Free Republic

Eight years after the atrocities of 9/11, Americans need to know what public school textbooks are teaching about Islam, radical Islam, and terrorism. The big three textbook states--those that set standards for content because publishers aim to capture their large sales, California, Texas, and Florida--are currently preparing for new textbooks, to be introduced in 2010-13. These books are likely to shape the content of public instruction for several years to come. At this point in a complex process of drafting and adopting "standards," then "frameworks," and finally texts, with time for public comment and revision at each stage, the outlook...

FOX News Reporting investigated the $10 billion dollar-a-year textbook industry and how the drive to be politically correct might be taking over American schools. Host Tucker Carlson, asked experts, teachers, publishers and parents the same question: "Do you know what is inside your children's textbooks?" From kindergarten through college, we found staggering errors and omissions which may be pushing agendas, hidden and otherwise. We spoke to the author of “The Language Police,” education historian Diane Ravitch, who said textbook publishers censor images or words they deem to be controversial in children’s textbooks. She told us that publishers pander to special...

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...

Requiem for China by: Bethany Stotts, August 27, 2009 Those familiar with the atrocities committed by the Chinese Communist Party are often distressed by the soft treatment given communist leader Mao Tse-Tung, a leader personally responsible for the death of tens of millions. At a recent press conference held by America’s Survival, Inc., Professor Paul Kengor explained why Chinese courses and history books tend to adopt rosy-eyed glasses when recording the actions of Chairman Mao. “[Mao] was a cultural icon in America in the ’60s. At one point in the ’60s, The Thoughts of Chairman Mao was the number one...

Indiana 1 Of 3 States With Public School Textbook Rental Fees INDIANAPOLIS -- In the midst of back-to-school season, expenses for clothing, supplies, backpacks, lunchboxes and the like are expected, but some costs catch parents off guard -- such as rental fees for textbooks. Indiana is one of just three states in which parents of public school students pay textbook rental fees, which typically run from about $100 to $400 each year, depending on the school district, 6News' Dan Spehler reported. The additional expense is something that people who move into the area may not be prepared for. Many parents...

Budget cuts will force the California Board of Education to delay buying new textbooks until January 2016 at the earliest, officials say. A state budget that closed a $24 billion deficit last month dramatically reduced state spending for kindergarten through eighth-grade textbooks, and a result most school districts are also putting off buying new high school textbooks, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday. California has also moved to allow funds that were supposed to be solely for textbooks to be diverted to other uses -- an amount that totals $334 million this year. The Times said administrators contend that flexibility...

Today’s top-selling biology textbooks present evolution as the only scientific view of the history of life. Often these textbooks use faulty or deceptive evidences to support evolutionary ideas. Fortunately, students can easily equip themselves with free materials that dissect textbooks and reveal the truth...

Sorry, I just had the link up and can't find it. It's called "I's on Edjukashun," and he quoted my Fox and Friends clip about the "pregnancy test" for any textbook, then showed a clip of Reagan pregnant. Funny, but I bet I had more viewers than the Messiah did for his news conference.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez wasn't the first to discover the book he gave to President Obama last week in an attempt to ease diplomatic tensions — college students in the U.S. have been turning its pages for years. The virulently anti-American book tells how for 500 years Europe and then the U.S. exploited Latin America, leaving it impoverished and governed by corrupt leaders. It outlines how U.S. capitalistic forces purportedly raped the region's natural resources and stymied Latin America's own development, exploited trade agreements and tariffs for its own interests and victimized the people of the region in exchange for...

Washington - "History is not history unless it is the truth." – Abraham Lincoln Most Americans understand history as an objective accounting of past events. In recent years, however, textbook publishers have come under increasing criticism for rewriting history. Claims are presented as facts while controversial material is whitewashed or omitted. Today these trends are quite apparent in the way public school history books address Islam. In his 2008 study "Islam in the Classroom: what the textbooks tell us," Gilbert Sewall, director of the American Textbook Council (ATC), reviewed 10 of the nation's most widely used junior and senior high...

A controversial private school for Muslim children is seeking to expand a campus in Fairfax County, a proposal that has made reluctant partners of neighbors concerned with the impact on traffic and water quality and critics who oppose what they say is the school's radical agenda. The Islamic Saudi Academy has asked the county for permission to build a state-of-the-art building on one of its two campuses, a 34-acre property near Fairfax City. The increased capacity could draw as many as 200 additional students to the 750-student campus each day, which has sparked concern among neighbors.... "The hearing started off...

