[| I, CWAS |]

The public education system is hardly a single unit at all. To say that they're all pitching in for anything, let alone a conspiracy on this alleged scale, is beyond absurd.

Where was it said that they are a single unit? Do you think a Public School is allowed to aver the Mormon faith and official act as a Mormon school and operate like a Mormon academy with all the Mormon requirements? No, why not? Because public schools are prohibited, a blanket that palls all of them.


There are only a handful of textbook publishers, and Mcgraw Hill, Harcourt/Bruce and Prentice-Hall all repeat the myth, and their texts are used by most districts in Ohio. And it is safe to say most districts period, as no publisher can put up their numbers. Textbooks are politically driven, and set up to either appeal to liberalistic standards or conservative standards. It isn't that hard to do when you have 3, and at most 7, players.

...
Textbooks have become so bland and watered-down that they are “a scandal and an outrage,” the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a nonprofit education think tank in Washington, charged in a scathing report issued a year and a half ago.

“They are sanitized to avoid offending anyone who might complain at textbook adoption hearings in big states, they are poorly written, they are burdened with irrelevant and unedifying content, and they reach for the lowest common denominator,” Diane Ravitch, a senior official in the Education Department during the administrations of Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, wrote in the report’s introduction.

“As a result of all this, they undermine learning instead of building and encouraging it,” she added.

A closed market
The culprit is the system by which many states choose what books their students will read. Because the market is a small one, textbook publishers must cater to the whims of elected school board leaders in the biggest states that buy the most books: Texas and California, which control a third of the national market, the Association of American Publishers estimates.

Few elementary and high school textbook publishers “can afford to spend millions of dollars developing a textbook series and not have it adopted in these high-volume states,” the Fordham Institute said.

So the operating philosophy is one of “superficial compliance with the rules, not a focus on results,” Wang said.

As a result, the politics of the boards adopting the books in Texas and California shape what is, to all intents and purposes, a de facto national curriculum, said Wang, who left Saxon Publishers, where he was president and chairman, in 2001 after he concluded that “this system was really unintentionally hurting the kids.”

Texas and California have both been the focus of campaigns to introduce intelligent design, an alternative explanation of the origin of life that critics dismiss as “creationism lite,” into the curriculum. But from there, the pressures diverge.

In Texas, the Board of Education is dominated by political conservatives who are heavily lobbied by conservative activists, among them the evangelical group Focus on the Family and the husband-and-wife team of Mel and Norma Gabler, whose tireless campaigning for religiously centered teaching materials has made them among the most influential forces in the production of American textbooks.

Texas’ textbooks, which are often adopted by other states that have few alternatives, have included board-ordered passages mandating politically conservative definitions of marriage, abortion and same-sex relationships and instructing students that pregnancies are best prevented by “respecting yourself” and getting “plenty of rest.” They have eliminated any mention of condoms, even though Texas leads the nation in teenage pregnancies.

161 pages of bias guidelines
In California, by contrast, the controlling forces are “social content standards” that insist that the state’s textbooks — even those in math and the sciences — portray ethnic groups, women, the elderly, the disabled and religious groups in precise proportionality to their representation in the population.

Scott Foresman-Addison Wesley, now part of textbook giant Pearson Prentice Hall, developed a 161-page manual titled “Multicultural Guidelines” in 1996 just to navigate the process in California. As summarized in the Fordham Institute report, the manual says company textbooks:

must include illustrations of tall and short people, heavy and thin individuals, people with disabilities, and families headed by two parents, by one parent, by grandparents, by aunts/uncles, and by other adults. When writing about the development of the U.S. Constitution, authors are directed to cite the dubious claim that it was patterned “partially after the League of Five Nations — a union formed by five Iroquois nations.”

Wang vividly remembers an encounter he had with the board that approves California’s textbooks when he showed up to testify for a book by Saxon.

“I was relating how well students did on state standardized tests” using the Saxon program, he said. The chairwoman pounded her gavel to interrupt the testimony to point out that quality wasn’t part of the discussion, he recalled.

