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Meet Joe Enge.Joe is an award-winning, 15-year veteran history teacher in Carson City who has, among other things, written two history textbooks and served on the 1997 task force which drew up Nevada's history standards.  But according to school district administrators, he's a "bad" teacher.You see, Joe has this crazy idea that American history should include our colonial period, as well as the Revolutionary War period.  You know, where the Founding Fathers fought for independence from England and wrote the greatest governing document the world has ever known - the United States Constitution.  You know, that period of time which...

IS TEACHING TRADITIONAL “HISTORY” HISTORY IN CARSON CITY’S HIGH SCHOOL? Meet Joe Enge. Joe is an award-winning, 15-year veteran history teacher in Carson City who has, among other things, written two history textbooks and served on the 1997 task force which drew up Nevada’s history standards. But according to school district administrators, he’s a “bad” teacher. You see, Joe has this crazy idea that American history should include our colonial period, as well as the Revolutionary War period. You know, where the Founding Fathers fought for independence from England and wrote the greatest governing document the world has ever...

My formerly homeschooled son has entered the local public high school. His history teacher has chosen to base his American history education on the texts of Howard Zinn, a commited Marxist. http://howardzinn.org/default/ Any people out there who know more about this "author" or have an alternative to the marxist view of America that this author gives?

(First published in the June 2005 issue of The NRB Magazine magazine) American history today has become a dreary academic subject. Yet, most who are bored by American history view Bible history quite differently: they love the stories of David and Goliath, Daniel and the lion's den, and Peter walking on the water. So it's not that people don't enjoy history, it's just that they don't respond favorably to the way American history is currently being taught. One reason Bible history is interesting and American history is not is that the Bible (as well as American education during its first...

Settlement Vindicates Use of Historical Religious Documents in Classroom By Jim Brown August 17, 2005 (AgapePress) - A settlement has been reached in a case involving a California elementary school teacher who was barred from distributing American history documents because they contained references to God and religion. The Alliance Defense Fund and the Cupertino School District have reached a settlement in which the district has agreed to no longer censor teacher Steven Williams because he is a Christian. Officials at Stevens Creek Elementary had prohibited Williams from providing fifth-grade students with supplemental readings such as William Penn's Frame of Government...

Revisionism is the common method employed by those seeking to subvert American culture and society. The dictionary defines revisionism as an “advocacy of the revision of an accepted, usually long-standing view, theory, or doctrine; especially a revision of historical events and movements.” Revisionism attempts to alter the way a people views its history and traditions in order to cause that people to accept a change in public policy. For example, during the 150 years that textbooks described the Founding Fathers as being devout men and Christians who actively practiced their faith, civic policy embraced and welcomed public religious expressions. But...

CUPERTINO, Calif. - Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund and the Cupertino Union School District filed a settlement agreement today in the lawsuit Williams v. Vidmar. "We are pleased that this matter has been resolved to the satisfaction of all parties," said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Kevin Theriot. "The school district is to be commended for agreeing that their policy allows teachers, no matter what their religious beliefs, to use handouts of historical significance that have religious content, like the Declaration of Independence." ADF attorneys filed the lawsuit in federal court against the district in November of last year on...

A controversial new state panel will determine whether New York schoolchildren are taught enough about the "physical and psychological terrorism" against Africans in the slave trade — and then recommend changes to text books and curricula. The Amistad Commission, named after the...

Many years ago my friend Robert Wible was stationed in India with the United States Information Agency. He returned to the U.S. with a textbook "Modern History" which was had been published in the Soviet Union. Translated into English, the book was being used in Indian schools. What is interesting about the book is that it tells a very different story than is usually presented in American textbooks. As the book covers the period from Middle Ages to the 1870s, various chapters of the book can be used to contrast the traditional American and the 1960s Marxist-Leninist interpretations of major...

