Free Republic

When a class of Palestinian ninth graders in Gaza recently discussed the deadly 1929 riots over access to the Western Wall in Jerusalem, it was guided by a new textbook, introduced this fall by the Islamist Hamas movement. … What Gaza teenagers are reading in their 50-page hardcover texts this fall includes references to the Jewish Torah and Talmud as “fabricated,” and a description of Zionism as a racist movement whose goals include driving Arabs out of all of the area between the Nile in Africa and the Euphrates in Iraq, Syria and Turkey.“Palestine,” in turn, is defined as a...

Author John J. Newman has some explaining to do. His textbook, United States History: Preparing for the Advanced Placement Examination, literally rewrites the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. On page 102 of Newman’s book (page 134 of the PDF version), the author cuts the Second Amendment in half and leaves out several key words.

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...

Does Prentice Hall ring a bell? Depending on when you went to school you may have had a few Prentice Hall textbooks. I know I did. One of their current textbooks, simply titled World History, is causing quite the stir in Florida. (Florida Today) reports:Two Brevard School Board members are reviewing a world history textbook used in ninth grade Advance Placement classes amid concerns that it is biased in favor of Islam — at the expense of Christianity and Judaism. House Representative Ritch Workman and individuals from two citizens groups spoke against the textbook, Prentice Hall World History, at the...

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

Tales of war, bombs and abduction — coming to a third-grade classroom near you. City and state education bureaucrats have given the green light to an English curriculum for elementary schools that includes picture books with startlingly realistic portrayals of war — to be read by 8-year-olds. They include “The Librarian of Basra,” which contains drawings of fighter planes dropping bombs on a palm-tree-lined Middle Eastern town. In another illustration, the protagonist looks worried, peering out a window at soldiers manning machine guns on a rooftop.The terrified townsfolk wonder, “Who among us will die?” and “Will our families survive?” Similarly,...

In wake of the release of a report comparing Palestinian Authority textbooks to Israeli textbooks in terms of incitement, Israel’s Strategic Affairs Ministry has released a simple PowerPoint presentation outlining PA incitement and giving examples. Among the more disturbing instances of incitement are incident in which teachers used their blogs or Facebook pages to spread hate. One PA school’s Facebook page includes an image of an Arab child being strangled by a snake marked with a Star of David. Another school’s Facebook page has an image of Adolf Hitler, complete with a quote stating that Hitler left some Jews alive...

Rosa Brooks serves as Counselor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Michele Flournoy. In May 2010 she also became Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and then Special Coordinator for Rule of Law and Humanitarian Policy. She is running a new Pentagon office dedicated to those issues. She is on leave from her job as a law professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. Brooks is known as a columnist (most recently with the LA Times) and at the Pentagon her portfolio has included both human rights issues and global engagement and strategic communication. Her mother, Barbara Ehrenreich, is...

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...

McGraw-Hill Education announced today it will layoff 63 employees from its Polaris offices as part of a move to reorganize and upgrade the digital quality of the kindergarten to high school products it offers. The Polaris offices are the headquarters of McGraw-Hill’s School Education division, which is part of the larger education operations. The cutbacks will reduce the number of employees at Polaris to about 510. Nationally, there will be 138 layoffs in the school education division...

California college students hit with tuition increases in recent years will get a little financial help after Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation Thursday to create a website on which popular textbooks can be downloaded for free. Twin bills by Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) will give students free digital access to 50 core textbooks for lower-division courses offered by the University of California, California State University and California Community College systems. Hard copies of the texts would cost $20...

Even given the longstanding urge of academics to treat Democratic presidents the way the Catholic Church once treated saints, the academic Left may have been a bit hasty when it rushed to canonize the current occupant of the White House. “When I still taught there, I’d walk past classrooms at Georgia Perimeter College and hear Obama’s speeches played for students,” Mary Grabar remembers. “Professors took entire classes to watch his inauguration in the assembly hall.” “They had Obama-Biden campaign material tacked up on the doors of their offices.” Grabar currently teaches at Emory. “For fall semester 2012, freshmen at Emory...

Campus bookstores hate the idea, and even some college students are skeptical of the new effort by a former California lawmaker to help them save money on textbooks for hundreds of classes on nearly every campus from Alabama to the Yukon Territory. It's a free price-check that lets students compare textbook prices and rentals, and buy from the source they like best. The new online tool comes from former state Sen. Dean Florez, president of the 20 Million Minds Foundation in Sacramento, which lobbies for low-cost textbooks and is behind legislation, SB1052, to create a low-cost digital textbook library in...

Who perpetrated the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 – a group of men merely fighting “for a cause,” or a band of radical Muslims bent on violent jihad? According to a new, comprehensive study of 6th-12th grade textbooks used by schools across the country, America’s children are being taught a very different answer to that question than many alive to witness 9/11 remember. SNIP

Member of Knesset Ahmad Tibi (Ra'am-Ta'al-United Arab List) is scheduled to introduce a bill in the Knesset, Monday, that would deny approval to textbooks that use of the terms "gang" or "gang leader" to refer to Arabs who fought against the Jews before the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948 and would refer to them as "fighters". Under the measure, a team of Arab and Jewish historians would have to re-approve existing textbooks for further use. Knesset Legal Advisor Eyal Yinon cleared the bill for introduction, who did not view the proposal as seeking to undermine Israel's...

<p>California has become the first state in the nation to require public schools to add lessons about gay history to social studies classes, after Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed the landmark bill on Thursday.</p> <p>The Democratic-majority Legislature passed the bill last week on a largely party-line vote.</p>

Gov. Jerry Brown has signed a controversial bill to include the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans in California's public school textbooks. After the governor signed the bill introduced by Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, he released a statement that said, "History should be honest. This bill revises existing laws that prohibit discrimination in education and ensures that the important contributions of Americans from all backgrounds and walks of life are included in our history books. It represents an important step forward for our state, and I thank Sen. Leno for his hard work on this historic legislation."

According to a shocking news report, California legislators have enacted legislation that gives the state the dubious distinction of being the first state in the nation to require public schools to include the contributions of gays and lesbians in their social studies curriculum. We can be certain that one result of this ill-advised move will subject kids to a form of what CIA spooks call "blow back" -- an inevitable result of a specific action. When I was a youngster I was teased and bullied for being an adopted child. In view of my personal experiences, should we add the...

Reporting from Sacramento — Textbooks and history classes in California schools would be required to include the contributions of gays, lesbians and transgender Americans under a proposal given final legislative approval in the Assembly on Tuesday and sent to Gov. Jerry Brown. The measure sparked a spirited debate, including personal pleas from two openly gay lawmakers — Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez (D-Los Angeles) and Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco). They said the bill would reduce the bullying of gay students and correct an oversight by history books. "I don't want to be invisible in a textbook," Ammiano told his...

The California Legislature could soon pass a bill that would require school textbooks and teachers to incorporate information on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Americans into their curriculum. The Fair, Accurate, Inclusive and Respectful Education Act, or SB48, which mimics a bill previously vetoed by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, made it one step closer to becoming law Tuesday after being approved by the state's Senate Judiciary Committee. The bill, introduced by state Sen. Mark Leno, could have a nationwide impact if passed because California is such a big buyer of textbooks that publishers often incorporate the state's standards into books...