After the Vietnam War, the way World War II was portrayed in American textbooks altered. Education textbooks were used to promote a feeling of patriotism before the Vietnam War. The Progressive Education Association intended schools to be the structure that America utilized to advance toward education reforms and the development of democracy during the progressive era (Smith, 2020). The National Education Association was encouraged by this to create a mission to promote liberty and patriotism (Smith, 2020). Some writers could not publish their writings because they were seen as traitorous for advocating opinions that did not exhibit a sense of pure nationalism.
A recent study demonstrates that, at least concerning the War in Vietnam and World War II, the simple portrayal of war as a noble, patriotic undertaking has waned in recent years. Nevertheless, neither the pain inflicted upon America’s adversaries nor outright foreign policy critiques are frequently seen in modern textbooks. The experiences of particular American troops received scant treatment in books. Instead, the sections on Vietnam just describe the death toll without weighing the sacrifices made by the soldiers or their expenses or without characterizing their conduct as either heroic or appalling. The prevalent use of this detached perspective when discussing Vietnam and other U.S. conflicts in textbooks lend credence to the idea that there is a hidden message of militarism and nationalism present in these materials.
The greater emphasis on the hardship of individual troops in American textbooks during the Vietnam War may result from a global culture that values people over nations or governments. Although it was there, we found that textbook descriptions of World War II focused significantly less on the suffering of the soldiers, which suggests that the Vietnam portrayal was, in part, a reaction to a specific military failure. However, the overwhelmingly unfavorable description of Vietnam and the increased attention to the suffering of American soldiers in other conflicts reflect and may be a factor in an increasing intolerance, particularly in the United States and other rich countries, for a nation’s own soldiers’ fatalities.
Reference
Smith, S. J. (2020). Chapter 15: Politics and Educational Policy. Windows into the history and philosophy of Education (pp. 163–175). Kendall Hunt Publishing.