Tuesday, March 26, 2013

From Salon.com
11 heinous lies conservatives are teaching America’s schoolchildren 
See also the Mother Jones article they reference: 14 Wacky "Facts" Kids Will Learn in Louisiana's Voucher Schools 

If you read both articles, you'll see they reference history textbooks published by Bob Jones University.
I actually taught out of one of these textbooks.
In 2000, I was doing my student teaching at a very conservative Christian high school which had Bob Jones University history textbooks as their set texts.
I remember at the time being absolutely appalled by what was in these textbooks.  Of course this was in the days before blogging, so I didn't really have much of an outlet to complain.  I just satisfied myself by complaining to whichever of my friends was around.
13 years later, the memory grows a bit hazy and I don't really remember the offending passages of the verbatim anymore.  I do remember the textbooks made a big deal about saying the Northern abolitionists actually made the problem of slavery worse, because the abolitionists used such strong language that it caused the Southerners to dig in their heels on slavery instead of compromise on it.  (I suppose you could make this historical argument, but if you only had a few sentences to some up the legacy of the abolitionists this is not what I would focus on.)
Also I remember the book had some very negative things to say about Black radicalism in the 1960s.
...And that's about all I can remember about it now.  But at the time there were all sorts of things in the book which used to set me off.

This is also a good place to bring up one of my favorite books: Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James Loewen (A)

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