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The Trouble With Textbooks
Fox News ^ | 9-3-09 | Tucker Carlson

Posted on 09/05/2009 9:52:05 AM PDT by smokingfrog

Hard-edged propaganda now suffuses America's history textbooks. A thorough cover-to-cover reading of almost any high school history text leaves you with the impression that the United States is at best embarrassing, and at worst a menace to world peace.

I think I was in fifth grade when I began to suspect that textbooks weren't entirely on the level. The first tip-off came from the word problems in math class. They typically began with scenarios that, even to a 10-year-old, seemed a little unlikely: "Julio's mom is a welder. His father is a pediatric nurse. If his mom welds for 9 hours a day, then..."

Or: "If Maria wins her first three prizefights by knockout, and her next three by TKO, how long before she can leave her job as a lumberjack and fight full time?"

The characters in my textbooks didn't sound like anyone I had ever met. Years later I realized, that was exactly the point. The educators who wrote them weren't interested in describing the world as it was, or had been, but rather as they wanted it to be. They were ideologues, and my math and history books were their pamphlets, disguised as academic texts.

Thirty years later, few textbooks bother with the disguise. Entire chunks of the English language have been banned from the classroom, liquidated in a P.C. purge. First to go were words containing the dreaded term "man," the three letters most offensive to professional feminists. Mailman, chairman, snowman, fisherman, manhole cover--every one now extinct, disdained relics of a bygone age.

(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: academicbias; arth; banned; pc; propaganda; textbooks; thoughtcontrol
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To: Kackikat

I will elaborate...

When I heard Khruschev say, “We will bury you from
within!” on a TV news broadcast (I believe), I asked
my Mother what that meant. She was a John Bircher
so she was very well informed. In fact, she wore
tinfoil way before it was kewl. Anyway... She said
that communists wanted to take over our country and
they would do it by inserting themselves into positions
of power in the area of public education, the government
and I believe she talked about Unions as well.

I was six years old at the time. I will never forget
K’s words nor my mother’s astute explanation. Now I
have lived long enough to see that the plan has nearly
been accomplished...

... without firing a single shot.


21 posted on 09/05/2009 1:13:27 PM PDT by Jo Nuvark (Those who bless Israel will be blessed, those who curse Israel will be cursed. Gen 12:3)
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To: Thank You Rush

Yes... there is a replay of TC’s Textbook special tonight at 10pm pacific time.


22 posted on 09/05/2009 1:14:13 PM PDT by Jo Nuvark (Those who bless Israel will be blessed, those who curse Israel will be cursed. Gen 12:3)
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To: smokingfrog

Anybody who sends their kids to a public school has little room to complain about it.

It is at least confusing, if not hypocritical, to submit your children to the authority of the tax-funded, union-run government school and then tell them that the government school’s vision of the world is wrong.

“Public School” is best understood as the tax-funded, union-run Bus Ministry of the State Church of Marxist Humanism.

Do yourselves and your childre a favor.

Make the sacrifices to edcucate them yourselves or at least enroll them in a church school or synagogue school.

For college, stay away from state universities or any school run by the Left. That pretty much leaves schools like Patrick Henry College, Pensacola Christian College, Bob Jones University, Liberty University, etc.

If enough people did that, you would effectively disembowell the Leftist machine.


23 posted on 09/05/2009 2:33:05 PM PDT by Westbrook (Having more children does not divide your love, it multiplies it.)
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To: metmom

George Bernard Shaw said it best about textbooks- no one ever learned anything from them.


24 posted on 09/05/2009 2:38:01 PM PDT by Clintonfatigued (Liberal sacred cows make great hamburger)
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To: wintertime
Once when she was about 7 we were reading books from the library and she said, “Why doesn't anyone in these books look like me?” My daughter has fair skin, very light blond hair, and bright blue eyes.

You couldn't find a book in the library featuring a girl with fair skin, blond hair, and blue eyes? My eldest son always has been a voracious reader, reading big books on his own at a very young age. There came a time when he wondered aloud to me: "I noticed all these characters look like you." (i.e. "white" skin, blue eyes, etc.) Think of all the most popular books. There aren't many books in which the main character is black, for example.

25 posted on 09/05/2009 2:56:23 PM PDT by Tired of Taxes (Dad, I will always think of you.)
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To: Tired of Taxes

You couldn’t find a book in the library featuring a girl with fair skin, blond hair, and blue eyes?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Yes, there were, but even at age 7, my daughter was trying to say that the illustrations in the library books were not reflecting her reality.


26 posted on 09/05/2009 3:04:55 PM PDT by wintertime (People are not stupid! Good ideas win!)
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To: Tired of Taxes
By the way, I grew up in the same neighborhood where the first “Rocky “ was filmed. We lived in an inner city row home in the Kensington section of Philadelphia that was exactly 12 feet wide ( really).

