How Americans look at the world is shaped by their education, which is in turn shaped by tribal loyalties. That is the takeaway from a NYT report on a study of how states take the same textbook and customize it for their political viewpoint.
Both California and Texas use the same history textbook, but the Texas version extols free enterprise, fails to mention "white flight" from the cities in the 1960s and in general promotes so called "republican values". The California version promulgates a watered down version of whites fleeing to the suburbs, but it tends to glorify the union movement and in its history of the gilded age and our latest iteration of same it focuses on inequality. In both cases, the books credit the same authors.
As one pundit put it, this is how red America will glorify the idiocies of the current president* in future textbooks. While much of the country will get a straightforward account of the horrors of the present administration, parts of America will treat tRump as the second coming of Ronald Reagan. So don't wonder why some of us seem to have a twisted view of history. It's all in the book!
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