Textbooks - perpetrators of 'classroom lies'

[Desertdog]

Home school your children so they can grow up without being a Socialist.

Textbooks - perpetrators of 'classroom lies'
Rusty Pugh - OneNewsNow - 9/20/2008 4:15:00 AM
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Education/Default.aspx?id=257542

A best-selling historian is exposing what he describes as lies taught in politically correct classrooms.

The myth of a September 11, 2001, government conspiracy has joined the ranks of lies taught in public schools. Best-selling author and historian Larry Schweikart of the University of Dayton, Ohio, has examined hundreds of resources used in public schools -- and he says what he found is frightening.
 
In his book 48 Liberal Lies About American History, Schweikart unmasks the liberal bias that he argues is corroding American education. "Well, I was getting a little tired of seeing these myths perpetuated through the textbooks," he shares. "I looked at 15 to 20 of the top, best-selling U.S. history textbooks -- and while I found that no textbook had all 48 lies, every one of them had most of these in them."
 
In his book Schweikart provides an overview of his findings to illustrate where the country is heading.
 
"In the introduction, I included a survey of pictures in these textbooks....you'd expect to find in the 20th century [section of those textbooks] pictures of the atomic bomb, and they're in most of these books; and Franklin Roosevelt, and they're in most of these books," he explains. "[And] you might also expect to find in most of them pictures of the moon landing, Martin Luther King [Jr.], John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan."
 
But that is not what the historian found. "The most common image -- after the A-bomb and Roosevelt -- in the 20th century section of these texts was the Klu Klux Klan," he states.
 
In the book, Scheikart gives many other examples, including lies dealing with Ronald Reagan. "One of the easiest to look at is that Gorbachev, and not Reagan, ended the Cold War," he relates. "...[Y]ou've got several of these textbooks saying...it was Gorbachev who really brought an end to all nuclear weapons, and basically disarmed Russia from the inside."
 
Schweikart says it is the responsibility of parents to correct these inaccuracies. He contends that those who write and edit the books -- and most of the teachers who use them -- actually believe everything in the books is true.

[Standing Wolf]

Absent ignorance, there'd be no socialists.

[Ryan in Maine]

That's why I home schooled starting in 9th grade. I was already old enough to notice that crap. You know something's up when the textbooks don't even agree with each other on a school-to-school basis. 

[Nick1911]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't history generally considered highly subjective in nature?  It seem that the opinions of respected historians tend to disagree with each other regularly.

[Boomhauer]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't history generally considered highly subjective in nature?  It seem that the opinions of respected historians tend to disagree with each other regularly.

Discussion and arguments based facts are one thing. That is encouraged (well, outside of public school classrooms). It's what we do all the time in our history classes.

Outright lies and BS (9/11 troofers, for example) is another. Revisionist history pisses me off, especially when it is so widely accepted without argument.

Then again, I keep in mind one of the quotes from Serenity..."Half of writing history is hiding the truth"

[drewtam]

This problem is not limited to history text. Let me trot out the tired adage: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."

It really applies in this case because this is the same problem that primary and high school science and math books have. Yes, science and math where it should have only one right answer when teaching.

Let me quote a part from Dr Feynman's hilarious and awesome book "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman"
Lead in: He's talking about his temporary efforts of helping California school board review math and science books for primary education. He's giving an example of why all the books were bad...

Anyway, I'm happy with this book, because it's the first example of applying arithmetic to science. I'm a bit unhappy when I read about the stars' temperatures, but I'm not very unhappy because it's more or less right - it's just an example of error. Then comes the list of problems. It says, "John and his father go out to look at the stars. John sees two blue stars and a red star. His father sees a green star, and a violet star, and two yellow stars. What is the total temperature of the stars seen by John and his father?" -- and I would explode in horror.

My wife would talk about the volcano downstairs. That's only an example: it was perpetually like that. Perpetual absurdity!  There's no purpose whatsoever in adding the temperature of two stars. Nobody ever does that except, maybe, to then take the average temperature of the stars, but not to find out the total temperature of all the stars! It was awful! All it was was a game to get you to add, and they didn't understand what they were talking about. It was like reading sentences with a few typographical errors, and then suddenly a whole sentence is written backwards. The mathematics was like that. Just hopeless!

