South African textbooks...

are filled with the kind of critical and contradictory ideas most of America classifies as too-liberal or radical to be taught in high school (unless you are studying at Northwest School or somewhere on Vashon Island). 

Right now, I'm leafing through a 12th grade textbook. On one page, there's an image of a soldier, wearing a hat that reads CNN. The caption is "Your Death-Our Business." The next page contains a cartoon of Goofys and Mickey Mouses landing on an island and bombing the shit out of it with coke cans. Scared brown people are being herded by a large Donald Duck. 

The Civil Rights Movement, the Black Panthers, Hugo Chavez, Steve Biko, Che Guevara are the heros of this textbook. America, globalization, the WTO, Coca-Cola, Mc Donalds, Nike, are the enemies. 

Also found in this history textbook: a lengthy diatribe on television and a picture of an obese, miserable-looking, white, blonde kid. 

"Television can have a damaging influence on people's lives: instead of interacting and communicating with each other, they sit passively in front of TV. This has led to the increasing sense of loneliness and alienation that many people experience the modern world. Television can also make people less creative, because their minds are fed information and they no longer use their imagination." 

I know, I know, blaming TV for all of society's ills has become a cliche among self-critical Seattleites, but imagine if these words were printed in textbooks all across America, next to the same picture of a fat miserable child...