EC interviews Dennis Ybarra, author of The Trouble with Textbooks, a book that's created some controversy by exposing the pro-Islam and anti-Christian and -Jewish bias in the United States' public school textbooks.

EC interviews Dennis Ybarra, author of The Trouble with Textbooks, a book that's created some controversy by exposing and documenting the pro-Islam and anti-Christian and Jewish bias in America's public school textbooks.

This is a short interview of our own Larry Schweikert, who has written a book about Liberal Lies.

Christianity was started by a young Palestinian named Jesus and the 9/11 murderers were not Islamic Fundamentalists but simply a generic "teams of terrorists." That's the caliber of politically corrected crap many of our children are being taught in American public schools -- and it's past time all parents took serious notice. A five year study by Gary Tobin and Dennis Ybarra of the Institute for Jewish and Community Research cites hundreds of such errors and distortions found in "28 of the most widely used social studies and history textbooks in the United States." Their book, The Trouble with Textbooks:...

Jesus was a Palestinian? That's what one public school textbook says. Although Jesus lived in a region known in his time as Palestine, the use of the term "Palestinian," with its modern connotations, is among the hundreds of textbook flaws cited in a recent five-year study of educational anti-Semitism detailed in the book "The Trouble with Textbooks: Distorting History and Religion." Authors Gary Tobin and Dennis Ybarra of the Institute for Jewish and Community Research found some 500 flaws and distortions concerning religion in 28 of the most widely used social studies and history textbooks in the United States.

AUSTIN – Advocates for more technology in the classroom – and fewer textbooks – are stepping up their arguments for change this year, trying to convince Texas lawmakers that the future of electronic textbooks is now. The technology push is getting a boost from a special House committee that warned about the consequences if Texas is stuck in the past when it comes to classroom materials. Among the reasons: the higher cost of printed books, the expense of transporting and storing them, and the fact that they can be outdated before students get them. "Our current system just seems outdated...

NEW YORK —  An education expert is warning that some American textbooks present a biased view of Islam and offer a sugarcoated picture of Islamic extremism, a trend that has parents worried about what's being taught in public schools.In numerous history textbooks, "key subjects like jihad, Islamic law, the status of women are whitewashed," said Gilbert T. Sewall, director of the American Textbook Council, an independent group that reviews history books and other education materials.Cindy Ross, the mother of a junior high school student in Marin County, Calif., said she couldn't believe her eyes when she read her son's textbook...

I recently read a book that deserves the widest possible readership: "The Trouble with Textbooks -- Distorting History and Religion," by Gary A. Tobin and Dennis R. Ybarra. I never have met or talked with either of these gentlemen, but I can't say enough good things about this book. For all who believe that there is a fairly objective rendition of history that we are obliged to teach our children, this book reveals how shockingly far from that objective American education -- particularly in schools' textbooks -- has fallen. In their conclusion, the authors quote the great historian of Islam...

What we know and learn about our country during our lifetime we get from media reports; what happened before we were born we learned through the history books we read in school. Knowing the truth about what goes on in the United States today is difficult because our media is increasingly biased and often dishonest. As it turns out, American history textbooks, both old and new, are inaccurate and biased, too, and some of what we thought we knew is false.

A prominent Tajik cleric and politician has accused the country's education officials of misinterpreting many historical facts about Islam and the Prophet Muhammad in Tajik schoolbooks. In an open letter to the Ministry of Education and numerous media interviews, Hoji Akbar Turajonzoda has said that the textbooks' authors have taken an "unprofessional, irrational, and sometimes insulting and offensive stance" toward Islam and Islamic values. Turajonzoda, who is a member of Tajikistan's upper house of parliament, said the textbooks portray the Prophet Muhammad as a creator of a new religion -- not as the messenger of God -- and suggest that...