According to a transcript of the meeting, which took place in 2001, the chairwoman said: “Effectiveness, while certainly something that we all look at as consumers, [is] not a criteria [here] and I think it is important that we keep that in mind. Test scores [are not] part of the criteria.”

“She was only considering whether the books had met the criteria,” not whether they actually worked, Wang said.

Wang, Ravitch and others have what they call a radical proposal: do away with the approval process altogether and let teachers and local school officials choose their own books.

“The system is resistant to the entrepreneurial spirit,” Wang said. “There isn’t a mechanism for encouraging innovation in education because of systems like this adoption process.”

Source

[Attila The Nun]

Global segregation = OK.
Domestic segregation = Bad.

?

Screw it, let's just practice strict ethnic eugenics!

First and foremost, never judge any historical figure by modern standards. At that time, the idea of sending freed men back to Africa seemed quite reasonable, and there could be many reasons to do this. While it is probably true that he did not view blacks as equal (very few did), he could have had many motives for such an idea. He could have seen it as a way of returning them to their rightful place after being kidnapped, or as a way to transition them into a non-prejudicial society etc. You cannot jump to conclusions. With that, he certainly could have been a segregationist. It would not be surprising, given that racism was rampant in almost every American. Even in the North (where there is huge revisionism to ignore that fact).

He was willing to leave it intact in ANY state that returned to the union.

He also in addition to favoring sending the slave to Liberia favored a gradual and VOLUNTARY freeing of slaves at such a rate that they could be deported as fast as they were freed.

The fact is that his hand was repeatedly forced or bypassed by a more radical and progressive congress.

The idea that freeing slaves slowly and intergrating them into society is hardly the uberracism claimed in this thread. Overall, it might have been better to have some kind of a transitional period than what actually happened, where blacks became little more than slaves after the Civil War.

[The Immortal Goon]

Do you think a Public School is allowed to aver the Mormon faith and official act as a Mormon school and operate like a Mormon academy with all the Mormon requirements? No, why not? Because public schools are prohibited, a blanket that palls all of them.

One of a very few rules public schools have to commit to. No saying one religion or faith is true or better than another; ne distinction of race; school lunch; and access for the handicapped. Those rules aren't really strong indicators that there is enough control to create some kind of bogus version of history.

There are only a handful of textbook publishers

...And now we come to the real problem. It wasn't public education at all, it had to do with big faceless corporations providing an inferior product. No surprises here, I agree with that assessment.

-TIG

[Zagadka]

...And now we come to the real problem. It wasn't public education at all, it had to do with big faceless corporations providing an inferior product. No surprises here, I agree with that assessment.

Which leads to the next point; the Republicans' "solution" to the public school "problem", either closing public schools in favor of private institutions or the more moderate but even worse voucher system, simply re-enforces this corporate dominance and propaganda.

I submit as an example the college system. You have public colleges, such as the one I'm attending now, and you have private colleges, such as DeVry or Phoenix. While AA/ASes aren't goldmines, a diploma from Phoenix isn't even worth using as toilet paper. This "low end" type of occupational school would be the only choice for millions of Americans, were it not for public colleges. With neither the time or money to attend a better school, their potential and opportunity is limited. At the very least, my public college associate's degree will mean that I meet standards.

At Berkeley, we granted a motto to Stanford: "Pay your fees, get your Bs". Objectively, of course, Stanford is a superior educationnal school - but a very costly one (for the West, anyway). Most of the kids at Cal can barely afford public UC fees, even with financial aid and scholarships, and end up with loans that can take decades to repay. But Berkeley is still a great university (as well as being one of the leading research institutes in the country).

What does this lead to? Class stratification. Generally speaking, the better university you attend, the more you get paid. Were Berkeley and the other UC campuses closed down, tens of thousands of people would have very few alternatives, save for low end "bargain" schools.

Applying this to K-12 school, it is even more alarming. The poorer a community is, the cheaper their education would be; this is already the case, as school districts get most of their money from local taxes, but doing this in the private sector would be horrendous.

The poor get poorer, the rich get richer.

