Fox looking for textbook bias

Fox and Friends | 12/17/08 | LS

[LS]

All, "Fox and Friends" is looking for any specific examples of bias or liberal errors that you can find in you high school or junior high textbooks---literature, sociology, history, economics, whatever. If you find examples, send them direct to:

friends@foxnews.com

We are going to be doing a segment on this for the next couple of weeks. The bigger the errors, the better

[Sacajaweau]

Well, we can start with the stupid cherry tree story. George killed one of his mother’s favorite horses while showing his buddies his riding skills.

[Red_Devil 232]

One easy way to determine if these text books are biased or perpetuating liberal lies is to look up Ronald Regan or Global Warming and see what they say.

[Sacajaweau]

I told my kids and now tell my grandchildren to go to history books written before the 1930’s.

[mc6809e]

Too bad conservatives have waited 30 years to do this.

[mewzilla]

McGuffey’s Readers are far better than most of the stuff I’ve taken a look at over the last few years.

[bboop]

haha, how much bandwidth do they have? Can we start, please, with the blurb about the ‘women and men’ taking pick-axes out into the gold mines in the California Gold Rush. The day there were (equal numbers of) women with pick axes in the mines!!

[mikelets456]

Ummm.Where do we start? Darwinism, global warming, evolution,gay day(s), family units, Christian bashing, “winter break”, “winter concert”,etc!!

[LS]

Not that simple. You need to find a demonstrably false statement in a book, such as "the Americans destroyed the Vietnamese economy" when in fact rice production increased.

"Interpretation" errors aren't helpful.

[callthemlikeyouseethem]

Watching F&F this morning I learned that Social Security and Veterans Benefits are “welfare” thanks to some text book. I thought welfare was getting something for nothing...;)

[LS]

Find me the blurb, find the page. We need specifics, not general memories here.

[LS]

That was me you saw debunking this.

[abb]

You done good this morning, Larry!

[antiRepublicrat]

Remember, mention of evolution is not inherently liberal so don’t waste their time with all mention. You might as well go off on all those heathen mentions of a “round Earth.”

However, I’m sure it won’t be hard to find evolution used to liberal ends.

[Terabitten]

Typically, though, textbook bias is through omission, not lying about some fact. For instance, they might talk about Jim Crow laws in the South, but not discuss the excesses of Reconstruction, which led directly to said laws.

[LS]

yes, understood. That's not what F&F are dealing with. You can't make that point in a 4 minute appearance. Indeed, all errors of omission are really interpretive bias, which is much harder to prove.

So we need to stick to specific errors. And there are plenty---I'm just looking for more examples.

[enviros_kill]

Look up anything about energy and the environment and bias will be clear in two pages.

In my experience many textbooks are filled with junk science and contribute to the weak curricula. Any topic revolving around energy or the environment will generally portray humans as the killers of cuddly polar bears or some other doom and gloom. It is rare it find the awesome achievements of the 20th century: peaceful nuclear fission, automobiles, and other technological advances presented without cautionary caveats and apologies. Why would a 4th grader wish to pursue the hard sciences that manipulate natural resources if mankind is always held up as the despoiler of nature? The clamor to retreat from the benefits of the Industrial Revolution by those who consider a gas (CO2) constituting 0.038 percent of our atmosphere to be a terrible calamity in the making is another indication of the anti-science that often impacts education curricula decisions.

Why teach science if it going to be ignored in the debate surrounding the global warming superstition?
More Bad News for the Global Warmers
http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?c12c2a7e-ffa8-4a64-9c00-416951497008

Green movement using school children as puppets, Wall Street Journal, 29Sep07.
http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB119101716857043113.html
Children are being indoctrinated and used as pawns by those promoting anti-science and anti-human ideologies.

The Global Warming Goons Want Your Little Ones
http://townhall.com/columnists/DougGiles/2008/11/29/the_global_warming_goons_want_your_little_ones?page=full&comments=true

Reality Deniers, 15Jan08, by Roy Spencer, principal research scientist at the Global Hydrology and Climate Center of the National Space Science and Technology Center in Huntsville, Ala.
http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=MzMwOTcxNWEyYWE4ZDQ0MTA5ZWRkNWE3MWJlODUzYzQ=

EXCERPT:

“Unfortunately, it seems that public opinion is leaning more toward feel-good efforts than toward real solutions. This can be partly blamed on our education system. Math teachers that place more emphasis on how a student feels about a problem than the correct answer, or a biology teacher ranting about the mythical extinction of polar bears, are not conducive to maintaining an informed public.

“The entertainment industry is equally to blame. While movie stars are sexy, equations are not so much. Movie producers and writers tug on our heart strings with stories centered on modern technological problems, but their solution to those problems always ends up with a touchy-feely vindication of the environmentally-concerned citizen over the evil corporate polluters. Those of us old enough to remember the 1979 movie “The China Syndrome” know that it had a profound effect on our views of the safety of nuclear power.

“But touchy-feely people need energy, too, and I can guarantee you that the solution to any energy problem won’t be in the touchy-feely realm. It will involve real chemistry, real physics, real engineering, real math, and real science.”

[rmlew]

Send them a copy of “A People’s History of the United States” by Howard Zinn. There is a lie or mischaracterization on almost every page.