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Think the history your kids are being taught in school is fair and balanced? Think again says Larry Schweikart, University of Dayton professor and author of "48 Liberal Lies About American History (That You Probably Learned In School)." Here are four examples from Schweikart's "worst offenders": • "The American Pageant," by Bailey and David Kennedy Schweikart's take: "One of the most long-running and flawed, of these texts, esp. in the Reagan years. On p. 237, I actually have two charts, one from the book, and one reflecting the REAL data (i.e., "real" dollars as a share of GNP — which...

TIPP CITY, Ohio — When 83-year-old Edmund Jackson uses a hand trimmer to clip the grass, one of the 22 pieces of shrapnel in his right arm dances under the skin of his wrist. ---- snip ---- The schoolbook program is designed to spark greater interest in history by giving students an emotional connection to it and showing them it’s made by real people like themselves.

Five years into the war in Iraq, military history seems to be experiencing a golden age. Hollywood has been cranking out war movies. Publishers have been lining bookstore shelves with new battle tomes, which consumers are eagerly lapping up. Even the critics have been enjoying themselves. Two of the last five Pulitzer Prizes in history were awarded to books about the American military. Four of the five Oscar nominees for best documentary this year were about warfare. Business, for military historians, is good.

One of the authors of "Mosaic of Thought" has apologized for mistakenly writing that Spartanburg was the scene of some violent incidents during the desegregation era. Inaccurate college textbook slams Spartanburg Violent integration incidents occurred in another city; errors to be fixed in 2nd edition By Linda Conley Published: Tuesday, April 29, 2008 | Updated: 9:16 am Picture this: A teacher is discussing with her students the violence and unrest that occurred in America when public schools integrated almost 40 years ago. The example she is using from her class textbook is the violence that occurred in Spartanburg County. The...

The New York Times reported Feb. 27 that fewer than half of American teenagers know when the Civil War was fought, and one in four believe Columbus sailed to the New World some time after 1750. About a quarter of the teenagers were unable to correctly identify Hitler as Germany's chancellor in World War II, instead identifying him in a multiple-choice test as a munitions maker or premier of Austria. Why is anyone surprised? The academic curriculum is the "cover," the "front." The real goal is not to ensure, but rather to ensure against successive generations developing a cohesive philosophy...

"I don't want to read anymore of this!" My son angrily threw his history book on the ground. When he cooled down a little, I asked him what was wrong, and he told me in tears about The Trail Of Tears. He couldn't take it. He didn't want to face the fact that our blessed Nation could do something so wrong. He couldn't believe that a lot of our Founding Fathers had been slave owners that had written about freedom while benefitting from the fruits of slave ownership. He was shutting down before my very eyes as to the love...

PARIS (Reuters) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy, facing a tide of criticism over his call for schoolchildren to "adopt" Jewish child victims of the Holocaust, hit back on Friday saying France had to raise children "with open eyes". In a speech praising faith that also drew fire from secularists, Sarkozy told France's Jewish community on Wednesday that every 10-year-old schoolchild should be "entrusted with the memory of a French child victim of the Holocaust". The proposal unleashed a storm of protest from teachers, psychologists and his political foes who said it would unfairly burden children with the guilt of previous...

My 12 year old son is developing an interest in history. About five years ago, I read a book review of an American History book written by a woman that was considered unbiased, that is it did not blame America for everything that has gone wrong in the world. The book was written for younger students. There may have been more than one book written. What I recall from the review was that it was well written and kept the kids interested (no mean feat for my 12 year). Does anyone know about the book or who the author is.

SEATTLE – A letter from the Seattle School District is raising some eyebrows about Thanksgiving and how it should be handled in the classroom. The letter tells school district staff that the holiday is seen by many Native Americans as a "time of mourning." It all started three years ago when some Native American parents voiced concerns about how Thanksgiving was being observed in Seattle Schools. "In terms of what they were seeing in some of the use of the feathers and those things because those are of spiritual and ceremonial significance to us," said Willard Bill, Seattle Public Schools....

Last month's exercise in democracy in a Pittsfield, Mass., classroom was enlightening in an important way neither the teacher nor students comprehended. Susan Barnes had her fourth-graders at Morningside Community School re-enact America's founding by writing a classroom constitution. As one might expect, with kids running the world, the lesson quickly degenerated into "what's in it for me?" orgy. Their constitution included the right to free computers, the right to extra recess, the right to change desks and the right to eat candy in class. Still, Ms. Barnes seemed satisfied by the outcome: "We explored how what runs our country...