A few years ago, the National Constitution Center surveyed teenagers and found that while only about four in 10 could name the three branches of the federal government fully six in 10 could name all Three Stooges. Everyone agrees we aren't teaching history well, but the direction of reform is controversial. Philadelphia's public schools have just announced they will mandate that all students take an African-American history course in order to graduate from high school. The theory is that the city's 185,000 public school students, two-thirds of whom are black, will finally become aware of their culture and gain self-esteem....

...To give you some idea how liberals, when they're in the majority, think, you merely have to consider California State Assembly Bill 756. Hold on to your hats because this one's a doozy. It bans school districts from purchasing history textbooks that are longer than 200 pages!...

Pennsylvania Legislator Asks District to Reconsider "unnecessary" Black History Requirement The Associated Press PHILADELPHIA (AP) - The speaker of the state House urged the city school district to reconsider what he called an "unnecessary" requirement that high school students take an African-American history course in order to graduate. "I would like to see them master basic reading, writing and arithmetic," Speaker John Perzel said in a letter Tuesday to James Nevels, chairman of the Philadelphia School Reform Commission. "Once we have them down pat, I don't care what they teach. ... They should understand basic American history before we go...

In a recent appearance at the Heritage Foundation, an author who has written many great histories gave some insight as to why the Ivory Tower produces such, at best, lackluster ones. "Many people say, 'Why bother with history?,' and unfortunately many of them are in education," best-selling writer David McCullough said at the Heritage Foundation last Friday. McCullough has penned best-selling historical biographies of American Presidents John Adams and Harry S. Truman. "Why is it possible that an otherwise intelligent person does not know that the original 13 colonies were on the East Coast or who George Marshall was," McCullough...

Some people are asking: How can the Philadelphia public school system mandate teaching African and African American history? But others of us are asking: How have school officials justified not teaching it in a school district where nearly two-thirds of all students are African American? America is so diverse that we should be teaching the stories of all its people, whether it is Greco-Roman history, including Greek mythology; Ireland's potato famine; the exodus of Eastern Europeans to America; or the roles so many other groups played here, including Italians, Germans, Asians and Latinos. This should all be part of the...

Black History Course Mandated for Philadelphia Schools By Monisha Bansal CNSNews.com Correspondent June 13, 2005 CNSNews.com) - The Philadelphia public school system, citing the fact that blacks encompass two-thirds of its student population, will require all students to take an African-American history course starting in September. But a conservative critic calls the decision divisive and claims Philadelphia parents "are sacrificing their children to a bunch of America-hating black liberals." Joe Lyons, spokesperson for the School District of Philadelphia, said there has been a public outcry since the 1960s "to include more emphasis on African-American history and culture in our curriculum."...

I've heard several talk show hosts talk about a recent (I think it's recent) study about how ill informed students were about history, for example not knowing who fought in Civil war, WWI, etc. I think Sean Hannity may have referred to it yesterday in his man in the street radio segment but I just heard the end of it. Unfortunately I've never been able catch any of the details of the study like the age group, the actual questions that were asked in the study and the actual statistics. Since Freepers are so well informed I'm hoping someone can...

LONDON, May 22 (AFP) - Admiral Horatio Nelson may have guided the British naval fleet to a famous victory at the Battle of Trafalgar, but he faces a far tougher foe during celebrations to mark its 200th anniversary -- the massed forces of political correctness. According to a newspaper report on Sunday, organisers of a re-enactment of the sea battle next month have decided to bill it as between a "Red Fleet" and a "Blue Fleet", rather than Britain and its French and Spanish adversaries. This is being done to avoid the embarrassment of assembled French dignitaries at the event...

Living History Program Gives Children Intense View of SlaveryBy Samira Jafari Associated Press Writer Published: May 16, 2005 ALPINE, Ala. (AP) - The girl stares at the ground, the man looming beside her. Directly ahead is a path for escape. Others stand rigidly with eyes cast downward. "They're runaways, ain't they? You don't even have a concept of freedom, do you?" the man barks at her face. "You a slave, girl?" She nods, a few others sniffle. The 50 children, only one of whom is black, were experiencing the cruelties inflicted upon slaves who tried to escape north through the...

