While in Boston, I ran across a CD of Tom Sawyer as mutilated into a children's musical, complete with anthropomorphic foxes in overalls on the jacket. One of the tracks was titled "Injurin' Joe".... I wonder if Joe is even vaguely Native American in this musical. I went off on a brief tirade about how the reason we have no history in this country is that we spend all our time erasing what little history we have because we're paranoid it will offend someone.

And yes, a lot of the history of America is offensive, but it's really no worse than a lot of the rest of the world, and if we don't learn about, and from, our mistakes, then what good can possibly come of them?

More alarming, though, is that I forwarded this article to SWIL's chit-chat list, and while response from most was outrage, the alumna who works in textbook publishing just shrugged and said "whatever". This, coupled with an essay I read in Boston by McIntyre (of McIntyre & Moore Booksellers, posted on the shelves near the music section in their shop at Davis Square) on the evil economic politics of the college textbook industry, is just appalling.

Why is American education all about textbooks and standardized tests, and not about primary sources and original thought and actually learning stuff?