Education: Revised History

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Britain last week began to reform its teaching of U.S. history. The Board of Education's first step was to start summer-vacation courses for British schoolteachers on U.S. life. Some subjects: U.S. domestic life and arts, literature, geography, painting and sculpture, the U.S. Constitution and Presidents (by Harold Laski), the South, "Main Street." For instructors, it drew heavily on U.S. citizens in Britain, among them Reporter Vincent Sheean.

Young Britons' study of the U.S. has always been sketchy: they read the yarn about George Washington and the cherry tree, brief accounts of the "American War of Independence," the Civil War, the Monroe Doctrine, Woodrow Wilson and his League of Nations.

Said the London Times of the new British project: "[Even among well-educated Britons] Washington is a half-mythical figure who couldn't tell a lie. Jefferson is almost wholly forgotten. Lincoln is remembered because he abolished slavery rather than because he saved the Union. ... In every sense a world in which American leadership is effective will be a new world. That is one of the many reasons why the study of American history, American institutions and above all American traditions is of prime importance to the rising generation in this country."