The University of Wisconsin-Madison did relatively well in a 50-college test of how much students learned about history and economics during four years of college, but students in Wisconsin and nationally knew little when they came in and not much more when they left. No college did better than a D-plus on the Civic Literacy Test released Tuesday by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a nonpartisan conservative educational organization that stresses the values of a free society. The national average was F.The test of 14,000 randomly selected students revealed that some of the most expensive Ivy League universities, with the highest-paid...

Seniors at UC Berkeley, the nation's premier public university, got an F in their basic knowledge of American history, government and politics in a new national survey, and students at Stanford University didn't do much better, getting a D. Out of 50 schools surveyed, Cal ranked 49th and Stanford 31st in how well they are increasing student knowledge about American history and civics between the freshman and senior years. And they're not alone among major universities in being fitted for a civics dunce cap. Other poor performers in the study were Yale, Duke, Brown and Cornell universities. Johns Hopkins University...

One of the reasons I decided to home school my kids was to save them from the politically correct indoctrination of the monopolized government-run schools. We selected a highly-rated curriculum from the highly regarded Calvert School which I had hoped would keep the PC crud to a bare minimum. Oh, how I was wrong. Get a load of what’s included in what amounts to the curriculum’s 2nd-grade history/civics course, “Explore Your World II.” The last few daily lessons have been on topics titled, “Good Citizens,” “Determination,” “Citizenship Traits,” “Authority Figures,” “Leadership,” and “Service.” Fine subject material, to be sure. But...

A name is more than a combination of letters. It represents an identity, a belief and, ultimately, a prophecy. So it should be no surprise that Nathan B. Forrest High School in Jacksonville is failing. The school, named for a Confederate army general and prominent Ku Klux Klan participant, is not performing to the academic standard set by the state's educational authorities.

The vast majority of American historians no longer regard American culture as an essential area of study. Instead, what they care about is social history -- the struggles and hard-won accomplishments of women, workers, African Americans, Latinos, Asians and Native Americans in a country often inhospitable to the poor and the powerless.

Colorado Springs - Douglas Bruce is known as a frugal man, not a giver of gifts. But when he tried last spring to give pocket- size copies of the U.S. Constitution to high-school seniors, two Colorado Springs-area districts said "no, thanks." snip Bruce said he made it clear that copies of the Constitution were to be given to seniors, but "I said nothing about giving them at graduation or interfering with the ceremony or my being there. That was a contrived excuse by Lewis-Palmer School District."

A reader emails us the following: So waiting for the Dolphin swim at Discovery Cove in Orlando, my daughter Nikki and I were seated with a Brit family--mom, daughter and son. After small talk about the great value of the pound vs the dollar etc, I mentioned that Churchill was one of my heroes. The son, no more than 16 countered that he really liked Hitler, and his sister Gandhi. I was stunned and sickened. According to him, Hitler was a great leader and did great things for the German people. He brought them out of depression. His quest for...

American students often get the impression from history classes that the British got here first, settling Jamestown, Va., in 1607. They hear about how white Northerners freed the black slaves, how Asians came in the mid-1800s to build Western railroads. The lessons have left out a lot. Forty-two years before Jamestown, Spaniards and American Indians lived in St. Augustine, Fla. At least several thousand Latinos and nearly 200,000 black soldiers fought in the Civil War. And Asian-Americans had been living in California and Louisiana since the 1700s. Now, more of these and other lesser-known facts about American minorities are getting...

Our history curriculum needs a complete makeover, suggests Kevin Donnelly AND you thought the English curriculum was bad enough. Think again. The cultural Left has also sabotaged the Australian history curriculum in schools. In his analysis of the history wars, Stuart Macintyre summarises the various approaches to teaching Australian history that have prevailed during the past century. Macintyre argues, as a result of the cultural revolution of the '60s, that historians questioned more conservative views in favour of a "left-wing" perspective. Historians, he notes, embraced approaches such as: Marxist history, labor history and women's history. Macintyre describes this as "history...

A national group is asking Arizona's public universities to require at least one United States history course of every student before graduation. American History currently isn't a required course at any of the state's major public universities. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni has written letters to Gov. Janet Napolitano and 20 state lawmakers, asking them to pressure college regents and administrators to make the change. "The flag doesn't mean all that much if you don't know how it got there," trustees member Charles Mitchell said. "What use is the Constitution if you don't know how it was written?"...

