ABSTRACT
So why is what Nancy Todd does in her classroom quite rare whileBob Brinton’s practice remains common? One of the principal reasons is that the pull of teaching the nation-building narrative arc-the nation’s collective memory-in U.S. history courses is indelible. It is staunchly rooted in the need to socialize the young and cultural outsiders into what Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (after Gunnar Myrdal) called the “American Creed.”1 Deeply implicated in patriotic identity-formation politics, the story arc and its representation in U.S. history textbooks serve to carry the symbolic meaning of what it is to be an American, epitomized in Brinton’s class by Abraham Lincoln. To claim that identity, one needs to be able to repeat that storyline, to call it one’s own, to say “we” and “our” when referring to America and to its history.
