The teaching of American history is ground zero in the left’s battle to indoctrinate students. The new AP U.S. History framework is the left’s ultimate weapon in this battle.
Now 55 leading American history scholars have condemned the College Board’s framework in a remarkable letter. Peter Berkowitz provides an outstanding analysis.
Stanley Kurtz takes a look at the scholars who signed the statement. They include a number of our friends and allies including (but not limited to) Charles Kesler, Jean Yarbrough, Paul Rahe, Stephan Thernstrom, Ron Radosh, and John Fonte.
It’s an ideologically diverse group, though. Lynne Cheney signed; so did Robert Merry a strong critic of George W. Bush’s foreign policy.
As Kurtz says, “the ordinary Americans who’ve rebelled against what our scholars aptly call an ‘arid, fragmentary, and misleading’ treatment of American history now have backing from a wide array of professionals.”
Here are key excerpts from the letter:
Ah hell. My daughter is taking this in the fall. On the plus side, she reads IOTW now so she’ll see this in the morning. Many thanks, Fur!
I’ve been bitching about this for over ten years the lefties write the history books.
That traitor 0bama did say he and his worshipers would rewrite history. The faggot terrorist Bill Ayers must be real proud of that bastard.
This is fantastic! I’d like to see Gordon Wood’s and Joseph Ellis’s signatures in support of this. They are my favorite historians (yes, even despite Ellis’s lie about serving in Vietnam).
It’s what the Soviets did to their history.
Truth a Al Acarte. That worked well.
whoever controls the past, controls the present. Or something like that – Orwell
any body checking the muslin aeronautics and space adminstration?
that’s not even a sternly worded letter like Barry likes to send out.
#BringBackOurHistory
Reading Alexis de Tocqueville is a good start for anyone who has history in mind as a subject. Once you read his ‘Democracy in America’ most of the lies are seen in early American history lessons taught in today’s school lessons.
It isn’t just our history books that are being perverted, it’s also in the museums. When I visit any museum dedicated to early America I learn that the settlers were just here to scrape wealth out of the land. They were “portrayed wrongly” for years and years as having been here for any other reason. And they didn’t wear those plain looking “Pilgrim” clothes either – they wore fancy silks and brocades. I am not exaggerating here.
Oh, and some of you are aware of the newest fad of ENSLAVED PEOPLE being the focus when you visit the home of a Founding Father. That practice is spreading out to include restored homes of prominent men from the Colonial period.
I have yet to hear any tour guide state that there is any indication that the ENSLAVED PEOPLES were treated badly by these leading men from that period, but you sure get the impression that those ENSLAVED PEOPLES were treated very poorly indeed. I mean in addition to being ENSLAVED PEOPLE in the first place.
Notice how many times I worked the term ENSLAVED PEOPLES into this comment? That’s precisely how often it is worked into the narrative by the tour guides. Oh, and at most of these sites they are busily building new representations of slave quarters, wash houses, and various other little buildings where ENSLAVED PEOPLES did their daily chores while they were slaves owned by our Founding Fathers.
I noticed that at Mount Vernon as the older informational plaques are replaced with new ones, the use of the word slave is replaced with ENSLAVED PEOPLE.
Where were these people years ago when the left first started messing with our heritage? It would have been better to prevent it than to go back and do damage control. Let’s see if they’ll actually do anything useful and aren’t just bloviating to get their names out there.