Rush Limbaugh said on his nationally syndicated radio show that Evanston Township High School students "don't know anything about World War II" and "they've probably never heard the name Adolf Hitler" because they're so focused on a multicultural curriculum. Some Evanston kids want to show Limbaugh what they know. They want to debate him on American history. "I think [a debate] would be great because then we'd prove him wrong and open up his opinion a little bit," Sarah Loeb, an ETHS sophomore, said Thursday. 'Balkanizing this country' Limbaugh's comments came after he read a Christian Science Monitor article Tuesday...

History textbook confuses studentsA publisher has agreed to amend a high school textbook that teachers said confused students into equating Norway's government under Nazi occupation and its post-war return to democracy.History teachers at Asker Upper Secondary School protested after finding that a textbook covering Norwegian history after 1850 made complex and controversial comparisons between occupied and post-war Norway.The text argued that "both put great weight on ideology and modern propaganda" and that their methods led to both forms of government being controversial."The book erases the separation between democracy and dictatorship. This can be dangerous in a time where one knows...

A publisher has agreed to amend a high school textbook that teachers said confused students into equating Norway's government under Nazi occupation and its post-war return to democracy. Einar Gerhardsen under a Labor Party political banner saying the country needs firm government. History teachers at Asker Upper Secondary School protested after finding that a textbook covering Norwegian history after 1850 made complex and controversial comparisons between occupied and post-war Norway. The text argued that "both put great weight on ideology and modern propaganda" and that their methods led to both forms of government being controversial. "The book erases the separation...

The dwindling cadre of academics who try to hold the line on standards have a particularly rough time of it when choosing textbooks. “Every semester I have to pick a new book and I have to pick the least bad book and it’s really depressing,” Suffolk County Community College professor Thomas E. Woods, Jr. says. “You need a good stiff drink.” “Other conservative academics from across the country have the same problem.” Dr. Woods teaches history at Suffolk, which is affiliated with the State University of New York. His partial solution to the textbook dilemma was to write his own...

(AP WIRE) The National Education Council announced today the number twelve will no longer be taught in public schools after 2008. The reason cited by the NEC is the number 12 has “religious” connotations that violate the separation of church and state clause in the constitution. Radical right wing organizations, like the Wall Street Journal and Fox News, reacted by decrying the decision as “ridiculous” and alleging, “this action will lead to lower math scores by US students.” Okay, I made the whole thing up. The point I’m trying to make is: you can’t teach a subject when you leave...

Lessons about inventor George Washington Carver or slave rebellion leader Nat Turner no longer will be relegated to the 28 days of February — or to black history classes — in Maryland public schools, but will shape the foundation of an expansive new curriculum. Students will learn about blacks' contributions to society in a variety of classes — such as science, music, language arts and American history — in a new, year-round curriculum called "An African American Journey," state school officials said yesterday.

CBN News) – WASHINGTON – About half of high school students lack a basic knowledge of American history according to a 2001 Education Department study. That education gap is driving the nation's second lady to pass on the country's historical record to the next generation. CBN News sat down for an exclusive interview with Lynne Cheney to discuss her latest campaign. Lynne Cheney kicks off the holidays by topping the national Christmas tree. But the passion of the nation's second lady is American history, and her desire to inspire young patriots through revolutionary tales. Cheney's just-released children's book is her...

Faced with the constitutional prohibition against teaching about the Christian origins of Thanksgiving in public schools, the Maryland State Department of Education has rewritten its curriculum, and renamed the holiday 'Lucky Thursday'. Starting in 2005, 'Lucky Thursday' lessons in public schools will instruct children in the random, yet fortuitous, events which led a band of deranged religious fanatics (called Puritans) to beach their boat on an unexpected continent where the native people stumbled upon, then rescued them. "The Puritans jumped on a boat, spun the wheel of fortune, and whammo...they ended up here," said an unnamed professor at the University...