CANBERRA, July 7, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Australian federal Education Minister Julie Bishop has announced the government’s plan to end the marxist-inspired history curriculum that has been standard fare in Australian schools. Bishop said she will press the states and territories to adopt “traditional Australian history” along the lines of that adopted in New South Wales by former premier Bob Carr. The Australian reports that the government is planning on forcing the issue, saying that refusal would mean the change would be included in the next funding agreement. Bishop said, “I want to work with the states on this. I want...

    Memorial Day was first called Decoration Day, when the women of Columbus, Miss., decorated the graves of fallen Confederate soldiers, many of whom had been killed at nearby Shiloh Church in the first great blood-letting of our Civil War. Union wives and mothers soon followed the example, many to sing of kneeling "Where Our Loves are Sleeping."     For generations schoolchildren learned as a Memorial Day recitation the lines written by Col. John McRae, a Canadian doctor, as he took a break at a field hospital beside a cemetery at the Ypres salient in 1915: "In Flanders fields the poppies blow/between...

Sydney high school history teacher Gregory Haines, in Quadrant magazine, laments the state of his profession ACADEMIC history has been under threat and perhaps in decline for some time. In part, this is due to an overall decline in arts faculties and a consequent search for relevance, funding and position in enterprise universities which are increasingly geared for vocational training rather than broad education. But there are other factors at work. The rise of postmodernism and theory in arts faculties, later in Australia than elsewhere, where the decline has commenced, has discredited what little education there is on offer. Australian...

Tales of Iraq Soldier brings treasures, history to school By JOHN MOLSEED Messenger staff writer Fair Oaks Middle School sixth-graders learning about Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization, had a special guest Friday — someone who had been there. Sgt. Tony Echevarria shared his experiences and visits to historic sites while stationed in Iraq with the students — one of them his son, Zak Echevarria. ‘‘This is believed to be the birthplace of Abraham,’’ Sgt. Echevarria said describing a Powerpoint slide showing the ancient brick structure. ‘‘He is the father of Judeo-Christian belief that we have today.’’ Echevarria has spent eight...

How Should Textbooks Treat the Clinton Scandal? by Larry Schweikart, University of Dayton Almost any student who has ever sat through a history class in high school or college will nod with familiarity when I discuss how many teachers cover the last 20 years of history: “well, of course, you know what happened next.” For me, the history that inevitably was left out was the late 1950s or the Kennedy/Nixon years. As I entered the history profession, I found most students had never “gotten up to” the Vietnam War. If the past is any guide, the likelihood of survey classes...

History lessons for British teenagers place too much focus on Adolf Hitler, according to a new report produced by the government’s curriculum watchdog. The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority annual report found that as a result pupils aged 14 and over were not getting a proper overview of history. The report stated: “There has been a gradual narrowing and ‘Hitlerisation’ of post-14 history. The option choices made by schools and colleges in GCSE and AS/A level mean that the content of post-14 history continues to be dominated by topics such as the Tudors and the 20th century dictatorships.” QCA Chief Executive...

The Associated Press's Ben Feller has written an article entitled "School Textbooks Tackle the Clinton Impeachment." For people who think of tackling as the kind of head-on tackling seen at football games, tackling is the wrong word. Mr. Feller's article indicates that the school textbooks are obfuscating (making obscure or confusing) instead of "tackling." The kind of contribution to the Hillary in 2008 campaign that will not be officially reported, because it is not money or property, but will be appreciated by the Clintons, each of whom indisputably misled the American people. One more scandal involving the Clintons. (If Hillary...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The impeachment of former President Bill Clinton is in a gray area of history, too long ago to be a current event, too recent to be judged in perspective. Yet history is already judging Clinton in the place where millions of students get their information about him - textbooks. Seven years after he was impeached in a scandal of sex, perjury and bitter politics, Clinton has become a fixture in major high school texts. The impeachment is portrayed in the context of his two-term tenure, a milestone event, but not one that overshadows how Clinton handled the...

Looks like I'll be on with Bridget Quinn and John Scott "debating" Alan Lichtman over the place of the Clinton impeachment in textbooks. Among other things, I'll demand fairness, that as the second impeached president he gets every bit as much attention as the first---Andrew Johnson. I'll also insist that he was acquitted only because the Senate refused to do its job. And it was not about sex.

