Here.

"Who controls the present controls the past. Who controls the past controls the future."

In that same vein of historical revision, look at this.

Just ask Emily Isaacs, age 10, a fifth-grader and a friend's niece. Did you study Lewis and Clark in school?

"We did a little bit," she said sheepishly, "last year."

What can you tell me about them?

"I can't think of anything," she said after an awkward silence.

And while she didn't know much about Lewis and Clark, she knew a lot about Columbus.

"He brought over diseases," she said eagerly.

It reminded me of the time I asked my nephew what he'd learned in school about World War II.

"Well, I know the Germans were bad," he said with equal trepidation. "But I know we were bad, too."

In their defense, neither is the class dunce. They're merely repeating what passes for history these days.

My kids don't get a serious treatment of modern American and European history until senior high school. So far, the teachers seem to be okay in these subjects.

A third item in the same vein pointed out by Andrew Sullivan: (italics mine)

...The other day at the Pierre Hotel, Mikhail Gorbachev, the man who ended the Cold War, was in an elevator administering an impromptu lesson in how newly cosmopolitan Russia deals with the question.

The article the quote is in is interesting in other ways:

The only woman in the elevator was also a non-Russian: Miranda, a graduate student at Harvard, who helps plan Gorbachev’s appearances in the States. The Pierre’s elevators are extravagantly appointed but not exactly spacious, and Gorbachev was pressed next to her in a corner. He was wearing a crisp white shirt and a red tie. She had a wired communication device in her ear.

“You are so wonderful!” Gorbachev said to her in Russian as the elevator made its way down from the sixteenth floor. “What would we do without you!” Palazhchenko dutifully translated. Then Gorbachev took her by the shoulders, leaned in, and pecked her on both cheeks.

Miranda blushed and began to pull away.

“No, no, in Russia, we do it three times,” Gorbachev said. Palazhchenko did his part.

“For you, Mr. Gorbachev, four, five—as many as you want,” Miranda said.

Wonder what the story would have been if that had been Arnold.