"What seemed puzzling to me in school was how my early grade history classes tended to show a strong western bias (mostly pro British and USA)..."

no need to limit it to lower grades... I never expected much during my first 8 years in St. Joseph's... I often knew more history & definitely science than my teachers.   So it was with great anticipation that entered 9th grade in our public jounior/senior high school and saw that 9th grade history was called World History. I felt like crying when I opened my textbook and discerned that it was world history as seen through western european eyes... it was a crushing blow to learn that it wasn't just my old parochial school with had tunnel vision.

Thankfully, my mom and dad loved books and our home library also contained several TimeLife series that included ancient history and various world cultures.

And this is the crux of the issue here... fundamentalists reject viewpoints that do not wholeheartedly support their own... there never seems to be an honest attempt to consider alternatives or examine various viewpoints in an unbiased manner.

While many (if not most) atheists and agnostics support the science of evolutionary theory, this is NOT a requirement... there are as many or more folks of religous conviction that accept science and scientific method as the valid tools that they are. It is only those who not only do not understand science, and seem to reject any attempt to understand because to do so would jeopardize they cherished beliefs, that are so vocal in their attempts to discredit science, scientific method and the information gained through it.

This has just been one more tired exercise in futility... because you can lead a zeolot to knowledge, but you can't make them learn.