I tell this to my students at the beginning of the unit so that they understand my perspective from the start. All teachers have a point of view. Our textbooks and other resources we choose to incorporate in our courses are not ideologically neutral. On the other hand, we should not be afraid to expose our students to alternative views as they struggle to develop their own understanding of history. Over the past ten years certain aspects of teaching about Vietnam have changed, while others have remained the same.
Students are still extremely interested in learning about Vietnam.
This is especially helpful since many students consider required US history to be one of their worst courses, having suffered through watered-down US history classes in the earlier grades. Students still come into the class with a lack of information or a great deal of misinformation concerning Vietnam. Students still have relatives who were involved in some way with Vietnam, although in ten years it is starting to become ancient history to students who have a very short historical perspective. What has changed is that students no longer come in with a strong anti-communist bias. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, students today have only a vague understanding of the Cold War ideology that permeated the interpretation of history.