Americans dont learn anything about communism. The average american would likely say that fascism is communism and oligarchy while also being dictatorship -- I believe this accounts for a large number of Americans on the two imperialist camps that have a monopoly on political narratives. Marxism is never taught to students, only those who have enough curiosity in an anti-intellectual culture will learn of it in their own pursuit. In that pursuit they must battle the waves of trotskyists, leftcomms, and ancaps who constantly distort the definition making it unlikely that they, who have not been taught how to think critically, will be able to discern which definition is correct with so many conflicting narratives. They have endless contradictions in their ideology, no coherent definitions, and a bunch of conflicting capitalist narratives competing for their limited attention.