From the Washington Post:

More than 140 years after our own great national crisis, in fact, American textbooks would seem to satisfy two of our three goals for books in Iraq: They are popular and diverse. But do they promote individual freedom of thought, our third overseas objective?

Hardly. Instead, the books tell every individual what to think: America is an exceptional nation in human history, an engine of opportunity for its own diverse people and a beacon of liberty for the world. Indeed, each new group that gained entrance to the textbook has been folded into this same triumphal story.

That's why the title of your child's history book has remained the same -- "Quest for Liberty," "Rise of the American Nation," and so on -- even as it added new races and ethnicities. Try to imagine a biology text called "Triumph of the Cell," or a physics book entitled "Rise of the Atom."

As in Iraq, our history texts try to imbue students with a normative set of messages -- that is, an ideology -- about the meaning of the nation. Our ideology isn't a baldfaced falsehood, like Saddam Hussein's claim of sovereignty over Kuwait. But it's not self-evidently true, either. If we really took individual freedom seriously, we would demand that individuals evaluate the ideology on their own: Is America really a force for liberty in the world? What does "liberty" mean, anyway? We should be asking students these tough questions, not telling them simple answers.

In the meantime, let's temper our expectations for school reform in Iraq. Before we ask a tyrannized people to promote democratic education, we might try practicing a little more of it ourselves.

So Iraq has a thing or two to teach us about education. So our history books are too positive on America (they teach that "America is an exceptional nation in human history, an engine of opportunity for its own diverse people and a beacon of liberty for the world") and unfortunately seem to teach kids that the basic idea of America is all about values and an ideology. I can only imagine what his idea of "democratic education" is, especially since he seems to have a tough time defining "liberty."

Classes taught by Zimmerman:

E55.2175: What Are Schools For? Historical Perspectives
E55.2174: History of American Education and Society: Race and Ethnicity
E10.2135: Historical Research
E55.2079: The Rise and Fall of Progressive Education
E55.2173: History of American Education and Society: Education and the Culture Wars
E55.3006/7: Department Seminar: History of Education

Another article by Zimmerman on educating kids on "progressivism" can be found here.

Read this last article and tell me he is not trying to impart an "ideology" in his teachings.