So you see, incompetence is strongly at work here in all of these school board 'approved' textbooks. Because the school board doesn't actually review the books. They have other people do it for them, while the publishers give them gifts and take them to expensive dinners to explain the books. The people who provide the reports aren't accountable, and will provide any old rating for any book because nobody pays attention to whats going on.

[K Frame]

Yes, the examination of history can be highly subjective. Different historians can take a set of facts and come to radically different conclusions as to why what happened happened.

No, it's not always an inherent, active bias causing that. Often it's how one historian weighs/interprets the importance of certain influences; which can be highly influenced by organic events in the historian's own life and times.

A fantastic example is Arthur Schlessinger's "The Age of Jackson." A fantastic work of historical interpretation, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, but today many of Schlessinger's interpretations are now considered to be erroneous.

A critical reading of Age of Jackson will give you the distinct impression that Schlessinger is making a case for Andrew Jackson being the first "New Deal" president.

[MicroBalrog]

Note that while the interpretation of history can be subjective, historians (UNLIKE literature scholars) do not generally deny the existence of truth. Further, I do think that there is at least an attempt, in historical studies, to GET to a truth.

As for the original article:

Wait, we didn't know before that pubic education is socialist?

[Iain]

Revisionist history pisses me off, especially when it is so widely accepted without argument.

Which revisionist history?

I suspect that it's just a dirty word, right?

[MicroBalrog]

Revisionist history pisses me off, especially when it is so widely accepted without argument.

Which revisionist history?

I suspect that it's just a dirty word, right?

Read Zinn.

[Iain]

I know we don't like Zinn. He is revisionism?

[MicroBalrog]

I know we don't like Zinn. He is revisionism?

Aye.

[Iain]

Zinn personifies revisionism?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_revisionism for an example:

The military historian James R. Arnold argues that:

The writings of Sir Charles Oman and Sir John Fortescue dominated subsequent English-language Napoleonic history. Their views [that the French infantry used heavy columns to attack lines of infantry] became very much the received wisdom. ... By 1998 a new paradigm seemed to have set in with the publication of two books devoted to Napoleonic battle tactics. Both claimed that the French fought in line at Maida and both fully explored French tactical variety. The 2002 publication of The Battle of Maida 1806: Fifteen Minutes of Glory, appeared to have brought the issue of column versus line to a satisfactory conclusion: "The contemporary sources are...the best evidence and their conclusion is clear: General Comp?re's brigade formed into line to attack Kempt's Light Battalion." The decisive action at Maida took place in less than fifteen minutes. It had taken 72 years to rectify a great historian's error about what transpired during those minutes.[20][21]

or do we mean - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_revisionism_(negationism)

Soviet and Russian history
See also: Soviet historiography

During the rule of dictator Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union, a variety of revisionist tactics were employed to ignore unpleasant events of the past. Soviet school books would constantly be revised to remove or alter photographs and articles that dealt with politicians who had fallen out of favor with the regime. History was frequently re-written, with past events modified so they always portrayed Stalin's government favorably.

as an example.

[MicroBalrog]

Zinn personifies revisionism?

No, he's an example of it.

Obviously, I meant the latter kind.

[Iain]

Right, so to use the term 'revisionism' imprecisely as so many do is a slander on those who practice the former.

Revisionism has become a dirty word for some. It is used to attack those who do not interpret history 'correctly' and is used by some in this way because of a guilt by association assumption due to the use of the term by foul scum like Irving and their Holocaust 'revisionism' (see denial).

[K Frame]

Revisionist history pisses me off, especially when it is so widely accepted without argument.

Which revisionist history?

I suspect that it's just a dirty word, right?

A perfect example of revisionist history is the script that was created to go along with the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II exhibit at the Smithsonian. When the script came out, Veteran's groups, main stream historians, and lots of others went absolutely nuts. It essentially excused Japan from any blame and pegged the United States, Britain, and other allied nations as the sole cause of the war and the sole guilty parties in waging a war of extermination. It focused on Allied "atrocities" such as the firebombing of German and Japanese cities, and especially on the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan, while largely negating or "pardoning away" Japanese and German atrocities. If one reads between the lines, the entire premise is that upwards of 300,000 Chinese that the Japanese "allegedly" slaughtered in the Rape of Nanking? They all committed suicide.

