Nicholas Drane

“You always run the risk, if you talk about social class, of being labeled Marxist,” the editor for social studies and history at one of the biggest publishing houses told me. This editor communicates the taboo, formally or subtly, to every writer she works with, and she implied that most other editors do, too. Publisher pressure derives in part from textbook adoption boards and committees in states and school districts. These are subject in turn to pressure from organized groups and individuals who appear before them. For years Educational Research Analysts, led until 2004 by Mel Gabler of Texas, kept capitalism safe from harm at school. Gabler’s stable of right-wing critics regarded even a hint of class analysis taboo. As one writer has put it, “Formulating issues in terms of class is unacceptable, perhaps even un-American.”
― James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong