The myth of opportunity in America runs deep, so deep in fact you’d be forgiven if you thought it appeared as the American Dream in the founding documents. It’s an old myth, one rooted in Puritanism and the Protestant Work Ethic, transformed by Benjamin Franklin in his autobiography, extrapolated by Horatio Alger in his Ragged Dick stories, epitomized by Jay Gatz in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, and championed from politicians throughout the decades as the rail against social safety nets. If only an individual would pull themselves up by their bootstraps they wouldn’t be poor. They’d succeed in society, being able to provide for themselves and their family and live comfortably in the process, never having to worry about that unexpected expense that might come along when a tree falls on the roof or a cancer diagnosis appears or a wreck occurs.

In the graphic adaptation to Lies My Teacher Told Me, James Loewen and Nate Powell begin chapter 7, “The Land of Opportunity,” with two quotes that drive home both the ways that the opportunity myth poisons the populace and the ways that the wealthy manipulate information, specifically the information students learn in school, to benefit themselves and increase their wealth while stifling the upward mobility of those underneath them. Two years into the depression in 1931, Will Rogers said, “Ten men in our country could buy the whole world and ten million can’t buy enough to eat.” Rogers points out that the wealthy, the one percent at the top of the pile, could alleviate the suffering of those underneath them, but instead of offering a hand to ease the pain, they perpetuate the myth that anyone can become like them if they only work hard enough. The problem, of course, is that the wealthy have assistance, specifically financial assistance accumulated through generational wealth, to become wealthy and maintain wealth while those suffering financially cannot even begin to accumulate wealth because once the money comes in the front door it exits out the back door to pay for survival.

Along with Rogers’ quote, Loewen and Powell have an epigraph from Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah which reads, “The history of a nation is, unfortunately, too easily written as the history of its dominant class.” Nkrumah’s quote echoes the well-worn maxim that history is written by the victors. However, Nkrumah does not just say the victors of war or battles; rather, he points out that the victors of the “dominant class” write history, and they do so in such a manner that eliminates any questioning of the social order, specifically in the United States the myth of the up from your bootstraps mentality. To underscore what Rogers and Nkrumah say in their quotes, Powell’s illustration for the opening of the chapter merely shows an empty plate with a fork on it against a white background, visually highlighting the lack of opportunity and sustenance for those who do not reside firmly within the “dominant class.”

When Loewen would ask his first-year students, “Why are people poor?”, they would respond by blaming individuals for not being successful. They did not understand or address “the ways in which opportunity is unequal in America” and “that social class structure” influences people’s ideas and paths in life. Loewen points out that half of the history textbooks he examined (9 of 18) for Lies for My Teacher Told Me didn’t even mention “social class, social stratification, class structure, income distribution, inequality, or any related topic” in the index, and none of the books listed “upper class or lower class.” Only three mentioned “middle class” adding directed questions that have students think about “America’s ‘middle-class values.’” Some mention labor history events such as the 1894 Pullman Strike or the 1911 Triangle shirtwaist Fire, but they don’t mention anything past the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, eschewing any “current, continuing, labor issues, like multinational corporate power, exporting jobs overseas, contemporary protest fronts, and diminished bargaining power.” None of this covers “social class,” so the students’ responses to Loewen’s question makes sense because they have not encountered any examination of labor history or social class.

This lack of historical grounding isn’t an anomaly because by leaving out any discussion of social class or labor movements the myth of equal opportunity takes center stage and persists. Through this, the textbooks, and by extension schools, as Loewen and Powell point out, reinforce Woodrow Wilson’s ideas when he said, “We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and another class of persons — a very much larger class of necessity in every society — to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific manual tasks.” Wilson’s comments continue to echo because in the late 1960s Roger Freeman, Reagan’s education advisor, said during the student protests at Berkley in 1970, “We are in danger of producing an education proletariat. . . . That’s dynamite! We have to be selective on who we allow [to go to college]. If not, we will have a large number of highly trained and unemployed people.” Education and knowledge empower individuals, and when discussing social class structures it threatens those in the power of those in the “dominant class.”

After detailing labor movements and class discussions left out of history textbooks, Loewen asks why textbooks might leave all of this information out. Part of the reason is self-censoring from publishers because, as a textbook editor told him, “You always run the risk, if you talk about social class, of being labeled ‘Marxist.’” This risk stems from “textbook adoption boards and committees, who are subject to pressure from organized activist and lobbying groups.” These boards determine textbook usage in schools and determine sales. If say, Texas, refuses to adopt a textbook, then that is millions of dollars in sales out the window. So, it is no wonder that books such as “Life and Liberty limited its class analysis to colonial times . . . in England.”

Even with this limited presentation, though, the myth of opportunity reigns supreme. Loewen notes, “Some Texan activist-critics still couldn’t be satisfied, though, as expressed by Deborah L. Brelina, a right-wing ally of the powerful Educational Research Analysts group. She wrote that Life and Liberty describes American “as an unjust society’ that’s unfair to lower economic groups — and therefore it should be removed from schools.” The myth of opportunity allows individuals, specifically whites, to overlook and ignore injustices caused by white supremacy such as chattel slavery, Jim Crow, genocide of Indigenous individuals, xenophobia, oppression of LGBTQ individuals, wealth disparities, and much, much more. We must use history, as Loewen argues, to inform the present because when we ignore history or it becomes obscured from us or willfully withheld from us, then citizens will, as Richard Nixon put it, “become ignorant of their own affairs, distrustful of those who manage them, and — eventually-incapable of determining their own destinies.” By limiting information, the “dominant class” maintains power and control, something I’ve written about again and again on this blog.

I’m going to write some more about Lies My Teacher Told Me in the next post, so stay tuned. Until then, what are your thoughts? As usual, let me know in the comments below. Make sure to follow me on Twitter @silaslapham.