I regret to say that in many American schools if they teach about George Washington it's mostly to talk about the fact that he was a slaveowner, or to highlight Lincoln's views on race which were not in accord with contemporary liberalism. Nor would many schools--both public (in our sense, government-supported) and private--see much use in teaching Shakespeare when there are black and Latino writers who are much more relevant, or so they claim. It's the students who are being robbed. My mother once told me that when she was about twelve, which means she and her mother would have been in the US about five years, her father somewhat longer (and none of them had come here speaking a word of English), she was trotted out proudly for the neighbors. "Judith is studying Shakespeare in school," my grandmother bragged. Further, if either set of grandparents had been told that their children should not learn about and admire Edison, or Washington, or Whitman, they would have screamed high and low. My grandparents' grandchildren have become doctors, university teachers, foreign service officers--I turned to the dark side and became a lawyer--businessmen, teachers, and so forth. There is a connection. Students are being robbed of opportunities to grow both as part of the work force and as citizens.