Public schooling in the United States serves the purposes of Americanization and
assimilation. Group and national identities are continually refashioned, however,
and in the late 1990s, it is much less clear what students are being socialized or
assimilated to than it was twenty or forty or eighty years ago. The resurgence of policy
activity and controversy regarding American pluralism-diversity-multiculturalism
has raised questions about what vision or version of the nation is to be transmitted
to future generations via school curricula.
The focus of the study presented here is the images of America actually being conveyed
in elementary, middle, and high school social studies classes. The absence of a
single, predominant image of America in these classes can be understood as reflecting
the complex realities of United States history and contemporary society. Closest
to a dominant theme was “imperfect but best”—America as the best country in the
world, despite past problems, current difficulties, and various complaints. Alternative
interpretations were offered, all pointing to disruption of the traditional story of
America, a disruption that challenges not only the conventional wisdom but also the
privileged positions of those individuals and groups who have benefited from dominant
ideologies and prevailing distributions of power.