A California teacher has been barred by his school from giving students documents from American history that refer to God -- including the Declaration of Independence. Steven Williams, a fifth-grade teacher at Stevens Creek School in the San Francisco Bay area suburb of Cupertino, sued for discrimination on Monday, claiming he had been singled out for censorship by principal Patricia Vidmar because he is a Christian. "It's a fact of American history that our founders were religious men, and to hide this fact from young fifth-graders in the name of political correctness is outrageous and shameful," said Williams' attorney, Terry...

Everyday I have to wonder what new low liberalism will reach with its political correctness hypocrisy. I have finally realized it first hand, witnessing the depths of disgrace these traitors will go to spread their vile message. My nephew Logan is in the 2nd grade and attends a public school. This November he and his class mates are learning about the Pilgrims and their voyage across the Atlantic. Each week they have spelling words they have to learn and spell, this week is a bit different than any other week. It would be expected, to learn words affiliated with the...

The Great Thanksgiving Hoax By Richard J. Maybury Each year at this time school children all over America are taught the official Thanksgiving story, and newspapers, radio, TV, and magazines devote vast amounts of time and space to it. It is all very colorful and fascinating. It is also very deceiving. This official story is nothing like what really happened. It is a fairy tale, a whitewashed and sanitized collection of half-truths which divert attention away from Thanksgiving's real meaning. The official story has the pilgrims boarding the Mayflower, coming to America and establishing the Plymouth colony in the winter...

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Maryland public school students are free to thank anyone they want while learning about the 17th century celebration of Thanksgiving (search) — as long as it's not God. And that is how it should be, administrators say. Young students across the state read stories about the Pilgrims (search) and Native Americans, simulate Mayflower (search) voyages, hold mock feasts and learn about the famous meal that temporarily allied two very different groups. But what teachers don't mention when they describe the feast is that the Pilgrims not only thanked the Native Americans for their peaceful three-day indulgence, but...

Coming soon to an elementary school near you: mandatory indoctrination in Islamic customs and practices. According to The Kansas City Star, third-, fourth- and fifth-graders in Herndon, Virginia, are to be given lessons in the three Rs: Reading, ‘Riting, and Ramadan. During this instruction, public school children will play act being Muslims, and, perhaps unwittingly, convert to Islam. Pupils from a nearby Muslim school will visit classes in the town’s public schools to educate their counterparts in Islam. They will be accompanied by something called “a multicultural trainer” named Afeefa Syeed. In Herndon, during this month of Ramadan (which began Friday),...

FRAMINGHAM -- The history of Islam was a dusty subject until Sept. 11, 2001, when the terrorist attacks on the United States had students asking a lot of tough questions. Nearly three years later, knowledge of the history of Islam and the cultures of the dozens of predominantly Muslim nations remains minimal. In an effort to reverse the trend, a week-long workshop for Bay State teachers was held at Cameron Middle School in Framingham this past week to send educators back into the classrooms armed with answers. According to the participants, the workshop worked. "When I teach this year I...

A sizeable slice of younger Britons think Gandalf, Horatio Hornblower or Christopher Columbus was the hero of the English fleet's defeat of the Spanish Armada, a survey showed today. Less than half identified Sir Francis Drake as a key figure in one of the most famous sea battles in British history, the poll for the BBC showed. A third of 16 to 34-year-olds did not know that William the Conqueror won the Battle of Hastings, while more than a fifth of 16 to 24-year-olds thought Britain had been conquered by the Germans, the Americans or the Spanish.The figures, released to...

Can America's schools teach history? The question ought to be ridiculous -- of course they can. What do we pay them for? History is as essential as reading and writing to a republic of free citizens. America's schools have always taught America's history. Unfortunately, there's a lot of evidence that our schools are doing a poor job of it. Results of the 2001 National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that 57 percent of high school seniors scored below the "basic" level of history achievement. And "basic" isn't impressive. The test-makers believe that students should achieve the "proficient" level, but only...

