Chapter 10, Summary and Analysis

"Progress Is Our Most Important Product" examines textbooks' final words to their readers. They are vapidly optimistic, ignoring opinion polls on how America is poised to meet the 21st century. They embody the social archetype of progress. Jefferson invites the "philosophical observer" to consider how, moving eastward from the Rocky Mountains, the progress of mankind from infancy to maturity can be observed. The idea of progress permeates the 19th and early 20th centuries, and is not questioned into the 1950s. Growth is equated with progress, in population numbers and signs of economic prosperity.

Textbook authors grow up in this atmosphere and naturally sell to their readers. By avoiding constant dollars, they graph rapid growth in family income and health care expenditures that belie the flattening of the 1980s. Negative factors like air pollution alerts, reliance on imported oil, and declining real...