No, in the class with which I worked we did not teach the scholars you mentioned. Materials involved different contradictory sources about specific people and events. For instance, the question was posed about why Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. A number of his comments were passed out, plus a number of comments from other people at the time, including one or two Black leaders who visited him in the White House. It was a very ambiguous situation.

Are you talking about Hayek and Friedman, the economists ? You might very well teach their comments and point of view at a college or university level, or even an advaced high school level, but I don't think that for middle school students, 8th graders, this would be the appropriate place. Since the theories of other economists are not discussed, why should we discuss theirs ? There is only so much ground one can cover.

You are certainly correct about where our sympathies would lie.

RE the shrinking voter base of the Republican Party, you can theorize all you want about this, but the next twenty years spell increasing trouble for the Republican Party. The trouble will not be based on your point of view about what Republicans do or do not believe, or on what Republicans claim they stand for, but on the PERCEPTIONS OF HISPANICS. Hispanics perceive, quite rightly, that Republicans dislike minorities, including themselves. Maybe when Hispanics and other minorities become as prosperous as everyone else their preferences will shift, but I doubt that this will happen in your or my lifetimes.

Better go read my comments on how opposing views and critical thinking are taught in the school where I have been. Nobody is indoctrinating anyone about anything except with the idea that is is important to think for oneself. We are all VERY CAREFUL not to engage in political discussions advocating one side or another. This is a given.

That said, when students are given an essay to write on which candidate they prefer to see as president, I have yet to see one out of dozens and dozens that does not favor Obama. This is because the student population is predominantly minority, and even if you don't want to admit it, they perceive very clearly that the Republican Party dislikes immigrants, legal or illegal, and minorities. No amount of "rebranding" is going to win over minorities into the Republican camp. This is what the Hispanic population senses and clearly perceives. As the demographics of this country change and minorities make up an increasing percentage of the voters, fewer and fewer people are going to vote for Republicans. Talk all you want. Shuck and jive all you want. You cannot defeat demographics.

This is an extremely interesting and valuable resource. It adds another dimension to the discussion, an important one. It goes way beyond the argument, given by someone else here in this thread, that he won't read it because it was written by a socialist.

The major thrust of the teaching in my school is that students are given xeroxed pages representing two opposing views and asked which of these views seems most correct to them. They are then asked to justify their opinions, carefully taking into account and discussing the point of view they are opposed to. They also hold classroom debates in which opposing sides try to convince the audience they have the correct view and the opposing side does not. And they have special evenings when parents come to school and circulate among tables, asking questions about a particular subject and expecting coherent answers. I estimate that Zinn's book comprises about 20% of the instruction, and lots of other points of view are represented. No one is taking Zinn's point of view without reservations.

But it is still a great history book that exposes a lot of things that went on down through history.

I will look up the counter argument and rad it. There are many counterarguments. If they are specific regarding specific statements and specific corrections of fact, then that is something seriously to take into account.

The teaching of this book in my school is being done with 8th grade students.

Getting back on topic, this should interest those of yopu who have not read Zinn's book.

From a review of Howard Zinn's A People's History:

"Howard Zinn's A PEOPLE'S HISTORY is probably the most famous example of revisionist history. What is revisionist history? Well, most importantly, it is an attempt to show important historical events from the perspective of those who have not typically written history, for example women, African-Americans, poor and working-class people, gays and lesbians, among others.

"Take, for example, Zinn's very brief analysis at the end of the book about the Clinton years. The popular press portrayed, consistently and repeatedly, the 90s as a decade of prosperity and a booming stock exchange, with poverty nowhere in sight. The 90s dawned as communism, it's enemy, collapsed. The 90s was the alleged triumph of capitalism. But Zinn looks critically at just who "triumphed" and what kind of "triumph" it was. He gives us different "dispatches" from the 90s, voices not likely to be heard in The Wall Street Journal: workers displaced from good-wage blue-collar jobs as those jobs moved overseas thanks to free-trade agreements; welfare mothers supporting families on minimum wages because the public believes they had to "work for their check" while the defense budget soars; the degradation of public schools and services; chronic poverty among African-Americans.

"What this revisionist history of the 90s does is two-fold: 1) it creates an alternative narrative of the 90s, as a decade in which the social safety net was sacrificed to fill the coffers of the highest 1%, and 2) in creating this counternarrative, Zinn revealed how "constructed" this official history is, that is, that any history that claims the 90s as the "triumph of capitalism" is able do so only by ignoring and suppressing those other dispatches from the 90s.

