If I were Steve Benen I would give you a couple dozen examples of tea party politician types just saying out loud what conservatives are supposed to say only in code, but I am lazy and have a day job. You just have to take my word that the whole epistemic closure business makes closedminded idiots a lot less careful about letting the world know what specific baseless fear or moronic superstition drives them to behave as they do.
Tensions have run high in Jefferson County [CO] schools since three conservative candidates were elected to the school board. These new board members have suggested an extensive rewrite of the way history is taught to the area’s students to a model they believe is more patriotic.
The right-leaning board-members said they believe history teachers should teach nationalism, respect for authority and reverence for free markets. They should avoid teaching any historical events or acts that promote “civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law.”
[…] Retired New Jersey history teacher Larry S. Krieger told Newsweek, ““As I read through the document, I saw a consistently negative view of American history that highlights oppressors and exploiters.”Krieger is one of the conservative activists leading the charge to change textbooks across the country to reflect a more traditional view of U.S. history and American exceptionalism.
While the narrative may be “historically true,” he argues, “progressives are going to be the heroes in this narrative.”
High school AP history, he said, should be less like a college course and award more plaudits to the founding fathers, captains of industry and other conservative heroes. The liberal bias in the AP curriculum, he said, will turn students against large companies, corporations and wealthy Americans.
Sure this history stuff might be true hand quote-unquote, but if the truth quote-unquote sounds progressive then we’ll just have to go with something else.
Next up: better edit these Bibles to cut out any mention of that communist Jesus fellow.
joel hanes
who is John Galt?
Peter Pan re-imagined for asocial and historically illiterate adults (almost all men) who are emotionally stuck in adolescence.
SpotWeld
The quote: “High school AP history, he said, should be less like a college course and award more plaudits to the founding fathers, captains of industry and other conservative heroes. The liberal bias in the AP curriculum, he said, will turn students against large companies, corporations and wealthy Americans.”
It feels like the unspoken theme there is “everyone would see the glory of the Free Market, if only liberial elites would stop pointing out how horrible it is to be anywhere but at the top”
SatanicPanic
on the bright side, now we can say “even conservatives admit that progressives are the heroes in US history”
Belafon
I’m pretty sure when Pat Roberts stated yesterday that the US was headed toward national socialism, he was trying to point at the Democrats, not the Republicans.
Rafer Janders
Well, there goes studying the Boston Tea Party, the American Revolution, the Civil War, and the presidencies of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush.
Belafon
@Rafer Janders: I’m pretty skipping slavery and the Civil War is a feature.
Mnemosyne
Uh, this guy realizes that AP History courses are supposed to be college-level, right? Unless he concurrently changes college courses, neutering AP History classes will mean the students won’t be able to be tested to get college credit for them, which is the whole friggin’ point of taking AP classes.
jayjaybear
Facts have a well-known liberal bias.
chopper
Ah, the old ‘technically true but collectively nonsense’ gambit.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Civil War: GONE
Slavery: GONE
Hippies: GONE
It’s like they have a wishlist, or something. Well, the good folks of Jefferson County are going to get what they richly deserve.
low-tech cyclist
@Mnemosyne:
They’re too dumb to realize that.
max
Next up: better edit these Bibles to cut out any mention of that communist Jesus fellow.
Southern Baptist churches tend to rely heavily on the early sections of the old Testament.
max
[‘Those are the bit with the slavery in them.’]
SatanicPanic
@Mnemosyne: One step at a time. They can go after colleges next.
Botsplainer
Just kicked the RS link out to my youngest daughter, an amazing archaeology scholar who wound up taking a boatload of AP and college credit classes during high school (she will graduate early).
I’m eager to hear her rage on this.
KG
@SatanicPanic: history is the tale as told by the victors
David Hunt
I’ve heard that some bibles that were for use with/by slaves had the entire book of Exodus removed.
chopper
@Mnemosyne:
Also, the AP calculus class focuses too much on ‘derivatives’ and so-called ‘integrals’. I, for one, think they should spend more time on finding codes hidden in the bible.
Iowa Old Lady
@Mnemosyne: You beat me to it. I strongly suspect this guy doesn’t know that.
Belafon
@Botsplainer: My oldest will graduate early for the same reason.
Botsplainer
@chopper:
A shameless admission – as the kids went through high school, I’d borrow their math texts at night when they were asleep and do story problems, for fun (and while drinking), to prove to myself I could still do them and be useful to the kids by being able to help them work through math.
Better than sudoku or crossword puzzles to pass time.