India's new government is poised to rewrite the history taught to schoolchildren after a panel of eminent historians recommended scrapping textbooks written by scholars hand-picked by the previous Hindu nationalist administration. Hundreds of thousands of textbooks are likely to be dropped by the National Council of Educational Research and Training, the central government body that sets the national curriculum for students up to 18. The move, one of the first made by the new Congress-led government, will strongly signal a departure from the program of its predecessor. The "saffronisation" of history, critics of the last government say, depicted India's Muslim...

Are our great universities abandoning the study of the American Revolution and the Founding Fathers? It looks like they are. Two of the leaders in colonial- and revolutionary-era scholarship, Bernard Bailyn at Harvard and Gordon Wood at Brown, are being replaced by historians with no apparent interest in the Revolution and the founding. The same happened some years ago at Yale when Edmund Morgan retired. Bailyn, Wood, and Morgan are members of a generation of American historians who have produced a luminous body of scholarship on colonial America, the Revolution, the founding, and the early republic. They have not written...

It is 1899 and Denzel Washington, the American president, orders Anne Frank and her troops to storm the beaches of Nazi-occupied New Zealand.This may not be how you remember D-Day but for a worrying number of Britain's children this is the confused scenario they associate with the events of June 6, 1944. Pupils knew more about Saving Private Ryan than they did about the real events of the D-Day landings A survey of 1,309 pupils aged between 10 and 14 and from 24 different schools found alarming levels of ignorance about the invasion of Normandy 60 years ago.Only 28 per...

Because we can frequently find answers to present problems in the past, most established colleges and universities actively discourage the genuine study of history, especially since they themselves have created a crisis that cries for a solution. “We have succeeded in sending a great many people to college and university,” legendary scholar Russell Kirk noted more than a quarter century ago. “We have not succeeded in educating most of them.” Dr. W. Wesley McDonald, himself a political science professor at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania, shows us how much we can still learn from the sage of Mecosta, Michigan in Russell...

In a move that surprised many Yale undergraduates and several historians at rival institutions, the University has denied tenure to popular history professor Mary Habeck GRD '96, a military historian. The senior faculty of the History Department voted last week not to tenure Habeck, who is completing her ninth year of work at Yale, several professors said this week. Sources would not say whether the decision was unanimous or split, citing the department's confidentiality rules. Habeck is still scheduled to teach next year, but she will leave Yale in 2005 due to a University policy requiring untenured professors to leave...

<p>The latest editions of the most widely used social studies textbooks across the country are full of errors and politically correct bias, reviews show.</p> <p>Publisher McDougal Littell's high school "World History: Patterns of Interaction" blames explorer Christopher Columbus for "the beginnings of an era of widespread cruelty and bloodshed" in the Americas, but fails to mention Aztec, Mayan and Toltec Indian practices of forced labor and cutting out hearts of opponents while they were still alive.</p>

 The Louisiana Purchase Treaty of 1803. When Thomas Jefferson negotiated the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the deal did not simply add 828,000 square miles to the United States for four cents an acre. It doubled the amount of U.S. property where slavery was allowed. By 1830, one quarter of a million slaves had been moved to Louisiana.The Civil War was not just about slavery, but about the expansion of slavery, which depended on Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas. In that context, the parched paper treaty becomes an important milestone in American. history, said Warren Goldstein, chairman of the history department...

ARE TODAY'S students knuckleheads when it comes to American history? Is democracy endangered as a result? Pointing to the dismal results of the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress, educational watchdogs across the political spectrum say yes. As president of the Organization of American Historians, which will hold its national convention in Boston next week, I'm glad to see history education get the attention it deserves. But how useful is it to bash the younger generation for what they don't know?The current brouhaha over students' poor scores is only the latest round of hand-wringing about "historical illiteracy" and "civic ignorance."...

