Posted on 03/11/2010 12:05:29 PM PST by metmom
If you want to know just what your kids are learning from their history books, all you have to do is apply the "Reagan test," says Professor Larry Schweikart.
As the Texas textbook battle continues to simmer, Schweikart says the first thing he does to determine whether a book is politically slanted is to go to any section discussing President Ronald Reagan. What you'll find there, he says, will tell you everything you need to know, he says.
Schweikart says the majority of books he’s examined credit former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev with ending the Cold War, and not Reagan. That's “a joke,” Schweikart says. “I lived through the Reagan years, I remember.”
(Excerpt) Read more at liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com ...
That's like crediting the Japanese emperor for ending World War 2 :)
BAHHAHHAHA
They were re-writing the Reagan years before the Reagan years were over. I remember being a TA in a U.S. History class in 1982 which used a popular textbook that the prof had written, and it was bad then.
Me too. I remember one teacher telling the class how the Reagan administration was just like the Nazis, since they too wanted to destroy unions and take rights away from minorities and women. Such idiotic statements made me reevaluate my politics, which, at the time, were left of center.
Notice how “expecting everyone to abide by and compete under the same rules” is “taking away rights of minorities”?
RE: “Having attended college in the 80’s I recall that academics and professors DESPISED Reagan, nearly to a man.
Not a surprise then that they would make sure he gets short-shrift in the history texts.”
**************
Absolutely — I was in schools in the sixties, when things were surely changing.
It makes sense that the Russians would credit Gorby with ending the cold war. Gorby WAS more amenable to change than his predecessors, but Reagan instigated it and pressed for it and finally accomplished it.
What makes NO sense is that US textbooks claim Gorby was responsible — NO WAY, NO HOW except that, as you say, the leftists control the schools and textbooks.
Can you recommend some good “factual” history books or curriculum for us homeschoolers? Currently we're using the Bob Jones curriculum, but I want to be sure that I get the facts of history.
I've also read Bill Bennett’s “America: The Last Best Hope”, Volumes I and II. I really liked it.
Larry, I saw your book in Costco last weekend. You may only make a few cents from each sale, but as far as I’m concerned, that’s a big-time as it gets!
Just a point from the article - I thought Texas was being blamed for being the end all be all of textbooks - yet this article says most are written in the North east. So which is it? The errors in the books are pathetic and of course have been happening for years.
Crediting Gorbachev for ending the Cold War is like crediting Admiral Donitz for ending WW2.
What I get out of it is that Texas is one of the biggest textbook purchasers and so what they want determines what is written and included in the textbooks that the publishers publish.
My Son received a dictionary from his school, and I flipped straight to Reagan’s section in it. It has a few paragraphs about all Presidents. One thing it said about Reagan was that he did cut taxes, but raised the defecit by doing so.
Now, I remember those years, but I was too young at the time to actually pay that much attention to it all. Could someone please straighten me out and give me something to say to the school about this? It seems very skewed to me.
Thanks in advance.
Funny you mentioned that, because my publisher just told me it was going into Wal-Mart and Costco, and I had the same response: NOW I’ve made it. I did not have that response when they told me it was #1 on the NYTimes bestseller list. So it’s clear where you and I hang out.
I do not know the lower grades, I'm afraid, so I can't help you with below sophomores in HS.
bookmark
True to form:
http://conservapedia.com/Liberal_bias#Media_Bias
Texas Education Agency: Fox News is lying
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2468921/posts
“Who controls the past, controls the future; who controls the present controls the past,”
George Orwell
Government schools do what government schools do...Develop mindless, ignorant serfs who are guaranteed to perpetuate the tyrannical state.
After all, the children are the governments, not the moronic, criminal, child-abusers who commit them to the government institutions.
Crediting Gorby with ending the Cold War is like crediting Cornwallis for ending the Revolution.
Thank you.
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