Publius Forum – by Warner Todd Huston
Looks like the Obamaites are once again attempting to tech our children that the U.S. is an evil country with new nationalized “history” standards for our schools that eliminate the founding fathers and focuses only on a relentlessly negative interpretation of the birth of the country.
I am late to this story, I know (it is impossible to cover everything, certainly), but this one is egregious, so I just had to hit it. Still, it is of a piece with the way the left is attempting to destroy this country by tearing it down in the eyes of our youth so that they grow up with the left’s preconceived notion that this country is evil.
Late last moth documents were uncovered that reveals they way that College Board authors have redesigned the AP U.S. History (APUSH) Framework from a previous five-page, cursory outline that leaves a lot of what is to be taught to teachers and school districts to a massive 98-page document describing in minute detail what is to be taught and more importantly what isn’t to be taught.
The College Board, the administers of advanced placement (AP) courses and tests, is unveiling the new scheme for AP U.S. history which is to be given to 450,000 students who take these history classes across the nation.
Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars,says the new AP U.S. history framework is “a briefing document on progressive and leftist views of the American past” that “weaves together a vaguely Marxist or at least materialist reading of the key events with the whole litany of identity group grievances.”
The first warning sign with this new scheme s that the College Board will not disclose (or hasn’t thus far, in any case) exactly who the authors of this new framework are. The whole campaign is anonymous, a very worrisome sign.
But even worse is what the framework contains… or rather what it doesn’t. There is no mention of any of the founders but George Washington, and then only his farewell address is briefly mentioned.
This is significant because the farewell address is constantly misconstrued as if the idea that we should “avoid entangling foreign alliances” is a “founding principle.” But it is absolutely not a founding principle.
Anyway, the subject matter also claims that the U.S. was founded on a corrupt and evil “rigid racial hierarchy” and then entirely omits the fact that religious diversity not only existed at the founding, but was specifically fostered by our founding laws and principles.
It goes on to claim that Manifest Destiny was really just a mission “built on a belief in white racial superiority and a sense of American cultural superiority.”
By the time it gets to WWII, the country is portrayed strictly through the lens of Japanese internment. But does note, of course, that the only way the country was saved from the Great Depression was through F.D.R.’s big government programs.
Above is but a tiny bit of the outrageous content of this “school” curriculum meant as leftist social engineering.
For info on how to fight this, visit THIS POST by Shane Vander Hart.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’sBigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, andBigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com,CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, Wizbang.com, among many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
Subtlety is off the table.