January 29, 2009

Vietnam: Love It or Leave It

Over the past few weeks, I've been reading this really thought provoking book, "Lies My Teacher Told Me", by James Loewen. The books is a spirited discussion of the many problems with high school American History textbooks - what general themes they follow, why they occur, who is responsible for them and how they could be solved. I highly recommend it since it makes for easy and compelling reading.

Near the end of the book, Loewen presents an exercise that I wanted to duplicate here in the hopes that you, dear reader, might be inspired to participate. Here it is:

In January, 1971 the Gallup Poll asked: "A proposal has been made in Congress to require the U.S. government to bring home all U.S. troops before the end of this year. Would you like to have your congressman vote for or against this proposal?" Estimate the results, by education, by filling in this table:


Please list percentages that you would use to fill in the empty parts of the chart in order left to right on the top row then left to right on the bottom. Then, briefly state two reasonable hypotheses to explain these results.

1 comment:

Kelsey Atherton said...

I've read the book, so I'll avoid answering. But man, that is a great book, and a great exercise.