In the NYObserver, Terry Golway looks at his child’s history textbook

Imagine, for example, explaining the Berlin Wall to a bunch of 10-year-olds without mentioning the Soviet Union, the United States or the word “oppression.” Well, the non-judgmental authors of Exploring Our Land have managed that trick. They write that in 1945, “a group of countries” divided up Germany. “However, people kept trying to leave East Berlin.” Why? The book doesn’t say. Besides, people move around all the time—what’s the big deal anyway? But 28 years later, the book informs young minds, “the people of East Germany changed their government … they decided to remove the boundary between East and West Berlin.”

Freedom, oppression—whatever! It is curious that the authors would choose not to mention the depredations visited upon East Berlin—thus causing the pre-Wall flight—for they certainly pull no punches in describing the evils of slavery in America and of white resistance to the civil-rights movement. This is how it should be—which makes the bland, who-are-we-to-judge passage about the Berlin Wall all the more curious.