This thread has too few posters, showing that not even Freepers are interested enough in history or the dumbing down of education.
Our Montessori school starts at age 4 telling the story of George Washington - the best hero you can imagine for little kids: he wore a cape, carried a sword, and won out over the bad guys. There is a great selection of picture books available about him.
Alas, what we can accomplish is only a drop in the bucket. When our students go into the public schools they study other things.
You are correct. I think that some of us are expecting it to deteriorate into another incessant Crevo fight and so are not bothering. And that's too bad, because the topic is really quite different.
Certain of the author's objections are about factual inaccuracy, others a matter of overly broad interpretation (Cromwell, for example, whose activities in Ireland are not to be minimized even if they were in Parliament's interests) - what I think these have in common is the tendency of an impatient reader to place these events in a narrative that is more digestible than accurate. That isn't necessarily a function of teaching. Forcing another narrative through education is not necessarily the answer. Anyone who has had to slog through Howard Zinn is painfully aware of that.
There is the impression by those of us for whom history is an interest that everyone should be equally interested. Actually I might make a fair case for that, but it isn't inherently truer than that everyone should be equally conversant with integral calculus as an engineer. Education can only go so far. You have to pick your objectives carefully. And anyway I'm terrible at integral calculus.