The Smithsonian had to set up a special commission to review the script. A revised script was submitted, but it wasn't much better. In the end, the Smithsonian had to abandon the entire script.

The script is online, and it's monumentally disgusting.

That said, am I claiming that the United States and other nations were without blame for various and sundry acts leading up to, and during, the war? No. But the script focused almost solely on the activities of the western allies and ignored the role that the Axis powers played in sparking and prosecuting the war.

And that is the hallmark of revisionist history.


Another excellent example of revisionist history?

Japanese school books.

There's virtually NO references to Japan's activities in the Pacific area from the beginning of the 20th century through the end of the war. It's largely ignored, especially activities such as the Rape of Nanking, the massacres in the Philippines, etc.

The Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere is portrayed as a wonderful, harmony filled collaboration of noble Asian peoples against the evil Western White Devil, not as the excuse for Japanese expansionism and subsequent subjugation, exploitation, and in many cases, eradication of what the Japanese themselves called inferior races.

Japanese history books that attempt to give a more even handed portrayal of Japanese excesses are routinely rejected by the Ministry of Education. IIRC one Japanese historian who wrote such a history book was stripped of his University of Tokyo professorship.

What DOES get a LOT of play in Japanese history books in regards to World War II? The "oh poor us, we were attempting to forge a wonderful alliance between the Asian peoples with love, harmony, respect, and understanding, and we got atom bombs dropped on us by the evil white devil United States."

It's one great big "pity us because we were wronged" party.

[Iain]

No, it's the hallmark of bad history. Or negationism as outlined above.

Revisionists will look at history and in the light of modern research, or recently unearthed archaeological evidence will seek to determine the validity of past historical research. We are not stuck with the interpretations of Gibbon for ever.

An example is given above, but also think about all those books written by Marxist historians looking to impose Marx's grand sweep of narrative upon events like the British Civil War. A lot of those books contained good research, and were revisionist in themselves. Any historian who took issue with the notion that the British Civil War can be viewed as one of those necessary Marxian struggles, at a time when that view might have been called dominant, was himself a revisionist, he was revising.

That is all the term really means. We go back we look at the history of histories and try to ascertain the validity of historical research based upon the evidence that was available to that historian, his own biases etc. It's not a dirty word.

[K Frame]

It may be a hallmark of bad history, but it is still revisionist history.

Revisionism as an activity takes many forms, but can be broken down into two main categories...

Passive revisionism, and active revisionism.

Passive revisionism is the proper kind of revisionist history. It incorporates new facts, new findings, and new interpretations in an attempt to give a more complete historical overview. A good example is the continuously updated history that comes out of archaeology. New archaeological findings revise history all the time by leading historians in new directions. Often, old theories have to be abandoned because of these new finds.

Active revisionism, however, is dogma based history. A historian engaging in active revisionist history will often attempt discount, discredit, or explain away facts that are inconvenient or contrary to the particular theory that he's pushing.

A good example of a this kind of revisionist historian is AJP Taylor.

[Iain]

Right, so there is good history and bad history, good revisionist history and bad revisionist history.

Simply though, my issue is with the us of the term revisionist as a slander. Or as a misunderstanding. I'm not sure about your 'active' and 'passive', but I will say that plenty of history has been written with an agenda, Marxist history being an example. Plenty of revisionism has been about identifying those agendas in historical writings.

Looking around on the web it seems that Bush referred to critics of the Iraq war as revisionists in 2003, so perhaps the misunderstanding or politically charged use of the term springs from there, although I'm sure that I've seen it misunderstood before.

This summer the Bush administration thought it had discovered a surefire tactic to discredit critics of its Iraq adventure. President Bush followed the lead of his national security adviser Condoleeza Rice to accuse such critics of practicing "revisionist history." Neither Bush nor Rice offered a definition of this phrase, but their body language and tone of voice appeared to suggest that they wanted listeners to understand "revisionist history" to be a consciously falsified or distorted interpretation of the past to serve partisan or ideological purposes in the present...

...The 14,000 members of this Association, however, know that revision is the lifeblood of historical scholarship. History is a continuing dialogue between the present and the past. Interpretations of the past are subject to change in response to new evidence, new questions asked of the evidence, new perspectives gained by the passage of time. There is no single, eternal, and immutable "truth" about past events and their meaning. The unending quest of historians for understanding the past—that is, "revisionism"—is what makes history vital and meaningful. Without revisionism, we might be stuck with the images of Reconstruction after the American Civil War that were conveyed by D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation and Claude Bowers's The Tragic Era.

http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2003/0309/0309pre1.cfm

[MicroBalrog]

Wasn't the word slung out as an insult even in the 1930's?