All, "Fox and Friends" is looking for any specific examples of bias or liberal errors that you can find in you high school or junior high textbooks---literature, sociology, history, economics, whatever. If you find examples, send them direct to: friends@foxnews.com We are going to be doing a segment on this for the next couple of weeks. The bigger the errors, the better

We are losing the war on terror and that war will be lost without even firing a gun or exploding a bomb - although there may be more of both even in the U.S. For proof of that, I urge you to read Robert Spencer's new book, The Silent Jihad: How Radical Islam is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs. I rarely devote more than one column to one book. But Mr. Spencer's book is such urgent reading that I have already done two columns on his book (Tuesday and Wednesday of this week now on The Bulletin's Web site...

CAMP MITTICA, Iraq, Nov. 26, 2008 – In a country with a desperate need for engineers, two 402nd Army Field Support Brigade contractors are bridging an Oregon university with Iraqi students and faculty thirsty for knowledge. From far left, Jesus Quispe, Josh Mater, Dhi Qar University Chancellor Ali Ismael Obeidi al-Snafi and various university staff members look over textbooks donated by the Oregon State University College of Engineering. U.S. Army photo by Maj. Chad Carroll  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. About 200 students and teachers from Dhi Qar University are the beneficiaries of new engineering textbooks from the...

Leading banks and investment funds have been foundering, because of bad debts and lack of trust; and other, less well-known kinds of fiscal chaos are also on the horizon. For example, due to an unfixable security flaw in the way funds are now transferred electronically, worldwide, it is no longer safe to write personal checks. A criminal who sees the numbers that are printed at the bottom of any check that you write can use that information to withdraw all the money from your account. He or she can do this in various ways, without even knowing your name ---...

The creepy indocrination of children in the art of Obama-worship continues: My 8th grade son is in an advanced English class at a public middle school here in Racine, Wisconsin. I just found out that my son's new (copyright 2008) Wisconsin - McDougal Littell Literature book has 15 pages covering Barack Obama. I was shocked - No John McCain, no Hillary Clinton, no George Bush - Just Barack Obama. I'm wondering how it is that Obama's story gets put into an 8th grade literature book? It would be one thing, if it was just the tidbit about his boyhood days,...

(IsraelNN.com) Saudi Arabia-funded textbooks distributed in American schools teach that Muslims discovered America and that Jesus was a Palestinian, according to repot by the Institute for Jewish and Community Research. Anti-Zionist propaganda is prominent in the books that were written at Middle East centers at universities, including Harvard, which received a $20 million donation from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal in 2005. The textbooks, distributed in all 50 states in the U.S., also teach that the Almighty revealed the Koran to the Muslim prophet Mohammed and that Jewish civilization contributed "very little" to the arts and sciences.

American elementary and high school textbooks contain many "gross misrepresentations" of Judaism, Christianity and Israel, according to a book-length study released this week by the San Francisco-based Institute for Jewish and Community Research. "It is shocking to discover that history and geography textbooks widely used in America's elementary and secondary classrooms contain some of the very same inaccuracies about Christianity, Judaism and the Middle East as those [used] in Iran," the IJCR said in a summary of the findings of the five-year study. In examining the 28 most widely-used history, geography and social studies textbooks in America, researchers Dr. Gary...

Back in May 2006 Nina Shea, director of Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom wrote in the Washington Post, “Saudi Arabia’s public schools have long been cited for demonizing the West as well as Christians, Jews and other ‘unbelievers.’ But after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001—in which 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis—that was all supposed to change.” In fact major changes were announced publicly. Shea cites a Saudi embassy spokesman who said in 2005, “We have reviewed our educational curriculums. We have removed materials that are inciteful [sic] or intolerant towards people of other faiths.” This was...

Islam is one of the most important issues of our time, but you wouldn't know it from reading a high school textbook. What students learn makes it almost impossible to understand Islam in history or the world today, much less what fuels Islam's challenge to peace and international security. A review of leading textbooks used in New York City and nationwide reveals they deliberately misrepresent Islamic history, jihad, Islamic law (sharia), global terrorism, and more. Thinking that jihad is "holy war" is wrong, students are told. Instead textbooks insist it is merely an effort to improve oneself and society. "Muslims...

Governor vetoes climate change curriculum California public students will stick to reading, writing and arithmetic, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger decided as he vetoed a bill late Friday that would have required climate change be added to schools' curriculum. The measure, sponsored by state Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, also would have required future science textbooks to include climate change as a subject. In January, the state Senate approved the bill, SB 908, by a 26-13 vote. Only two Republicans supported the proposal. In his veto statement, Schwarzenegger said he supported education that spotlights the dangers of climate change. However, the Republican...

