Free Republic

Several months ago, the Educating for American Democracy (EAD) initiative announced $600,000 in grant money to five organizations for K-5 Pilot Projects in civics education. EAD is a national civics advocacy project that has lots of money and prestige. When it went public in 2021, six former U.S. secretaries of education, three of them appointed by Republicans, signed a letter of endorsement in The Wall Street Journal. One of the recipients of this hefty grant was the Georgia Council for the Social Studies in partnership with the Georgia Center for Civic Engagement and the state Department of Education. The grant,...

TEMECULA, Calif. (AP) — A Southern California school board has voted to approve a social studies curriculum for elementary students, resolving a dispute with Gov. Gavin Newsom over lesson plans that mentioned the state’s first openly gay elected public official.

"Would you believe New York’s Bard College actually boasts an Alger Hiss Professorship of Social Studies?"That's the question R.J. Stove asks in the May 10 issue of American Conservative in a review of "Alger Hiss's Looking-Glass Wars: The Covert Life of a Soviet Spy."Answer: Yes, we would.In fact, we’d be surprised if the following are not available at Berserkeley, Amherst, Columbia, Duke, etc.:  The Oliver Stone and Ted Turner Seat in Castro Studies The Nicholas De Genova Lecture on U.S. Military Strategy The Jane Fonda Fellowship in the Consequences of Treason The Jim Jones School of Culinary Arts

North Dakota legislators have proposed a bill allowing public high schools to offer an elective Bible studies class as part of its social studies curriculum. "The intention of this bill is to provide an option to schools to teach a class on the bible from a historical perspective," State Rep. Aaron McWilliams, R-Hillsboro, a co-sponsor of the bill, told Fox News. "My position is that no religious text should be excluded from being taught as it relates to the historical or philosophical influences in our history or on our society today." But the Republican lawmakers have come under heavy criticism...

....concepts that still help me make sense of the world, like the "racial nadir" — the downturn in American race relations, starting after Reconstruction, that saw the rise of lynchings and the Ku Klux Klan. In doing so, Lies My Teacher Told Me overturned one assumption embedded in the history classes I'd been sitting through all my life: that the United States is constantly ascending from greatness to greatness. "I started out the new edition with the famous two photographs of the inaugural crowds of this guy named President Obama, his first inauguration, and this guy named President Trump, his...

A Berkeley middle school teacher who was accused of instigating a violent clash with neo-Nazis in Sacramento this summer is back at it, recorded in a deranged rant at a Berkeley protest against Milo Yiannopoulos shortly before violence erupted Wednesday. Yvette Felarca, a social studies teacher at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School, attended a protest against Yiannopoulos’ scheduled speech at the University of California Berkeley Wednesday, when she spoke out against the Breitbart senior editor’s controversial views and called on protesters to prevent him from speaking “by any means necessary.” In a video posted to YouTube on Thursday, Felarca...

The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, citing survey results released on Monday, blames widespread ignorance for the relatively positive views millennials have toward socialism and communism. Of the 2,300 Americans polled by YouGov, 80% of baby boomers and 91% of the elderly agree with the statement that “communism was and still is a problem” in the world today. Millennials? Only 55%. Furthermore, almost half of Americans between the ages of 16 and 20 said they would vote for a socialist, while 21% would go so far as to back a communist. Capitalism, on the other hand, is viewed favorably by...

Hello all, I am a junior high SS/Religion teacher in one of the Cincinnati Catholic Schools. We are using an updated textbook from Prentice Hall (Pearson). To be blunt, I hate this textbook! It's all over the place on our American historical roots as well as very biased against American ingenuity and foresight. My principal and parish priest are very open to using resources that have not 'revised' the world's history. Can anyone suggest a textbook company that is not revising history? The textbook we use now is called "America, History of our Nation."

A Breitbart News investigation reveals that mainstream media outlets incorrectly reported a key detail in the story of the 9th grade World Geography teacher in Virginia who sparked a national controversy over a "calligraphy lesson" that required students to hand copy the Arabic characters that comprise the shahada, the Islamic statement of faith. According to news reports, the teacher said she "had not designed the assignment herself, but took it from a standard workbook on world religions." That was how the News Leader, a Gannett daily newspaper headquartered in Staunton, Virginia, initially reported the story on Thursday. Gannett is the...

When we think of President Woodrow Wilson, we think of a multitude of historical events: the creation of the Federal Reserve Bank and other progressive legislation at home; idealistic internationalism, a world war to "keep the world safe for democracy," and promotion of the League of Nations abroad. Lately, we think of the Princeton University students protesting against him. In mid-November, they were agitating for the former university president's name to be removed from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs over his legacy of white supremacy. But there's another reason conservatives should revisit Woodrow Wilson. We need...

