Problems with Public School Education

American history revision is one of the growing problems with public school education and has been for years and years now in our public school classrooms. The mad Libs that dominate our public education landscape are unwittingly following in the footsteps of the Soviet Union, with its simple airbrushing away of people or objects in photographs that the government didn't want anyone else to ever know about. It could not just destroy the photographs, because after a while people would get very suspicious. But if it released the air-brushed photographs of events and people that the populace recognized, ti could get away with the selective memory-making.

American history revision is creating ever growing problems with public school education in this nation. The PC army commanded by the mad Libs is obsessed with obliterating all "offensive" talk from our textbooks, from our teachers' tongues, from our children's minds. Somehow, the politically correct point of view forbids any hostility (real or imagined) from being directed against anyone except...white male Americans.

American history revision insists that all white American males are members of the KKK--even though that crazy organization hates (or at least is supercilious towards) the vast majority of white male Americans along with everyone else, too. Irish, Catholics, Jews, Russians, Asians, Native Americans...all need not apply to the WASPs.

Think this all sounds crazy, this concern over our deep problems with public school education? Consider what follows.

A publicly funded home school curriculum in the state of New Mexico is under fire from that state's incompetent secretary of education (Dr. Veronica Garcia) for being "sectarian". It is being demanded by said commissioner that the curriculum be dropped--even though it has been used for over a decade, is highly effective, and has never once received any complaints from anybody.

The problem with this curriculum? It's funded and put together by Christians--in accord with state education standard guidelines, mind you. It's called A Beka Books. Kathy Harper teaches a the Family School is located in the Bloomfield, New Mexico, school district on the campus of Naabi Ani Elementary. She says, "A Beka Books -- they provide the best home-school curriculum out there. Are there references to the Bible, to God in the materials? Yes, there are. You know, there might be a story about Jonah that the kids have to write. But as far as in the classroom, is it a place where we expound and preach and have worship or any of that? That does not go on in the classroom."

Even if you are an agnostic or atheist--as some Conservatives are, mind you--you cannot objectively deny that Christianity was a core part of the founding of the United States. Sometimes that Christianity was of a quite esoteric kind, other times fundamentalist, but it was always there. If no indoctrination is going on, who cares? You can hear it without being programmed to believe it--can't you?

Or, is the real problem that such teachings do get in the way of another, hidden agenda?

Founder and president of WallBuilders, Christian historian David Barton, says, "Always remember that your children do not know as much about history as you do -- and consequently have no basis for identifying bias."

On that note, let's consider the widely distributed textbook 'World History: The Modern World' published by Prentice Hall. The author of "Islam in the Classroom: What the textbooks tell us", Gilbert T. Sewall, says he finds "[deficiencies in Islam-related lessons] uniquely disturbing".

"[K]ey subjects like jihad, Islamic law, [and] the status of women are whitewashed. The picture is incomplete...and the reason for this is that publishers are afraid of the Islamic activists. They don't want trouble. [The 9-11-2001 report does not named the religion or motives of the airplane pilots, calling them just] teams of terrorists. In terms of content [about the historic attacks], so much is left unanswered. Who were the teams of terrorists and what did they want to do? What were their political ends? Do [textbooks] describe and explain looming dangers to the United States and the world? [The textbook 'History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond', published by Teachers Curriculum Institute, states that] Jihad is defined as a struggle within each individual to overcome difficulties and strive to please god. Sometimes it may be a physical struggle for protection against enemies... Instead of making corrections or acknowledging contested facts, publishers and their editors defend misinformation and content evasions against the record. Bias persists. Silences are profound and intentional. From what they read in history textbooks, students and teachers are not likely to grasp why the United States and its allies consider militant Islam an enemy. Students will not learn that broadly based Islamist factions sanction violence in countries all over the world. They will not grasp the connection between jihad and September 11 [of 2001]," he says.

Where are the hard, cold facts? When Christianity has been historically violent or deeply prejudiced, it does not get glossed over or removed from public schools. Yet, arguably the most violent and irrational religion the world has ever seen grow beyond cult status gets a free pass. This is the world of American history revision and it presents one of our prominent problems with public school education.

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