Islamofascism: A new study confirms our "ally" Saudi Arabia is still poisoning young Muslim minds with anti-Western textbooks. So? Its hate-filled graduates are enrolling at our colleges.The Hudson Institute reviewed the 2007-08 textbooks distributed by the Saudi Ministry of Education and found that, despite promised reforms, the kingdom still teaches students to "hate the infidels." The texts assert that it's "permissible" for a Muslim to kill an "apostate," an "adulterer," a "homosexual," as well as non-Muslims practicing "polytheism," or Christianity. The violent ideology is introduced in a religion textbook in the first grade and reinforced and developed in following years...

Because they are so clearly designed for the convenience of large testing companies, I had always assumed that multiple-choice exams, the bane of any fourth-grader's existence, were a quintessentially American phenomenon. But apparently I was wrong. According to a report last week by the Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom, it seems that the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Education finds them useful, too. Here, for example, is a multiple-choice question from a recent edition of a Saudi fourth-grade textbook, "Monotheism and Jurisprudence," in a section that attempts to teach children to distinguish between "true" and "false" belief in God: Q....

WASHINGTON — Two years after protracted American-Saudi negotiations persuaded the State Department that the Saudis would remove religious intolerance from their national textbooks, a new study finds the books still portray non-Sunni Muslims as the enemies of true believers. The report from the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute finds that the Saudi textbooks are filled with the austere supremacism of the Wahhabi sect of Islam, despite promises from the Kingdom in 2006 to alter them. For example, a textbook for 10th graders on Islamic jurisprudence not only says it is permissible in Islam to murder a homosexual,...

Despite a promise to remove attacks on other faiths from the public school curriculum, Saudi Arabia's state-produced textbooks still refer to Jews and Christians as apes and swine, insist that Jews conspire to take over the world and on Judgment Day "the rocks or the trees" will call out to Muslims to kill the Jews, says the Washington-based Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank. The textbooks, used by five million students in the kingdom every year, as well as in many Saudi-funded institutions outside the country, also attack homosexuals and Muslims who do not practice a fundamentalist form of Islam....

By Jerry Markon and Ben Hubbard Washington Post Staff Writers Tuesday, July 15, 2008; Page B01 A Saudi-funded academy in Fairfax County used textbooks as recently as 2006 that compared Jews and Christians to apes and pigs, told eighth-graders that these groups are "the enemies of the believers" and diagrammed for high school students where to cut off the hands and feet of thieves, a Washington Post review of the books has found. Saudi officials acknowledged that the textbooks used at the Islamic Saudi Academy had contained inflammatory material since at least the mid-1990s but said they ordered revisions in...

American School Books Redefine 'Jihad' to Exclude Violence -- Where is Media? By Warner Todd Huston | June 8, 2008 - 21:49 ET In yet another example of why the west could be too weak to fight the sort of global terrorism that takes the form of Islamofascism, a textbook monitoring group is charging that American textbooks have been cleansed of mentioning the violence inherent in the Islamic "Jihad." Now, our children will not be taught what "Jihad" truly means, nor that it has been used as an excuse to kill their fellow citizens because our schools have sanitized Islam...

(CNSNews.com) - Religious textbooks at the Islamic Saudi Academy (IPA) in Fairfax, Va., which have sparked controversy for content that allegedly promotes violence and hatred toward non-Muslims, will be rewritten and reissued by the time students return to school in the fall, said school officials. "We hope the books will be clean from any kind of misunderstanding that people think about," the head of Islamic teachings at the academy, who asked not to be named, told Cybercast News Service on Tuesday. The IPA official, however, denied that the books used until now contain lessons that teach children to hate non-Muslims...

State Department officials said Thursday they have no plans to close a Saudi-financed Islamic school in Northern Virginia that has failed to eliminate violent and intolerant language in textbooks. "They told us they would revise the textbooks by the 2008 school year," State Department spokesman Rob McInturff said. "We don't plan to take additional action apart from the discussions that have been going on with the Saudi government." Results released Wednesday from a federal investigation into the Islamic Saudi Academy - with campuses in Alexandria and Fairfax - found textbooks at the 900-student private school had passages that blame the...