Clinton Scandals are High School Textbook Fixtures The impeachment of former President Clinton is in a gray area of history, too long ago to be a current event, too recent to be judged in perspective. Yet history is already judging Clinton in the place where millions of students get their information about him - textbooks. Seven years after he was impeached in a scandal of sex, perjury and bitter politics, Clinton has become a fixture in major high school texts. The impeachment is portrayed in the context of his two-term tenure, a milestone event, but not one that overshadows how...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The impeachment of former President Clinton is in a gray area of history, too long ago to be a current event, too recent to be judged in perspective. Yet history is already judging Clinton in the place where millions of students get their information about him - textbooks. Seven years after he was impeached in a scandal of sex, perjury and bitter politics, Clinton has become a fixture in major high school texts. The impeachment is portrayed in the context of his two-term tenure, a milestone event, but not one that overshadows how Clinton handled the economy,...

Hi Freepers, I must admit, this story is playing out TO THE TEE of the MSM. As many of you may already know, there is a growing battle for truth in regards to the proper teaching of Pre-Civil War American History in Carson City Nevada. Fix News has been here and I can only assume that they will be back. If you do not already know the story, visit Chuck Muths website www.theengefiles.com To make matters worse, the Neveda Appeal is fighting for THE WRONG SIDE and the reporter is so frustrated with the Blogosphere that she has done something...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 14, 2005 – Elementary school students at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va., got a combined current events and history lesson Dec. 13 from the wife of Vice President Dick Cheney. Lynne Cheney spoke to students at W.W. Burrows Elementary School about the election taking place in Iraq on Dec. 15. "What's happening is that the people in Iraq are going to vote for, what is in essence, their Congress, their national assembly," Cheney said. "It's a turning point, one of those things that when you're a grown-up, you will look in your history books and you will see...

EAST HARTFORD - The threat of nuclear terror was made real for an 11th-grade history class at East Hartford High School on Friday by a congressman and a fictional film, "Last Best Chance." U.S. Rep. John B. Larson, D-1st District, said he is on a mission to raise awareness of nuclear terror threats and what the United States is doing about it in order to develop a grassroots movement of public support. "Americans should be more aware of this threat," he said. "You have to ask yourself are we any safer than we were on Sept. 10th?" After the film...

CARSON CITY: "HE SAID/SHE SAID" School administrators in Carson City, Nevada, had a very...bad...day yesterday, thanks to y'all. By the time school administrators went home, over 6,500 online petitions in support of history teacher Joe Enge had been sent to the school superintendent, the Carson High principal and the 7 members of the school board. Alas, the volume of emailed petitions overwhelmed the district, and by lunchtime the petitions were being "bounced" by the school district's system. Then came the phone calls. At first, administration personnel tried fielding the flood of calls it was receiving, but by mid-afternoon most...

The Carson City, Nevada, school administrators are attempting to fire an award-winning history teacher, Joe Enge. Why should that matter to you? I’ll combine his story with that of my 11th grade history teacher. Maybe you’ll agree this matters to everyone who cares about the future of America. In Carson City schools, administrators insist that history teachers begin teaching American history with the Civil War. Joe Enge, an 11th grade teacher there who’s written two history books and has served on a statewide board on history teaching, disagrees. He begins at the beginning, teaching his students about the American Revolution,...

Meet Joe Enge.Joe is an award-winning, 15-year veteran history teacher in Carson City who has, among other things, written two history textbooks and served on the 1997 task force which drew up Nevada's history standards.  But according to school district administrators, he's a "bad" teacher.You see, Joe has this crazy idea that American history should include our colonial period, as well as the Revolutionary War period.  You know, where the Founding Fathers fought for independence from England and wrote the greatest governing document the world has ever known - the United States Constitution.  You know, that period of time which...

IS TEACHING TRADITIONAL “HISTORY” HISTORY IN CARSON CITY’S HIGH SCHOOL? Meet Joe Enge. Joe is an award-winning, 15-year veteran history teacher in Carson City who has, among other things, written two history textbooks and served on the 1997 task force which drew up Nevada’s history standards. But according to school district administrators, he’s a “bad” teacher. You see, Joe has this crazy idea that American history should include our colonial period, as well as the Revolutionary War period. You know, where the Founding Fathers fought for independence from England and wrote the greatest governing document the world has ever...

My formerly homeschooled son has entered the local public high school. His history teacher has chosen to base his American history education on the texts of Howard Zinn, a commited Marxist. http://howardzinn.org/default/ Any people out there who know more about this "author" or have an alternative to the marxist view of America that this author gives?

