A common past is preserved through institutions, traditions, and symbols. Among those institutions including museums, monuments, school textbooks, archives, commemorations, the school history textbook is one of the most crucial instruments to shape and transmit a collective memory of one nation. The notion of identity depends on the idea of memory.
The purpose of this article is to analyze three 11th-grade American history textbooks widely adapted in the U.S.- Pathways to the Present, American Nation, and American Odyssey- in order to seek answers to the following questions: how do the American history textbooks present the memories of war taken place in the 20th century, especially, World War I, World War II, and Vietnam War?; In the textbooks whose memories are accepted as the official memory of the nation. This article finds that “Pathways to the Present” is organized around two kinds of collective memories: one produced by the new-right and the other by the new-left. By integrating them together, the textbook attempts to represent both political views. “American Nation”, seemingly adopting an ‘objective’ attitude toward the two political views, in fact, tends to take the side of the new-right, while “American Odyssey” apparently takes the side of the new-left.