In yet another example of why the west could be too weak to fight the sort of global terrorism that takes the form of Islamofascism, a textbook monitoring group is charging that American textbooks have been cleansed of mentioning the violence inherent in the Islamic "Jihad." Now, our children will not be taught what "Jihad" truly means, nor that it has been used as an excuse to kill their fellow citizens because our schools have sanitized Islam of all outrage and violence. Will the media follow this story and report that our children are being exposed to Islamic propaganda like...

McLEAN, Va. (AP) — Textbooks at a private Islamic school in northern Virginia teach students that it is permissible for Muslims to kill adulterers and converts from Islam, according to a federal investigation released Wednesday. Other passages in the school's textbooks state that "the Jews conspired against Islam and its people" and that Muslims are permitted to take the lives and property of those deemed "polytheists."

The books say it’s OK for Muslims to kill adulterers and converts McLEAN, Va. - Textbooks at a private Islamic school in northern Virginia teach students that it is permissible for Muslims to kill adulterers and converts from Islam, according to a federal investigation released Wednesday. Other passages in the school's textbooks state that "the Jews conspired against Islam and its people" and that Muslims are permitted to take the lives and property of those deemed "polytheists." The passages were found in selected textbooks used during the 2007-08 school year by the Islamic Saudi Academy, which teaches 900 students in...

A textbook monitoring group said that Maryland middle and high school students will be required to read about Islamic teachings that have been dumbed down and are products of political correctness. According to the New York Examiner, a new report issued by the American Textbook Council said that administrators who approved books for use in the Montgomery County school district caved into pressure by pro-Islamic groups seeking to present a less violent interpretation of Islam. Gilbert Sewall, director of the council, stated that, for example, the definition of jihad has gone through "amazing cultural reorchestration" in textbooks, losing any connotation...

A new report issued by the American Textbook Council says books approved for use in local school districts for teaching middle and high school students about Islam caved in to political correctness and dumbed down the topic at a critical moment in its history. "Textbook editors try to avoid any subject that could turn into a political grenade," wrote Gilbert Sewall, director of the council, who railed against five popular history texts for "adjust[ing] the definition of jihad or sharia or remov[ing] these words from lessons to avoid inconvenient truths." Sewall complains the word jihad has gone through an "amazing...

What happens in Texas does not stay in Texas: the state is one of the country’s biggest buyers of textbooks, and publishers are loath to produce different versions of the same material. The ideas that work their way into education here will surface in classrooms throughout the country. “ ‘Strengths and weaknesses’ are regular words that have now been drafted into the rhetorical arsenal of creationists,” said Kathy Miller, director of the Texas Freedom Network, a group that promotes religious freedom. The chairman of the state education board, Dr. Don McLeroy, a dentist in Central Texas, denies that the phrase...

DALLAS — Opponents of teaching evolution, in a natural selection of sorts, have gradually shed those strategies that have not survived the courts. Over the last decade, creationism has given rise to “creation science,” which became “intelligent design,” which in 2005 was banned from the public school curriculum in Pennsylvania by a federal judge. Now a battle looms in Texas over science textbooks that teach evolution, and the wrestle for control seizes on three words. None of them are “creationism” or “intelligent design” or even “creator.” The words are “strengths and weaknesses.” Starting this summer, the state education board will...

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.

NEW YORK — Can it be true? That Islamic schools in the United States teach hatred towards American Christians and Jews? The Washington Post on Monday revealed that one such school outside Washington, D.C., uses textbooks teaching 11th graders that "the Day of Judgment can't come until Jesus Christ returns to Earth, breaks the cross and converts everyone to Islam, and until Muslims start attacking Jews." Other accredited Islamic schools in America have world maps on classroom walls that exclude Israel. Some such schools promote class discussions that portray Usama bin Laden as "simply the victim of … prejudice" against...

History textbooks being used by hundreds of thousands of public school students across the U.S. are blatantly promoting Islam, according to a new report by an independent organization that researches and reviews textbooks. WND has reported several times on issues involving the promotion of Islam in public school texts, including a recent situation in which California parents complained their children were being taught that "jihad" to Muslims means "doing good works. The new report is from the American Textbook Council, which was established in 1989 as an independent national research organization to review social studies textbooks and advance the quality...

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...