As children, we tend to trust the information our teachers tell us. But as history is told and retold, educators develop new understandings of the past.

“The really outrageous things about education in the past is not so much the misinformation they fed us but how much real information they withheld,” says historian Jim Turner, who helped PHOENIX magazine “factcheck” lessons from Arizona schools.

1. Anasazi is defined in history books as a Navajo word for “ancient ones,” but it means “ancient enemy.”

2. History books written until the 1970s depicted American Indian cultures as either savages who needed to be civilized or children who needed parenting by superior people. Only in the 1980s were words like “savage” and “squaw” removed from textbooks.

3. Until the 1970s, most textbooks portrayed Anglos as saints who brought civilization to Native Americans and whose theft and killing were justified in the name of progress.

4. History books portrayed the lone sheriff or righteous gunslinger as prime players in taming the West. But Spanish Catholics, Mormons, Jews and Mennonites were also big contributors to the West’s growth.

5. Textbooks stated that Teddy Roosevelt charged up San Juan Hill on horseback during the Spanish-American War. He and his men were actually on foot, and there was no San Juan Hill. They charged up Kettle Hill and then proceeded to San Juan Ridge.

6. Lyndon Johnson earned his nickname “Landslide Lyndon” during his 1948 U.S. Senate run. It appeared he had lost the election, but it was soon discovered that 203 people voted at the last minute, causing Johnson to win by 87 votes. Four years after Johnson’s death, in 1977, an election judge admitted he helped rig the election. Textbooks finally stopped calling Johnson “Landslide Lyndon.”