The Washington Times gives flunking grades to history textbooks:
The latest editions of the most widely used social studies textbooks across the country are full of errors and politically correct bias, reviews show.
Publisher McDougal Littell's high school "World History: Patterns of Interaction" blames explorer Christopher Columbus for "the beginnings of an era of widespread cruelty and bloodshed" in the Americas, but fails to mention Aztec, Mayan and Toltec Indian practices of forced labor and cutting out hearts of opponents while they were still alive.
Publisher Glencoe-McGraw-Hill's eighth-grade "The American Republic, Vol. 1" states: "On May 26, 1637, English soldiers and their Narraganset allies burned the main Pequot [Indian] village, killing hundreds"...
The text did not explain the raid was part of an effort to free...kidnapped women — and that warriors of other Indian tribes, also victims of Pequot terrorism, had joined British colonists in the raid.
I just got my copy of the Schoolhouse Rock DVD; my boyfriend and I watched most of them last night. We agreed that many of the "America Rock" videos could not possibly be made today, because there would be too many objections to American "imperialism" and "ethnocentrism." The Schoolhouse Rock videos made you proud to be an American. I doubt most of the history texts today have that effect.
Posted by kswygert at March 31, 2004 12:54 PM