Militant Islamists in the United States and their allies have set their sights on our American children. They seek to provide an education similar to that taught in the controlled regimes of the Arab world. So far, American textbook suppliers are more than willing to accommodate them. It is well known that the Palestine Authority, Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Arab world use propaganda in their schools to support Islamic hegemony and stir up sentiment against Israel and the West. Students in the Middle East are taught to distrust Christians and Jews and are then taught to apply...

No matter what your Marxist, lesbian, long-toothed, community college history teacher sporting a bad haircut, stretch pants and stale coffee breath says, the vast majority of the founding fathers of our great nation were deeply committed Christians. I’m talkin’ deep. The truly great men who laid the foundations of our nation were solid, principled men who had profound internal convictions regarding God’s eternal truths and believed those verities should serve as a blueprint for an external government. Those godly, risk-taking “rebels with a cause” went into life’s laboratory on fresh American soil, as they looked to heaven for wisdom to...

If high-school students seem bored by history, consider what they get to read. A panel of scholars perused the pages of this country's history textbooks and found weighty volumes filled with shallow writing masked by colorful illustrations, bright graphics and copious quantities of white space. "These books include so much about so many topics and people that it is nearly impossible for teachers or students to know what information or themes are of greatest importance. All resort to an approach that may be described as 'if this is Tuesday, we must be studying the Hittites.'" reports the 10-member panel, led...

It's Feb. 29, which means it's my last chance this year to answer the question: Why is there a Black History Month? The question is a valid one, often posed by honestly curious white people. Too frequently, though, I hear this: Why do you need a Black History Month? I'm tempted to reply that there are White History Months - they're the other 11 months of the year. That response, however, would be too flip and unfair to those who really want to understand the motive for the month. But when you think about it - and work with me...

Monday, February 16, 2004 Kids taught about slavery during Sharon Woods drama -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 'It opens their eyes': 1,200 participate this month By Anna Guido Enquirer contributor SHARONVILLE - Whip in hand, a slave catcher berates slaves at the Cincinnati Runaway Slave drama* at Heritage Village Museum. 7th grader Chandler Wright is made to hide his face and grasp the fence as punishment for his insolence by slave catcher John Riley (left, Ray Buelterman of White Oak) as he and fellow students from The Phoenix Community Learning Center in Bond Hill experienced the role of runaway slaves. (Glenn Hartong photo) Some...

Friday, February 06, 2004 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal Taunts, tears follow race lesson Education expert says instructor had good intentions but method `misguided' By J.M. KALIL REVIEW-JOURNAL Stacey Gough picks up her 9-year-old daughter Amber at Manch Elementary School on Thursday afternoon. The mother is perturbed about a librarian's decision to separate students according to their race as part of a Black History Month exercise.Photo by John Gurzinski. Parents say an elementary school instructor's outlandish technique for teaching children about segregation has fostered fear and confusion among students rather than a fundamental understanding of racism. Officials at Manch...

This week's "Dumbing Down" Award goes to the NEA. (That's the National Education Association, but the same applies to the National Endowment for the Arts.) Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and author David McCullough, past president of the Society of American Historians, told a Senate panel recently, "We are raising a generation of people who are historically illiterate and ignorant of the basic philosophical foundations of our constitutional free society." He noted that only three colleges in the United States require a course on the Constitution in order to graduate: the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, the Naval Academy at Annapolis...

The state has unveiled sweeping changes it wants to make in the K-12 curriculum. A high school history teacher says the plan will gut the subject he has taught for 25 years. But the state superintendent says the new curriculum will make Georgia's schools the best. The Georgia Department of Education recently unveiled a draft of the new high school history curriculum. Officials tout it as "world class." It's not. They describe it as "rigorous" and "strengthened." It's neither. With much fanfare, spokesmen say it will raise expectations. It won't. While presented as part of the state's vision of "leading...