Thousands of children in swaths of war-torn Syria, now controlled by dreaded Islamic State militants, can no longer study math or social studies under new diktats issued by the jihadists. While sports is banned, the children will not be allowed to learn about elections and democracy. Instead, the children will be subjected to the teachings of the radical Islamist group. And any teacher who dares to break the rules "will be punished." ... The Sunni militant group has captured a slew of Syrian and Iraqi cities in recent months as it tries to establish a caliphate, or Islamic state, spanning...

State Board of Education Encourages Schools to Include Cesar Chavez into Social Studies Curriculum Contact: Martin Ackley, Director of Public and Governmental Affairs (517) 241-4395 Agency: Education February 13, 2014 LANSING – The State Board of Education this week unanimously adopted a resolution honoring the late Cesar E. Chavez as an American hero, a civil rights leader, Latino, farm worker, and a labor leader; a religious and spiritual figure; a community servant and social entrepreneur; a crusader for nonviolent social change; and an environmentalist and consumer advocate. State Board member Lupe Ramos-Montigny initiated the resolution to honor the life, legacy...

A parent in Bryant, Ark., claims her sixth-grade daughter brought home a history class assignment that asks students to “revise, omit two and add two amendments” to the “outdated” Bill of Rights. Her daughter is reportedly a student in the Bryant School District. Lela Spears, the girl’s mother, told the Digital Journal that the worksheet requires students to take part in a theoretical special committee, the “National Revised Bill of Rights Task Force.” The committee is charged with the task of revising the Bill of Rights to “ensure that our personal civil liberties and the pursuit of happiness remains guarded...

It is our duty to stop stuff like this. Guyer High School (and obviously several others) are complicit in attempting to condition students to interpret the 2nd Amendment in a clearly opposite manner in which it was intended. The 1st, 3rd, 4th, and 5th are also misinterpreted as several commentators below pointed out. This textbook, currently being used by Guyer High School, is attempting to redefine the Second Amendment to impressionable young minds. Parents, you must speak up and demand action. Investigate your child's history book ASAP, and post more pictures in the comments below. Call your school and demand...

There's no text just a link to the video on Fox News. Link to Video

Oregon school cancels zombie survival classes, ensures students will be eaten Armand Larive Middle School had what is perhaps the greatest junior high social studies class ever: Zombie Survival Skills. But the killjoy parents and administrators put the kibosh on the post-apocalyptic class, feeling that undead studies were not appropriate for growing minds. The East Oregonian reported on Rich Harshberger's zombie survival classes at Armand Larive earlier this week, a class that focused largely on real-world survival skills and also had a reading and writing component. Apparently, parents were a bit surprised to learn the school was teaching a class...

Emerging as a force in American education a century ago, social studies was intended to remake the high school. But its greatest effect has been in the elementary grades, where it has replaced an older way of learning that initiated children into their culture with one that seeks instead to integrate them into the social group. The result was a revolution in the way America educates its young. The old learning used the resources of culture to develop the childÂ’s individual potential; social studies, by contrast, seeks to adjust him to the mediocrity of the social pack. Why promote the...

I am a Canadian economist who has worked on family issues in Canada and the U.S. for the past 26 years. Although I’ve mostly studied matters of divorce, custody, child support, and the general institution of marriage, for the past few years I’ve been working on series of empirical projects related to same-sex marriage. I’ve been using a special data set in Canada that is large (over 300,000 individuals) and random (with weights), that directly identifies sexual orientation, and that was designed by Statistics Canada. In the process of working on same-sex marriage I have read almost every study...

Stephens: To the Class of 2012 Attention graduates: Tone down your egos, shape up your minds. Dear Class of 2012: Allow me to be the first one not to congratulate you. Through exertions that—let's be honest—were probably less than heroic, most of you have spent the last few years getting inflated grades in useless subjects in order to obtain a debased degree. Now you're entering a lousy economy, courtesy of the very president whom you, as freshmen, voted for with such enthusiasm. Please spare us the self-pity about how tough it is to look for a job while living with...

The state House voted 42-15 Tuesday to allow high schools to teach elective courses on the influence of the Bible on Western culture and civilization. Tuesday's vote came over the objections of House Minority Leader Chad Campbell. The Phoenix Democrat said limiting schools to using the Old and New Testaments "is going to run into a constitutional challenge." But Rep. Terri Proud, R-Tucson, who wrote HB 2563, said she does not see a problem. She said the language allowing the use of the texts for non-religious purposes has been approved by others. Proud did agree to several last-minute changes, including...