Oversimplified to the point of falsity

My daughter is learning about the causes of World War I.
Unfortunately, she's learning lies.

For example, why did Italy betray its Triple Alliance partners and side with Britain and France? As this worksheet explains, "Italy's reasoning was that the Triple Alliance was a defensive alliance, but Germany and Austria-Hungary had taken the offensive." That's garbage. The reason Italy went with Britain and France is because of the territorial concessions it was promised in the 1915 Treaty of London. [Source]

The distinction may seem innocuous, but it's important for understanding the causes of World War II. During the peace conference, Woodrow Wilson's insistence on self-determination denied Italy those concessions; the broken promises fed Italy's sense of grievance. [Source]

Later, Mussolini seized on that and cast himself as the one who could make Italy great again, despite having "won" its most recent war. [Source]

Unfortunately, when it comes to the causes for WW1, even for college-level students there's a 10 minute version, and then there's a semester-long version. Given the time constraints of an 8th grade U.S. history class, teachers invariably have to go with the former. They just don't have time for a fuller explanation of the truth.

In that sense, history is like physics. You have to learn about the Bohr model of the atom (which is wrong) before you can learn about electron clouds. And you have to understand Newtonian physics (which is wrong) before you can understand Einstein's ideas about gravity warping time and space.

So while I would *love* for history classes to "just teach the facts," the reality is that there are simply too many, and in the rush to get through the material, we lie to students.

Is there anything we can do about that?
Well, maybe we should be honest about it at the beginning.

Imagine a teacher saying, "Most of what I'm going to teach you is true, but many things are oversimplifications that hide details that become important later. Some things might be true, but are isolated incidents that don't represent a bigger picture. Other things have been chosen so that you get a positive impression of our nation's history, while still more have been left out for the same reason."

Despite it being the truth, I imagine that person would get fired pretty quickly.