Posted on 08/28/2015 8:15:52 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion
. . . Last year, the College Board, the nonprofit corporation that controls all the high-school Advanced Placement courses and exams, published new guidelines for the AP U.S. history test. They read like a left-wing dream. Obsession with identity, gender, class, crimes against the American Indian and the sins of capitalism suffused the proposed guidelines for teachers of AP American history.
As of a few weeks ago, that tilt in the guidelines has vanished. The College Boards rewritten 2015 teaching guidelines are almost a model of political fair-mindedness. This isnt just an about-face. It is an important political event.
The earlier guidelines characterized the discovery of America as mostly the story of Europeans bringing pestilence, destructive plants and cultural obliteration to American Indians. The new guidelines put it this way: Mutual misunderstandings between Europeans and Native Americans often defined the early years of interaction and trade as each group sought to make sense of the other. Over time, Europeans and Native Americans adopted some useful aspects of each others culture.
. . . To Bernie-Sanders progressives, what happened was a sellout. For ThinkProgress.org, College Board Caves to Conservative Pressure.
What really happened was the resurrection of an American idea the left wants to extinguishfederalism. Some states began to push back. Legislative opposition to the guidelines formed in Georgia, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Nebraska, Tennessee, Colorado and Texas.
Stanley Kurtz, of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, has argued that the College Board was concerned that its lucrative nationwide testing franchise would be at risk if states began to replace it with their own courses. I think hes right.
. . . Someone rewrote those guidelines into a reasonable political accommodation.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Ping.
Win is clearly an exaggeration . . .
Not until the RINO leadership are in stocks and stripped of their congressional privileges, and certain democrats are in orange jumpsuits.
Don’t be too sure we won - see http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/213288/
It should have said, what followed was an inevitable clash between a culture with science, architectural, medical, and cultural achievements with technology to build ships to travel the world and refine metals with the sciences of metallurgy, and chemistry, and knowledge to move earth, and build transportations systems and plan cities and water storage, just as they were at the beginning of a scientific, technological and political explosion when they meet a group of people who afters thousands of years their greatest scientific innovation was fire. I can guarantee if aliens with technology incomprehensibly well beyond ours were to land and start moving in, they would see us as inferior and after we fought back enough a nuissance, and eventually something that must be purged
Not time to go home yet though.
The GOPe is just as guilty and deserve orange jumpsuits. I want Jeb to pay for his crooked deal with Lehmans. I want Roberts impeached. I want the dirt on McConnell and Boehner leading to convictions. I want Congress subject to insider trading laws just like Martha Stewart. I want such a cleaning of government that politicians are afraid to accept a stick of gum. When I see these things, I’ll know that conservatives have won.
Hope to see the full article move over to non-pay sometime, looks interesting. Speaking of snark, I’d love to have the full article to throw up in the face of certain smart-ass nephew that thinks he knows it all since he took an AP course 25 years ago. He’s becoming a real PITA on Facebook on many subjects, including being an outlet for any BS the local “alternative” paper prints, like the “truth about Planned Parenthood” being all about sex ed and women’s health. Since he’s never married or made a baby, I guess I should expect him to be clueless about such matters.
Obsession with
identity
gender
class
crimes against the American Indian
the sins of capitalism
The author of the article, not I, was declaring you won. I notice he didnt say, we won . . .
EXACTLY. Was going to type something similar.
Pyrrhic victory at best that someone is trying to dress up.
I don’t like it when the trashcan media says “hey conservatives, you won.” It usually means we lost.
I know. I should have made that clear.
But we’re so cute. Don’t you think they’d want to keep us as pets? At least the pretty blonde anchorwomen and eastern european supermodels.
InAmerican Beliefs, John McElroy notes that there were four main colonial powers in America, and each of them found different things and wanted to do different things:
- Spain :
- found bronze-age civilization, and conquered them in a conventional manner as they would have liked to have done in Europe, especially England. Since they found a going concern their only interest was in dominating and exploiting it, rather than creating it. So the only people they sent to their colonies were soldiers and gentlemen to be in charge. No Spanish peons need apply.
- France :
- found in Canada not a going bronze-age civilization but a stone age one. But like Spain, France's primary motivation was control - of navigation of the St. Lawrence River - and trade with the natives. So there was need of traders, but mostly of gentlemen and soldiers to control. Very few peons, even French ones and certainly none other, were needed.
- Portugal :
- found stone age peoples in Brazil. In order to exploit Brazil they sent over workers - in the form of African slaves. Plus of course, gentlemen to control the operation.
- England(it wasn't Great Britain until later) :
- found in the portion of North America which it was able to claim nothing but stone-age people and forests. The land was rich and had tremendous agricultural potential but wasn't farmland until it had been laboriously cleared of trees and vines. The English colonists found that gentlemen were pretty useless; what the situation cried out for was farmers. So England sent over poor people - some, including some of my ancestors, came from Lutheran Germany - and so the American polity was dominated by practical people (even if they often had religious motivations for wanting to come, still they learned that the situation required diligent work).
WSJ: “You Conservatives” means we at the WSJ are not among you.
bkmk
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.