미국 중등학교 미국사 교과서에서의 베트남 전쟁 서술 = Vietnam War in American High School Textbooks of American History

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Almost every country in the world has past histories that they would not want to reveal or confess too honestly. The American history is not free of these past events. From historical perspectives, there have been many failings in documenting American history: the problems of race, gender, and the wars in foreign countries. On these issues, American historians recently have tried to correct their biased view through history textbooks. How has the textbook handled the Vietnam War? In my opinion, there was little effort to revise nationalistic views on the Vietnam War in history textbooks until 1980s. Why does this occur? In general, I could find the cause for these problems through researching educational systems of high school history teaching and mechanisms of textbook publishing. In the case of the Vietnam War, I discovered that there were some revisions of the description among a few newly published or revised textbooks after mid-1980s. I suggest these changes were influenced by two historical events. First, the mood of the American people has changed since 1980s, that is, today the Vietnam War is no longer a critical issue. Second, the publication of National Standards for United States History in 1994 has affected some historians, especially advocates of multiculturalism. They have tried to rewrite their own history textbooks. Because of this, historical viewpoints and descriptions of the Vietnam War in the American History textbooks have been revised.