I’d also haul out my old calculus books to do the same.
Certified Mutant Enemy
AP history, he said, should be less like a college course
AP history is supposed to be like a college course. That’s the point.
RaflW
Well, Jared Polis, the Democrat in the US House in the district that includes Jefferson County, is “Now Accepting Bitcoins!” on his campaign website. It’s all very Galt, innit?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
The party of Teddy Roosevelt!
Bostondreams
@Mnemosyne:
If you are talking about Larry Krieger, he certainly knows this. He has made a small fortune prepping students for the old APUSH exam. The changes would mean he has to rewrite his guides.
Mike J
@SatanicPanic:
There are four liberals on Mt Rushmore.
Jay S
@Mnemosyne: Hey they will fit right in at Liberty U. or some other real bastion of american education. None of those godforsaken liberal education joints for these kids.
Mnemosyne
@Bostondreams:
Fix’d. I should have known there was a grift at the bottom of this. There always is, when it’s a conservative pushing it.
Belafon
@Mnemosyne: I’m pretty sure he thinks that any college will accept the class because it’s got the letters “AP” in front. The problem for him is that most of them would be smart enough to check for “CO” at the back.
Bobby Thomson
IFTFY
Gene108
I hope, when they go over captains of industry they have a whole section dedicated to George Soros.
Julia Grey
It was so hard to police the subversive thoughts that might spring from virtually any book of the Bible –much less any other book — that it was illegal in many? most? places to teach slaves to read at all!
I’m reminded of the scenes in the early days of the AMC series Hell on Wheels, where the freed black man remembers his childhood, in which he was taught to memorize many Bible verses and declaim them for visiting company. His master assured those who worried about this level of education that the child was just spouting the complex material like a parrot, because a black child couldn’t possibly understand the stuff.
I don’t remember it very clearly, and this might be just what I would have done with the story, but it seems to me that the kid later put the memorized parts together with the verses themselves when he was shown where they were in a Bible and that was how he taught himself to read. He not only understood them, he made use of them in an unexpected way.
Calouste
Another example that the reactionaries are using Nineteen Eighty-Four as a manual rather than a cautionary tale.
“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
Jim Kakalios
So, the Revolutionary War is right out, then? Are you sure the school board members are not British, demanding that they want their country back?
jake the antisoshul soshulist
I think there has already been one attempt to do that very thing.
http://www.conservapedia.com/Conservative_Bible_Project
Scotius
@Calouste:
Äs I recall there was an old joke in the Soviet Union: “A historian is someone who can predict the past.”
karen
My best friend lives near Charleston, SC. In some of the schools there, kids are being taught that slavery wasn’t racism, it was just business. And they’re not learning much about history. Or science. Or how to spell. That’s not all of the schools, I’m not saying it is. But I do find it interesting that in the part of South Carolina she lives in is probably 75% African American (and this is an area where Gullah is still spoken) and the money spent on education there is criminally low. It’s almost as if the teachers are being paid to miseducate the students. According to my friend, education is not a priority there.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Bostondreams: Goddamn. It really is about nothing more than a novel way to steal with these guys, isn’t it? Nothing else. Steal steal steal.
Trollhattan
What are Mr. Krieger’s views on Kolob? Yes or no or “teach the controversy?”
Speaking of, there’s a new book.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Belafon: I had a teacher in high school that went to schools like this as a youth in her native country in the 1930’s and 1940’s. By the way, she taught German.
louc
The kids are alright.
Jeffco kids protest proposed censorship of history curriculum.
jl
‘ that promote “civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law.” ‘
Because it might make progressive look good.
OK, does this nitwit think that 19th century anarchist bombers will be mistaken for progressives, and things like the Haymarket Bombing will make them look good?
Or, an admission that the Founding Fathers were more progressive on some issues than the reactionary vicious loons that infest the sad rump of the GOP today?
Or does this sadsack just say random stuff whenever a quarter-baked thought rambles through his head, which I bet happens quite often?
jl
I am sure these idiots would be happy if more emphasis were laid on the happy and positive things that happened, and maybe he really means ‘male white men done did’ in US history.
How about, say, even recent immigrants (edit: as in ‘just off the boat’) were allowed to vote in local government and even state elections in many places?
Or. Washington, one of the richest men in America gave away a g-damn fortune when he freed his slaves and set up a private affirmative action program for them?
Or, maybe Hamilton being an early radical race equalizer who thought that the franchise for House elections should be the absolutely widest possible (which would improve the House greatly these days)? Edit: and at constitutional convention said that compulsory voting would be acceptable recourse if turnout got too low in elections?