[Attila The Nun]

You guys got this wrong. I find this to be nothing that isn't common historically, heroes in people's history becoming altruistic and skewed with time. People like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington are no different. This is simply engrandising your own history. It happens in every culture.

[Zagadka]

You guys got this wrong. I find this to be nothing that isn't common historically, heroes in people's history becoming altruistic and skewed with time. People like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington are no different. This is simply engrandising your own history. It happens in every culture.

Which doesn't mean that it shouldn't be corrected when and as soon as possible.

[Attila The Nun]

Which doesn't mean that it shouldn't be corrected when and as soon as possible.

Why should it be? You think that history is about getting to the truth for most people? No, no. History is tainted by politics for the masses, and that's the way it always will be. It is revised over and over again to fit what the dominant power thinks. Abraham Lincoln might have been a racist who wanted slavery for all we know, but that doesn't matter, because people think he was an altruistic liberator.

[Zagadka]

Why should it be? You think that history is about getting to the truth for most people?

Call me an idealist.

[Attila The Nun]

Call me an idealist.

One of the greatest truths about history is that it is changed.

Don't let that stop you from trying to get to the truth, though.

[Lokakyy]

One of the greatest truths about history is that it is changed.

Actually, just the representations of history change. There is no such monolithic, homogenous thing as history.

[The Immortal Goon]

Actually, just the representations of history change.

Agreed.

Really, I don't know why people get so pissed off about these things. Gee whiz, people were right racist bastards two hundred years ago. Big shock. Doesn't everyone have some kind of kooky old uncle or aunt who, for no apparent reason at all, hates Asians, or blacks, or whites, or whatever?

We tend to kind of dismiss that and figure that this is just how people felt back then and it will be relegated to the past.

Then people come ranting and raving about people in history being racist, OF COURSE THEY WERE RACIST. We marvel at Roman engeneering because of the tools they had at the time - we don't criticize them for not having railways and airplanes.

There are people who think that we should hold historical figures to today's standards, which is stupid.

The truely ironic thing about this poll is that two of the people who rally against "political correctness" the most, Ix and CWAS, are downing on Lincoln because he wasn't politically correct enough by their standards.

I always say this in these threads, but it doesn't really matter to me why Lincoln let the slaves go. He couls have lost a bet for all I care. The point is that he did it.

-TIG

[Zagadka]

The accurate representation of history is a duty of historians - propaganda isn't. The creation of a popular mythology of "heroes" out of people who were scum only serves to obscure our objective vision of how societies work and have worked. Without objective history, it would be lost that America ever supported Saddam or Osama, which is an important factor in current history. WHat could eventually be lost is memory of why 9/11 happened, or that it even did, or that 8 million people died during the WWII holocaust. These are important things to remember, in my view, and an objective record of them must be kept. Similarly, an objective record of the more distant past must be kept. History should never be forgotten and abandoned to myths.

[Attila The Nun]

The accurate representation of history is a duty of historians - propaganda isn't. The creation of a popular mythology of "heroes" out of people who were scum only serves to obscure our objective vision of how societies work and have worked. Without objective history, it would be lost that America ever supported Saddam or Osama, which is an important factor in current history. WHat could eventually be lost is memory of why 9/11 happened, or that it even did, or that 8 million people died during the WWII holocaust. These are important things to remember, in my view, and an objective record of them must be kept. Similarly, an objective record of the more distant past must be kept. History should never be forgotten and abandoned to myths.

Tell me, did it affect the Romans that they got their history of the Punic War from a man that lived during the time of Augustus Caesar? History has never been objective, and the world has not crashed. While I do indeed wish there was an objective history, and wish to find out this history, I at the same time recognize that for the vast majority of epople hisotry is composed of one myth after another.

[Zagadka]

History has never been objective, and the world has not crashed.

No, but it has been bent to serve propaganda needs of various groups, such as the Nazis, the Soviets, the Maoists, etc. Just because it hasn't been in the past doesn't mean it *shouldn't* be now. Historians and archeologists alike have a shared goal of finding out exactly what DID happen, what those myths were. We are now at the point, with modern technology and free and open society, where we can look back and expose these myths, and if not have a completely objective view, have a more objective view.

