 | I had the good fortune to attend the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics (NCSSM) 1982-84. It was the first state residential high school of its kind to specialize in recruiting extremely bright, self-motivated, rising eleventh graders for an intense, two year program of rigorous coursework. Unfortunately, I found the history department of this high school riddled with instructors entirely sympathetic to the leftist "underdog" views of Howard Zinn. Although we did have other texts such as A Pocket History of the United States, clearly Zinn took center stage.
At every turn, Zinn chooses to focus on the "rectum" of the body of American history rather than the whole body and its many beautiful parts. He opts to preoccupy himself with the feces of history rather than its bountiful fruits. As a naive eleventh grader, I never appreciated our instructors compelling us to wade through the sewer of Howard Zinn's mind. I never forgave them for that and I never will. This textbook belongs in a trash bin, not in a classroom. Students considering NCSSM today should investigate what lies beneath its shining "public relations" veneer to determine its true nature. |
A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
