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The parents of a Bellevue high school student have taken their son out of an American History course after discovering it was based on the research of historian Howard Zinn.

To quote the student鈥檚 father 鈥淚 don鈥檛 want my son learning George Washington was evil鈥︹��

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Our sister station KTTH covered this story, and I picked up on it because I read Howard Zinn鈥檚 book 鈥� it was a gift from my mother 鈥� and found it more interesting than any of the history I learned in high school.

It鈥檚 called a 鈥溾�� and yes 鈥� it鈥檚 all the stuff that has been kept out of high school history textbooks. It doesn鈥檛 say that George Washington was evil, but he is described as 鈥渢he richest man in America.鈥� And you learn that then, as now, the elites controlled the government.

You learn that the Native American tribes had their own functioning governments with the family as the smallest social unit 鈥� where disputes were settled based on customs and governed by a moral code, and the freedom of the individual came first. A concept that鈥檚 pretty popular these days.

The book has vivid depictions of slavery, but it also covers the rebellions of white tenant farmers in the north, who were not allowed to own land, and were locked into an American version of feudalism. There were rent strikes and violent tenant revolts 鈥� you begin to see why Washington had trouble raising an army.

Zinn鈥檚 book is 688 pages of the history you never learned. And yes 鈥� he鈥檚 described himself as having anarchistic tendencies, but there鈥檚 a reason for that. He was a bombardier in WWII. He dropped bombs on European cities 鈥� including dropping napalm on an occupied area of France. After the war 鈥� he went back to visit some of the cities he bombed. And he realized those bombs didn鈥檛 just kill the enemy.

It made him a skeptic of big government 鈥� which, come to think of it, is also something we hear a lot about today.

Howard Zinn鈥檚 book failed to shake my patriotism, any more than visiting Cuba or Iran or the old Soviet Union did. I still see America as a unique experiment worth protecting. Of course, I read it as an adult, and perhaps the uncensored version of the history that got us here may be inappropriate for children.

But if your child is strong enough to know the stuff that鈥檚 been stripped out of the textbooks 鈥� you might want to give them the book as a gift when they鈥檙e old enough.

Listen to Seattle鈥檚 Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O鈥橞rien weekday mornings from 5 鈥� 9 a.m. on 成人X站 Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the聽podcast here.