"So the claim that Zinn is biased is, therefore, irrelevant. History, as Zinn himself claims, is constructed from an endless supply of evidence and events. The historian operates on assumptions (that is, ideology), to create history. Zinn is quite upfront that he is 'anti-capitalist' and frankly, I think he bleakly illuminates the endless pain capitalism has wreaked on the majority of the population while a tiny minority lives off the fat. To point out Zinn's bias is merely to help him make his point. The reality is that the left is aware of its ideology; the right pretends its ideology and history is merely 'natural.'"

Fine with me. I won't miss your posts at all.

And inb the meantime, if you wish to send me your mailing address, I would happily mail you tomorrow a stamp with the image of one of my dogs on it, and also email you a photo or two of the same dog. You can tell me some easy object you would like in the photo of the dog and I will put it in the photo before I take it.

Well, let us start with the stamp. Send me a private message with your address and I will do two things: 1) Mail you a letter with the stamp on it (it will take me a week or two to purchase a new sheet of them, so you will have to be patient); 2) send you an email of a larger version of the stamp; and 3) Take a photo of one of the major elements in the stamp which I worked on in PhotoShop top make the background.

By the way, Mead called me by phone three times to discuss matters. That is where she gave me those silly responses like "Samoans won't like you if you publish this."

Afai e te mana'o e talanoa fa'a-Samoa, ua lelei.

You have thought this all along.

The point is, BMAC, that you are criticizing a book you haven't read and hence have no firsthand experience with. You quote a critic or two -- very well-qualified ones, too, I might add. But even when you quote them, the references they give are not specific, and are just the names of an author or two.

I have experience with academics whose findings were very well-established. The most well-known one was Margaret Mead, whose "Coming of Age in Samoa" was simply demolished by myself and another person in two separate books. Mead responded to my book with several charges: 1) You're just trying to make a name for yourself. 2) Samoans won't like you if you publish this. (In fact they love my book.) She NEVER SAID I WAS WRONG and NEVER GAVE FACTS THAT CONTRADICTED MINE.

Zinn is being subjected to similar, non-specific criticisms. Critics say: 1) He is a Socialist; 2) He denigrates this country; 3) He is unpatriotic.

(1) may very well have been true. (2) and (3) are terribly false. But these are all tactics such as the late (thank goodness) Senator McCarthy would have engaged in. They are simply buzzword smears.

The only effective criticism of Zinn's book would be to quote statements of his and to offer solid, contradictory evidence that these statements are false. To my knowledge, neither you nor any other critic has managed this.

Put yourself in the place of an established, well-known academic. When someone comes along and presents a "revisionist" book that includes a huge amount of material you just didn't note or write about in your own work, what would your likely reaction be ?

To my knowledge, neither you nor anyone else has noted in any specific way serious flaws in Zinn's book. His book is very well annotated. You can go straight to his sources and look for yourself. That's the test of an excellent work about history. Anything less is simply not intellectually respectable.

Another thing I have noted over the years is that as the established players who presented a false description of matters die off, as is slowly happening now in relation to Zinn's book, the "revisionist" version is continues to be subjected to close scrutiny and found to be accurate. Increasing numbers of readers are doing just this.

On this one, the tide of history is with Zinn. It almost doesn't matter what you and I think now. His reputation will continue to get better and better.

No, I want you to be specific. The labels I cited are pejorative labels of the sort that advertisers call "buzz words." These are words intended to convey emotional feelings -- they connote but don't denote. I don't think I have used "buzz word" labels of this sort. You have made the statement that I do. Now find them and show them to us.

I think we are working with different definitions of what the word label means. If you will cooperate, we can determine if this is true.

This should really not be spilling over into generalized arguments -- and I am guilty of helping it take that path. My discussion is supposed to be focused on Zinn's book, which some of you have criticized without reading it. If you haven't read it, and if you are only quoting critics with agendas of their own (discrediting the book because they omitted important material, for instance), then in academic circles you would simply be laugfhed at.

Examples, please ?

You are definitely wrong here. I look at lots of arguments counter to my beliefs. Just because I reject them doesn't mean that I haven't looked at them.