American history has become the story of Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, and a bunch of mean whities. Nothing else much has happened here for the past 2 or 3 hundred years.
Have you see the textbooks that kids use in schools now days? A friend of my has an 11 year old, and there is very little about the founding fathers. Most History that is taught is post WWII. There is an emphasis on civil rights to the point of absurdity. Civil right deserves a place in history, but not the central focus.
Little is taught of the origins of Western Civilization, like Ancient Greece and Rome.
Also, geography is neglected. When I was in grammar school, we learned all the states with capitols and the next year had to go to a map on the wall and ID every country in the world (there were fewer countries then).