freedom from thought

New Jersey high schooler, libertarian, and occasional LRC contributor Max Raskin addresses today one of my main topics: the schooling of history (1, 2, 3, 4):

For most students, history is that easy "A" class, requiring little more than memorization to do well. For me, it is a class that has demonstrated a truth that I now know all too well -- the government is relentless in its self-gratifying publicity campaign, and will stop at nothing to promote itself, often at the expense of the truth. Its textbooks read as hagiographies, substituting thoughtful analysis for blind reverence. [I'm pretty sure he means either "substituting thoughtful analysis with blind reverence" or "substituting blind reverence for thoughtful analysis ."]

This is about as concise a statement of the thesis as I've seen:

Seeing as it has historically been the government who has taken away liberty through its expansion, historians who portray such growth in a favorable light are inserting their own anti-freedom beliefs.

And here's exactly what I (a) wish I'd suffered more of back in school, and (b) want to keep my son from having to struggle with:

Now this all sounds good in principle, but what to do when I am in class, being lectured by someone I disagree with? Do I raise my hand at misinterpretations I see? Do I speak once a class, delivering a short speech that attacks the textbook's main bias of the day (because it would take oh so long to go over them all)? Do I write essays on why the test's answer key supports fascism and the end of western civilization? Or do I quietly resign myself to a silent anguish of knowing that nothing I can say will ever mean anything to these people?

[...]

Am I wrong in pointing out the flaws with my teacher's approach to antitrust legislation? How could predatory pricing exist when under Rockefeller the price of Kerosene fell from a dollar to ten cents per gallon? Or the price of steel rails under Carnegie fell over 140 dollars per ton? Why should these "trusts" be punished if they raise the standard of living by cutting costs and raising real wages? Of course they shouldn't be.

Why should I have to subscribe to my textbook's "Whig" theory of history? What if I believe that history is not an inevitable progressive march upwards? What if I believe that capitalism and liberty [are] what made America great, not governments and interventionism?