[roo_ster]

No, it's the hallmark of bad history. Or negationism as outlined above.

Revisionists will look at history and in the light of modern research, or recently unearthed archaeological evidence will seek to determine the validity of past historical research. We are not stuck with the interpretations of Gibbon for ever.

An example is given above, but also think about all those books written by Marxist historians looking to impose Marx's grand sweep of narrative upon events like the British Civil War. A lot of those books contained good research, and were revisionist in themselves. Any historian who took issue with the notion that the British Civil War can be viewed as one of those necessary Marxian struggles, at a time when that view might have been called dominant, was himself a revisionist, he was revising.

That is all the term really means. We go back we look at the history of histories and try to ascertain the validity of historical research based upon the evidence that was available to that historian, his own biases etc. It's not a dirty word.

Calling marxist historians revisionist is an insult to revisionist historians (both passive & active, in Irwin's scheme).

Sorry, all marxist revisionism is bunk and not to be taken any more seriously than phrenology or lysenkoism. 

The writings of a man who fluffed up his adolescent end-times scheme, cherry-picked Brit gov't reports to bolster his ridiculous theory, and never stepped foot in a factory are not to be taken as anything but an exercise in intellectual masturbation subsidized by credulous 19th century trustafarians.

Roughly equivalent to a Christian fanatic who dreams all the numbers mentioned in the Bible can be read and shown to demonstrate a new theory of mathematics.   

Applying a balm of feces in a fervent and faithful manner will never result in a cured patient, just a patient covered in sh!t from head to toe.

[roo_ster]

Oh, if you desire to, you can listen to a 10 minute interview by the author of the book in the OP:
http://radio.nationalreview.com/betweenthecovers/post/?q=ZjRjZDZlNWRmOGNmZDIxZWVmNzg3NjliMmZmZjc5MzA=

[Nitrogen]

Yes, the examination of history can be highly subjective. Different historians can take a set of facts and come to radically different conclusions as to why what happened happened.

No, it's not always an inherent, active bias causing that. Often it's how one historian weighs/interprets the importance of certain influences; which can be highly influenced by organic events in the historian's own life and times.

A fantastic example is Arthur Schlessinger's "The Age of Jackson." A fantastic work of historical interpretation, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, but today many of Schlessinger's interpretations are now considered to be erroneous.

A critical reading of Age of Jackson will give you the distinct impression that Schlessinger is making a case for Andrew Jackson being the first "New Deal" president.

REally good history teachers teach you this.  I had several.  My wife does it when she teaches history.

[Iain]

So you don't like Marx. I'm surprised.

That really has no relevance though. Historical revision on the one hand means updating scholarly narratives or textbooks to incorporate new information or new interpetive models. link, and what we've been using so far. Ergo, when Marxist historians looked at the history of the British Civil War and saw it as a struggle between the classes they were applying a new interpretive model. Thus revisionist, regardless of whether or not you like the model, consider it valid or get surprisingly over excited.

[HankB]

Revisionism is nothing new. When I was in college, as part of my "fuzzy subject" requirement, I took a history course on the impact of nuclear power on society. Large lecture hall, taught alternately by a "social science" professor and a "humanities" professor.

The latter fit virtually EVERY stereotype of knee-jerk liberalism you could imagine . . . we crossed swords (verbally, at least) on more than one occasion.

Example: He was once waxing eloquent about the SALT treaty, how it was so wonderful. So I asked him in class "Professor, you've been very passionate in your defense of and endorsement of the SALT treaty. Tell, us all, please, when you actually sat down to read the treaty, which part struck you as most beneficial? Please be specific."

Embarassed, he allowed as he'd never actually read the treaty.

"Thank you professor, for establishing that fact."

"What fact?"

"By passionately defending and endorsing something you haven't actually read . . . you've demonstrated, once again, that you don't know what you're talking about."

 

(Other disagreements involved the deadliness of plutonium, the merits of nuking Japan in WWII, internment camps and who started them, etc.)