One of the Interesting Things about the US

I may have touched on this before, but I think this is interesting.
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In most countries, there is a unified history taught to school children.  That is kind-of the case in the United States.  For most of the country, the history books are essentially the same.
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Okay, actually there are usually two major set of school books.  Texas is the key buyer for a set of school books that more conservative states purchase.  California is the key buyer for most other states text books.
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That is because California and Texas have the largest school age populations, and once you create a good text book, it is much cheaper to buy one already done, than try to commission a new one.  Not that either Texas or California commission these, but they are the largest markets, and the purchase process tends to select ones the board finds relatable.
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But that is in general.
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In Grade 5 (maybe different now), most states' history classes are the actual state's "history".  That is, it is on the history of the state, not the country.
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So, in Ed's case, they learned about the mine workers (called "badgers", hence the school mascot).  They learned about the westward migration into the mid-west.  They learned about Indians and even the bad things we did to the Indians.
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There weren't many Indians in the California - the Spanish killed them off.  So I didn't learn all that much about them.
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In California, our history is really different than Wisconsin's or New York's.  We were first settled by the Spanish, who built the Missions and killed the Indians.  To this day I will roll my eyes when we pass a Mission, but secretly want to go to complete my mission charm collection.  We took school field trips OR my parents / grandparents took me to (deep breath): Mission San Fernando, Mission Ventura, Mission San Juan Capistrano, The San Diego Mission, The Santa Barbara Mission, and more.
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Japanese Interment Camp

We also learned about the Japanese Internment Camps.  During WWII, America decided that Americans of Japanese descent were a risk of treason and terrorism.  So they rounded them all up and shipped them to internment camps in the middle of nowhere (the deserts of California, the swamps of Arkansas, etc.).  The war hysteria was helped, becasue all that land that got sucked up by the states or connected individuals, but that isn't why it happened (sarcasm).  Anyway, I was told about this because Gardena, where I went to grade school, was one of the 2 places in Los Angeles that the Japanese were re-settled.  The other was a community called Sawtelle, which was condemned with a decade for the 405 Freeway. My school was probably 1/3 Japanese - and, like all children, I assume that the entire world was that way.  I thought everyone knew about this and that every town was 1/3 Japanese.  And this happened in 5th grade.
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So if you hang out with a bunch of Americans from different areas, you can ask them about their history and, depending on the state, get much different answers.  Isn't that odd.