"Famous philosophers have warned of the danger of overly realistic history. In his 1692 classic, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, John Locke denounced seventeenth-century history instruction because it celebrated soldiers and conquerors and thus implanted 'unnatural cruelty' in young minds. In the early 1800s, the great Swiss educator Johann Heimlich Pestalozzi banned history from the elementary school curriculum because he believed history exposed innocent children to 'learning about the wickedness and evils of the world before they were able to understand their significance.' Thus, traditionalists and progressives fight fierce battles over standards, curriculum, and textbooks. From their past, traditionalists want God, heroes, pride, nationalism. From their past, progressives want reason, complexity, honesty, and cosmopolitanism."
Peter Gibbon in a 2017 Humanities article asks, "how do we offer a realistic portrait of America's past without extinguishing idealism?"
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