High School history should be, as Steve seems to be saying, age appropriate. To me that means it is a mix of celebratory patriotism and a look at some of the dark truths in America's past. High school students aren't idiots, mostly anyway, it is possible to present the heroic side of America's founding fathers while noting that many of them were slave owners, and thereby implicated in all of the ugliness, racism and cruelty of the plantation slave system.
As for the idea that the Native Americans didn't do too much with the country prior to the arrival of the Europeans, this is one of the key arguments used to justify dispossessing the Indians of their lands.
I recommend, for those who are inclined to explore this further, Jared Diamonds fine book "Guns, Germs and Steel." He asks the question, in effect, of why it is that Europeans sailed across the oceans to conquer the new world, rather than Native Americans sailing across the Atlantic to conquer Europe?