Of course the “Dick and Jane” primers were in use then, and my little first grade mind simply couldn't understand why Dick and Jane's neighborhood and house didn't look like mine? I would ask, “Mommy, where do Dick and Jane live?”

Later as an adult, I had a job in Marion, Ohio. I would joke with my husband, “I know now where Dick and Jane lived! Marion, Ohio!” :-)

27 posted on 09/05/2009 3:12:32 PM PDT by wintertime (People are not stupid! Good ideas win!)
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To: smokingfrog; prayerfullywaiting; Anti-Bubba182; wintertime; Freddd; umgud; karatemom; Kackikat; ...

Carlson’s special airs tonight at 10pm pst.

After watching Tucker Carlson’s Fox News special
on Textbooks and revisionist history, I awoke in the
night with this awful thought.

What if the Obummer regime is purposefully targeting
the elderly through health neglect because they are
the remaining eyewitnesses to history’s atrocities
of communism, socialism and fascism?


28 posted on 09/05/2009 7:01:29 PM PDT by Jo Nuvark (Those who bless Israel will be blessed, those who curse Israel will be cursed. Gen 12:3)
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To: Jo Nuvark

There is some truth to that, it’s like eliminating the eyewitness of a murder, etc.


29 posted on 09/05/2009 7:04:03 PM PDT by Kackikat (There is no such thing as a free lunch, because someone paid, somewhere.)
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To: Westbrook

bttt


30 posted on 09/05/2009 7:04:53 PM PDT by aberaussie
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To: Thank You Rush

You can watch it right now on:

http://www.tikilive.com/


31 posted on 09/05/2009 7:16:49 PM PDT by smokingfrog (No man's life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in session. I AM JIM THOMPSON)
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To: Jo Nuvark

Look how many senior citizens have rolled out for the town hall meetings and against the AARP. 0bama will try to marginalize the older generations for sure. Accuse them of being selfish, stuck in the past, and the ones to blame for the manufactured crisis, etc. Maybe not all that far-fetched.


32 posted on 09/05/2009 7:21:27 PM PDT by smokingfrog (No man's life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in session. I AM JIM THOMPSON)
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To: Jo Nuvark
Thanks for the heads-up, you guys! I've even forsaken FOX, so I wasn't even aware of this.

TVO Time.

33 posted on 09/05/2009 7:25:55 PM PDT by bannie
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To: smokingfrog

Homeschool is the way. End public education completely. Let the private market work with private schools and homeschooling. That would end the propaganda for good.


34 posted on 09/05/2009 7:57:40 PM PDT by socialismislost
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To: Clintonfatigued; metmom

Shaw was also a communist. Textbooks at the time
were Judeo-Christian. Today, Shaw would revere
testbooks. He also believed in giving his money
away and often did ... to total strangers. Easy
for him, he was married to a million heiress.

The only good thing about Shaw was “Saint Joan”
and his friendship with G. K. Chesterton.


35 posted on 09/05/2009 8:17:49 PM PDT by Jo Nuvark (Those who bless Israel will be blessed, those who curse Israel will be cursed. Gen 12:3)
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To: wintertime

While on this subject, consider how few children’s books are about homeschoolers! The few novels I’m finding today for young people with homeschoolers as lead characters tend to be either left-leaning or promoting the view that homeschoolers are very strange.

My son, being a voracious reader, now is a prolific writer. He didn’t used to be interested in writing. Now I can’t seem to stop him from writing. He’s written hundreds of pages of stories using his computer. And, oddly enough, none of his characters resemble him or his reality at all. I tried convincing him there might be a market for a story about someone like him - but, so far, he doesn’t seem to be interested in writing one.


36 posted on 09/05/2009 9:01:24 PM PDT by Tired of Taxes (Dad, I will always think of you.)
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To: Tired of Taxes
While on this subject, consider how few children’s books are about homeschoolers!
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^’’

Excellent observation.

Of course, when my kids were homeschoolers very few families were homeschooling. It was considered very daring. I didn't expect to see any stories about homeschoolers.

Homeschooling could now be as high a 4% of the school age population. I agree with you, children as normal homeschoolers should be, as characters, a natural part of literature for both children and adults.

Aren't we seeing children and adults in wheelchairs in advertising? Well, why not normal homeschoolers in literature?

Good point!

37 posted on 09/06/2009 5:59:09 AM PDT by wintertime (People are not stupid! Good ideas win!)
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To: Anti-Bubba182

http://d.yimg.com/kq/groups/15523565/1322781786/name/TeaPartyCommercial


38 posted on 09/06/2009 1:51:12 PM PDT by christianhomeschoolmommaof3
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