Posted on 06/23/2005 11:47:23 AM PDT by quidnunc
Napoleon Bonaparte once said, “History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.” True enough. Depicting history is, and always has been, a collective enterprise. But our modern, relativistic culture has made separating fact from fancy increasingly difficult, as political correctness often trumps truth. As a result, we are rewriting history.
Nowhere is this more evident than in American classrooms, where our children’s history lessons change with the political winds. Anti-bias guidelines and fears of offending special-interest groups permeate history textbooks, smudging out historical accuracy.
Our Founding Fathers are now referred to as androgynous “framers.” According to a 2004 Washington Times report, word such as “man,” “mankind,” “aged,” and “suffragette” are now banned from textbooks. In 2003, reviewers found 533 factual or interpretive errors in social studies texts submitted for adoption to the Texas State Board of Education. While publishers agreed to 351 revisions, they stated the remaining errors were simply a “misunderstanding” of the textbook.
However, nothing changed to ensure students would not fall victim to the misunderstandings. The result is that millions of American schoolchildren are misinformed about important historical events and documents. In 2002-03, only 55 percent of North Carolina high school students were considered proficient in U.S. history. This is no surprise, given the widespread deficiencies in our history curriculum: The Fordham Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based education organization, gave North Carolina’s Social Studies Curriculum an “F” in a 2002-03 evaluation of state history standards.
Our teachers are unschooled in the fundamentals of American history. Chester Finn, president of the Fordham Foundation, said that only 31 percent of middle school history teachers and 41 percent of high school history teachers actually majored in history as undergraduates. Just like the character in Sam Cooke’s song, “Wonderful World,” our teachers “don’t know much about history.”
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My children, educated and brainwashed in the 60s and 70s, rejected anything I tried to tell them about America. They were only open to what they were told in school, in rock music, and from pop culture icons like Che Guevara, Jane Fonda and their like. Even today as adults they refuse to even listen to anything that smacks of non-60s dogma.
I often feel the "revolution" was fought and lost when the liberals -- no, the correct name is Marxists -- took control of education and thus our history. The truly sad part is my kids are instinctively conservative but feel they have to remain in lockstep solidarity their peer group even as adults.
"Those who fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it."
Would repeating ninty five percent of America's history, be a bad thing??
On the bright side I imagine holidays around your place are more lively for it...
Like the Great Depression, the Civil War, slavery, Prohibition, small pox epidemics, and the Company Store system for example? I wouldn't care to repeat those.
That's the five percent of our history I omitted.
After putting four through the Great Neck South (LI) system, one the most highly rated public systems in America (number 4 in US News & World Report). I am going to put the last into a conservative private school. I will have to continue paying the taxes to support the public system but I won't subject the little guy to their version of things.
Closer to forty percent.
Speaking of history!
Check out the airchecks, complete with music and commercials at...
http://www.therealdonsteele.com/
Besides, it is the terrible trials that strengthened us a Nation. That doesn't mean we need to repeat the same trials, on top of the ones the future has in store. The good bits are only good in contrast to the bad stuff.
I plan to go with private school for our children when the time comes but I wasn't sure whether private schools must follow such guidelines as well.
Public Schools were created to mold students into good students. They were to be Americanized, learn our common history, and learn the prevailing generic Protestant Biblical worldview.
Today, we have multi-culturalism, multilingualism, and discrimination against religion. The goal of the left is to destroy America.
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