That's also how I remember the standard U.S. History textbooks (which were the only ones, we definitely didn't use Zinn). Fairly patriotic tone, lots of focus o

That's also how I remember the standard U.S. History textbooks (which were the only ones, we definitely didn't use Zinn). Fairly patriotic tone, lots of focus on important presidents, all generally presented positively. Most of the labor/populist stuff was skipped or glossed over. William Jennings Bryan did get a mention (mostly in the context of a silver vs. gold standard debate that just seemed confusing to me at the time), but you wouldn't learn who Bill Haywood or Eugene Debs were, or why they once had a lot of supporters, or that the "labor wars" included decades of intermittent violence and actual pitched battles (e.g., the Battle of Blair Mountain). Even World War I was more heroic-Allied-victory than tragic-waste-of-lives in tone. There were some exceptions to the general approach: the oppression of black Americans was covered in some detail, during both the slavery and Jim Crow eras, as was Indian removal. I did go to high school in Texas, though, which has made a deliberate effort to keep a "pro-American" tone in their textbooks.