Much of what gets taught in public high schools is really with a theme of Manifest Destiny: the pioneers came and conquered, threw off the yolk of foreign royal

Much of what gets taught in public high schools is really with a theme of Manifest Destiny: the pioneers came and conquered, threw off the yolk of foreign royalty, sought to create freedom from sea to shining sea I think that's what people remember when they think back to their own history classes, because that's all they were prepared to assimilate and remember when they were teenagers. This comes up often when somebody learns about something horribly imperialist the United States did, or something horribly racist or otherwise corrupt that happened here. Their first reaction is, "Why didn't they teach us THAT in high school? It would have made history class so much more interesting and personally meaningful to me!" Of course they WERE taught that in high school, and odds are they had a nice idealistic teacher who did their best to help them personally connect with it, but it didn't make any impression on them because they were teenagers and didn't give a shit. tl;dr They did teach you that and you were bored out of your skull and forgot it as fast as you could.