Reply #18: Heres one from one of our local teachers

[madokie]

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1316/is_n9_v21/ai_8017733


I have to admit I haven't read the book but thought I would post a link

What Should We Tell Our Children About Vietnam? - Bill McCloud

Washington Monthly, Oct, 1989 by Michael Massing

E-mail Print Link What Should We Tell Our Children About Vietnam In February 1987, Bill McCloud, a junior-high-school teacher in Pryor, Oklahoma, decided that the time had come to teach students about Vietnam. McCloud, a veteran of the war, found few teaching aids, so he wrote to a variety of people connected with the conflict--cabinet officers, generals, pilots, and protestors--asking what they thought was most important to teach about the war. More than 120 people wrote back, including George Bush, Dean Rusk, Henry Kissinger, McGeorge Bundy, and even the notoriously uncommunicative Robert McNamara. Now, with this slim volume, we, like Oklahoma's students, have the benefit of their collective wisdom.

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More » Alas, What Should We Tell Our Children About Vietnam? contains few revelations. Vietnam was so complex that even 800-page tomes have not been able to do it justice. Most of the letters in this volume come to no more than a few paragraphs and some only a few sentences. The book consequently reads like a collection of soundbites, or the history of Vietnam according to USA Today. Cliches abound. "Many precious American lives were lost," declares Jimmy Carter. "War is a terrible thing," announces Shelby Stanton, a Vietnam vet and military historian. Harry McPherson, special assistant to Lyndon Johnson, rues our "lack of a clear objective."