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Why is it surprising that U.S. students are ignorant when it comes to knowledge of our history and government? Most public school kids here in Washington State, for example, spend the first SEVEN years of their formal schooling learning about Native American History. It isn't until seventh grade that anything else is introduced! For the most part, one year of U.S. History in high school is the most significant exposure to this important material that most American kids get.

It has been downright unnerving to watch, year after year, my kids study the lives of some obscure Native American Chief and not even know who Thomas Jefferson is. They have made simulations of huts, made maps of the migratory path of specific tribes, heard endless times how awful The White Man is - you get the drill. Mostly cool and important stuff to learn once, but it's year after year after year. Never mind that my children's Irish ancestors suffered the Penal Laws from the British and had thousands of acres stolen from them. So the descendants of these oppressed Irish get to sit and hear about how horrible the European White Man is. Over and over and over. What's up with that?

I swear it's the liberals who try to coax the flames of racial hatred in this country. I am wondering if really they have a problem with self-loathing (they don't want to teach our kids about their great nation, because they really think America is a bad place).

In this nation, most of us came from folks who were persecuted or oppressed. Most of us came from people who weren't here when the land was taken from the Indians. Most of us had parents and grandparents and great-grandparents who were trying to put food on their tables and a roof over their heads when slavery or its aftermath of racial ignorance occurred. Most Americans have no slave owners in their family history. Yet our kids are taught as if that is everyone's legacy.

The important contributions of the forefathers of this great nation are today downplayed in public and most private schools. The "feel good" liberal agenda proponents want instead for our kids to be experts in building huts from grass and mud.