(First published in the June 2005 issue of The NRB Magazine magazine) American history today has become a dreary academic subject. Yet, most who are bored by American history view Bible history quite differently: they love the stories of David and Goliath, Daniel and the lion's den, and Peter walking on the water. So it's not that people don't enjoy history, it's just that they don't respond favorably to the way American history is currently being taught. One reason Bible history is interesting and American history is not is that the Bible (as well as American education during its first...

Settlement Vindicates Use of Historical Religious Documents in Classroom By Jim Brown August 17, 2005 (AgapePress) - A settlement has been reached in a case involving a California elementary school teacher who was barred from distributing American history documents because they contained references to God and religion. The Alliance Defense Fund and the Cupertino School District have reached a settlement in which the district has agreed to no longer censor teacher Steven Williams because he is a Christian. Officials at Stevens Creek Elementary had prohibited Williams from providing fifth-grade students with supplemental readings such as William Penn's Frame of Government...

Revisionism is the common method employed by those seeking to subvert American culture and society. The dictionary defines revisionism as an “advocacy of the revision of an accepted, usually long-standing view, theory, or doctrine; especially a revision of historical events and movements.” Revisionism attempts to alter the way a people views its history and traditions in order to cause that people to accept a change in public policy. For example, during the 150 years that textbooks described the Founding Fathers as being devout men and Christians who actively practiced their faith, civic policy embraced and welcomed public religious expressions. But...

CUPERTINO, Calif. - Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund and the Cupertino Union School District filed a settlement agreement today in the lawsuit Williams v. Vidmar. "We are pleased that this matter has been resolved to the satisfaction of all parties," said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Kevin Theriot. "The school district is to be commended for agreeing that their policy allows teachers, no matter what their religious beliefs, to use handouts of historical significance that have religious content, like the Declaration of Independence." ADF attorneys filed the lawsuit in federal court against the district in November of last year on...

A controversial new state panel will determine whether New York schoolchildren are taught enough about the "physical and psychological terrorism" against Africans in the slave trade — and then recommend changes to text books and curricula. The Amistad Commission, named after the...

Many years ago my friend Robert Wible was stationed in India with the United States Information Agency. He returned to the U.S. with a textbook "Modern History" which was had been published in the Soviet Union. Translated into English, the book was being used in Indian schools. What is interesting about the book is that it tells a very different story than is usually presented in American textbooks. As the book covers the period from Middle Ages to the 1870s, various chapters of the book can be used to contrast the traditional American and the 1960s Marxist-Leninist interpretations of major...

A few years ago, the National Constitution Center surveyed teenagers and found that while only about four in 10 could name the three branches of the federal government fully six in 10 could name all Three Stooges. Everyone agrees we aren't teaching history well, but the direction of reform is controversial. Philadelphia's public schools have just announced they will mandate that all students take an African-American history course in order to graduate from high school. The theory is that the city's 185,000 public school students, two-thirds of whom are black, will finally become aware of their culture and gain self-esteem....

...To give you some idea how liberals, when they're in the majority, think, you merely have to consider California State Assembly Bill 756. Hold on to your hats because this one's a doozy. It bans school districts from purchasing history textbooks that are longer than 200 pages!...

Pennsylvania Legislator Asks District to Reconsider "unnecessary" Black History Requirement The Associated Press PHILADELPHIA (AP) - The speaker of the state House urged the city school district to reconsider what he called an "unnecessary" requirement that high school students take an African-American history course in order to graduate. "I would like to see them master basic reading, writing and arithmetic," Speaker John Perzel said in a letter Tuesday to James Nevels, chairman of the Philadelphia School Reform Commission. "Once we have them down pat, I don't care what they teach. ... They should understand basic American history before we go...

In a recent appearance at the Heritage Foundation, an author who has written many great histories gave some insight as to why the Ivory Tower produces such, at best, lackluster ones. "Many people say, 'Why bother with history?,' and unfortunately many of them are in education," best-selling writer David McCullough said at the Heritage Foundation last Friday. McCullough has penned best-selling historical biographies of American Presidents John Adams and Harry S. Truman. "Why is it possible that an otherwise intelligent person does not know that the original 13 colonies were on the East Coast or who George Marshall was," McCullough...

Some people are asking: How can the Philadelphia public school system mandate teaching African and African American history? But others of us are asking: How have school officials justified not teaching it in a school district where nearly two-thirds of all students are African American? America is so diverse that we should be teaching the stories of all its people, whether it is Greco-Roman history, including Greek mythology; Ireland's potato famine; the exodus of Eastern Europeans to America; or the roles so many other groups played here, including Italians, Germans, Asians and Latinos. This should all be part of the...