Monday, May 24, 2010

New conservative Social Studies standards come from Texas

In the field of education, the surest way to set my blood a boilin' is the mention the words 'revisionist history'. I fell victim to the 'values clarification' agenda way back in the 1970's, and fought it vigorously. In World History, my liberal teacher taught Mao Tse Tung's little red book (the spelling used then) as sacred doctrine. We carried little copies and memorized excerpts from it which were enshrined on the walls, in little stations around the walls of our classroom, like the Stations of the Cross. This was in the late 70's when Mao was starving 28 million of his own people. But not according to Ms Hair (not her real name, she just dressed like a character from the musical with a blond Afro) who told us all year, "there's no hunger in China". Indoctrination, pure and simple. Ms Hair was a pot smoking, lesbian, New Age, card -carrying Communist, whose father was on the school board, giving her immunity, that is until they caught her dealing pot to the students.
Mr Green was another case. He taught European History in Northport High School. Mr Green's course "Great Minds and Monarchs of Europe" should have been called, "Why the Catholic Church is the Enemy of All That is Good". From the Inquisition to the Crusades, the Reformation to Pope Pius X who he accused of collaboration with the Nazis, there was no Catholic left unblamed in Mr Green's class.
Thanks to Mr Green, I became an apologist. I had debated with Ms Hair the virtues of communism for a year, and with Mr Green, I began to do research into the history of the Catholic Church with Jesuit Fr Fagan (real name) in St Philip Neri Parish. Fr Fagan had a great library of books to support my arguments, and I learned about Catholic heroes like Msgr. O'Flaherty the Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican who hid Jews and US airmen to refuge in the Vatican itself right under the noses of the Nazis. Monsignor is immortalized in the wonderful film "The Scarlet and the Black".
So, the liberal members of the Texas Board of Ed have been outvoted and are crying foul. The new curriculum, vitally important because it determines what major Social Studies textbook companies willl print, will more accurately reflect the religious and cultural heritage of the United States. For example it is mentioned that the "separation of church and state" is NOT found in the Constitution, the bogus term BCE and CE do NOT replace BC and AD (before Christ and Anno Domine). Students are warned about the dangers which international treaties place on US sovereignty, and the US is named a "Consittutional Republic"rather than a Democracy. Democrats should like that last one, if this were a direct Democracy, Obamacare would never have passed; instead our elected officials ignored the vox populi.
So, now after years of domination by the liberal revisionsists, a more accurate portrayal of US History may be printed in our children's textbooks. Don't get too excited, there are mostly liberals in publishing, according to the textbooks I have used as a teacher. I don't expect them to change to the truth overnight, when they've had decades to rewrite history.
I just hope that Catholic school administrators have the good sense to use good Catholic textbooks like Ignatius Press Catholic Textbook Project which present a balanced view of American and World history. Pleanty of cultural diversity, NO Catholic bashing. In fact the accomplishements of Catholics like Christopher Columbus are lauded.

Read the entire AP story here.

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1 comment:

Paul said...

Thanks for your blog :)