How school textbooks distort labor history
This being Labor Day, it seems like a good time to look at the way the history of the labor movement is taught in U.S. schools. Unfortunately, it isn’t — at least, not much, and when it is, it is too often inaccurately portrayed.
Members of the Communications Workers of America demonstrate. (Joseph Kaczmarek/AP)State content standards sometimes ignore the movement almost completely, and textbooks either do the same thing or else treat inadequately the role labor has played in the creation of the American middle class and the raising of living standards in the country.
Why? Scholars say that the answer is largely because unions are unfavorably viewed by the business community as well as by some politicians — and that this has spilled over into the treatment of the subject in textbooks because of the