The Myth of Opportunity in History Textbooks

The myth of opportunity in America runs deep, so deep in fact you’d be forgiven if you thought it appeared as the American Dream in the founding documents. It’s an old myth, one rooted in Puritanism and the Protestant Work Ethic, transformed by Benjamin Franklin in his autobiography, extrapolated by Horatio Alger in his Ragged Dick stories, epitomized by Jay Gatz in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, and championed from politicians throughout the decades as the rail against social safety nets. If only an individual would pull themselves up by their bootstraps they wouldn’t be poor. They’d succeed in society, being able to provide for themselves and their family and live comfortably in the process, never having to worry about that unexpected expense that might come along when a tree falls on the roof or a cancer diagnosis appears or a wreck occurs.

In the graphic adaptation to Lies My Teacher Told Me, James Loewen and Nate Powell begin chapter 7, “The Land of Opportunity,” with two quotes that drive home both the ways that the opportunity myth poisons the populace and the ways that the wealthy manipulate information, specifically the information students learn in school, to benefit themselves and increase their wealth while stifling the upward mobility of those underneath them. Two years into the depression in 1931, Will Rogers said, “Ten men in our country could…