I at the same time recognize that for the vast majority of epople hisotry is composed of one myth after another.

Right, and our goal - our job - is to debunk those myths and replace them with reality.

For instance, society long covered up the rampant homosexuality and pedophilia that existed in ancient Greece and (to a slightly lesser extent) Rome, as well as other ancient cultures. This has only lately been viewed as "acceptable" history.

To get back on topic, allowing Republicans to disingenuously say that they are the same "party of Lincoln" and that Lincoln was against slavery is pure propaganda. All students should know the truths of these matters.

[green party]

yes, I had known that Lincon did not believe in freeing the slaves. It is a shame that all these historical myths are taught to young school children.

[Zagadka]

Actually, it struck me earlier in this thread - I didn't post it since it is somewhat against my point - but there is a very subtle argument made in The Simpsons that agrees with Attila's argument; in the episode where Lisa finds out the horrible truth that Jebediah Springfield was a notorious pirate and tried to kill George Washington, but then doesn't go public with the information because it "brings the town together" and "makes people happy"... it is one of the cases where I strongly disagree with them, and I'm not sure if they were making a connection to Lincoln or other American folk heroes or not (Davy Crockett and many other early pioneers were complete assholes).

[Attila The Nun]

No, but it has been bent to serve propaganda needs of various groups, such as the Nazis, the Soviets, the Maoists, etc. Just because it hasn't been in the past doesn't mean it *shouldn't* be now. Historians and archeologists alike have a shared goal of finding out exactly what DID happen, what those myths were. We are now at the point, with modern technology and free and open society, where we can look back and expose these myths, and if not have a completely objective view, have a more objective view.

There is no way that history could be objective. To try and make it such is to forget that history is dependant on viewpoints first and foremost, most importantly the winner's viewpoints. History is written by the winners, because the winners can propogate it. Why would they want to see somethin contrary to their story? There is no changing it, Zag. The powerful decide what viewpoint is propogated, and as such there is no such real thing as objetivity, except maybe in ancient history.

Right, and our goal - our job - is to debunk those myths and replace them with reality.

For instance, society long covered up the rampant homosexuality and pedophilia that existed in ancient Greece and (to a slightly lesser extent) Rome, as well as other ancient cultures. This has only lately been viewed as "acceptable" history.

Yes, cultures which are long dead and long since fallen from power. Now unless you can widely debunk a myth about the US, you've got nothing.

[Zagadka]

There is no way that history could be objective. To try and make it such is to forget that history is dependant on viewpoints first and foremost, most importantly the winner's viewpoints. History is written by the winners, because the winners can propogate it. Why would they want to see somethin contrary to their story?

Because they're not ignorant buffoons who do whatever they are told by their authoritarian leaders?

Of course, history will never be totally objective, and of course, the more detached you are from the history the more objective you can be, but modern society, at least in the West, is becoming more educated, more academic, more responsible for their past. The age of rapid and mass distribution of information makes lies and propaganda much more difficult to contain, and with a hint of research, any independently thinking student can be lead to different truths. This is what democracy requires to survive - an informed and educated public.

Now unless you can widely debunk a myth about the US, you've got nothing.

Happens all the time. We're already making progress in revealing the truths about the Indian Wars, the Mexican-American War, various authoritarian actions taken by FDR in the Great Depression and WWII... all kinds of things. The myths of the past are continually debunked by academia as soon as the information becomes available.

Right now, the primary enemy of education is the government that is withholding important government reports and documents from WWII and the Cold War. The Freedom of Information Act was a great step forward, but the battle isn't over.

[Captain Hat]

I'll read more of this later, but the first discrepancy I see in Ix's article is the referenced constitutional amendment. The article states that the amendment was passed by the 106th Congress.

The 106th Congress did not convene until 1999.

[Zagadka]

Nice catch.

I Googled it, the only thing I could find was:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/R ... 0:@1(hr214)

That link may expire, but after briefly reading it, all it contains is financial stuff about banks, public information, and women's rights.

I presume that the author made an error, or Ix's source is just full of shit again.