I can think of few other positive things to mention in US history that I am sure would make the reactionaries very very happy.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@jl: Aaron Burr was a proto-feminist – probably helped along in this by that fact that his only child was a remarkably intelligent daughter.
raven
(Reuters) – Conservative author and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza was sentenced on Tuesday to spend eight months in a community confinement center during five years of probation after pleading guilty to a campaign finance law violation.
jl
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): I think the BJ lawyers could actually make themselves useful by suggesting positive incidents in US history to include in the curriculum. Maybe Amistad case, or SCOTUS case deciding removal of the ‘Five Civilized Tribes’ was unconstitutional. Or maybe Jefferson-Hamilton debate on patent and IP law and early US tradition of giving public interest more weight than today would also please the reactionaries.
charluckles
All of this is wrapped up in the school reform scam.
@louc:
Hilarious were the tens if not hundreds of “won’t somebody think of the children” comments to the Post when earlier this week the teachers held a sickout in protest of this and the new Koch brothers school reform scheme pushed by the board. Now the students are up in arms as well and all of those “won’t somebody think of the children” comments have now moved directly on to “damn lazy kids, get off my lawn!”
ArchPundit
@Belafon:
A lot of colleges don’t accept the AP anyway–or accept it for less than the intro class.
jl
@raven: That should be included in future US history curriculum. Would be a salutary minor sidebar lesson for our precious youth who follow us.
jl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: He meant the reactionary version Zombie Founding Fathers, along with Zombie Godhead Reagan. The real ones would be too open minded, too liable to free ranging debate, certainly not Xtianist, or even vaguely traditional Christian, and and other very very bad and suspicious things.
Edit: Since they disagreed with each other greatly on many things, also very risky for setting example of mindless conformity Real Founding Fathers, OUT of the curriculum. Definitely. Zombies are OK.
TaMara (BHF)
The best part – the teachers and students have had a sick out/walk out since last week and the students are in the street protesting. It’s lovely to watch. LOL.
Civil disobedience at it’s best.
These board members were shoved into office and JeffCo is not taking it lying down.
Roger Moore
@BillinGlendaleCA:
By an odd coincidence, so did I. She said she first learned the utility of knowing a second language when she used her English to beg American soldiers for food. She also said she had some trouble with the swastikas on her birth certificate when she first came to the US.
Villago Delenda Est
So, they should not teach history, they should indoctrinate wingtard values in students.
How is this different than what Stalin or Hitler thought should be taught? Anyone? Bueller?
geg6
@ArchPundit:
Not in my experience. If they get a high enough score on the test, my large research university accepts them, usually for some intro or gen ed classes. And we have an excellent academic, graduation rate and career placement record.
Roger Moore
@Villago Delenda Est:
That’s what the wingnuts think history is, probably because that’s the way American history has usually been taught in our schools. The idea of teaching history closer to the way serious historians see it is a genuinely radical concept.
jl
@Roger Moore: Interestingly enough, so did I as an undergrad, but she was a substitute teacher. And she was horrified that the regular German teacher, who though not German at all, or overtly sympathetic to authoritarian views, was teaching us old-fashioned German, and said we were ‘talking too much like Nazis. No one speaks this way in Germany now. It is clumsy, not fit for the modern world’.
She was a kid during WWII and was so traumatized by the experience she was terrified of defeat failure and any kind of authoritarianism, even that needed for good teaching practice. So everyone more or less did what they liked under her supervision and her tests were super easy. I focused on learning to read well, and neglected learning to speak well. Worst performance I ever turned in on an oral exam, while still managing to pass.
Villago Delenda Est
@ArchPundit: Yeah my 5s in AP European History and German got me “pass” grades for freshman classes at the University of Oregon back in 1976. Really helpful.
Villago Delenda Est
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Also, too, WWII GONE, because we fought on the WRONG SIDE.
John N
American history education is already such ridiculous propaganda, I can’t even imagine what they would do with it.
ArchPundit
@geg6:
AP knows this is a problem actually. They are starting to try to adapt. I have done some work on their scores where I used to work and 4s and 5s have little to do with how students fare in intro courses with the exception of calculus I & II. There are a number of issues, but mostly it has to do with the curriculum committees for AP not having the most innovative teaching faculty in their fields. Having done a reasonably sized comparison across competitive institutions, the trend is away from accepting those credits with some exceptions in public universities where the leges are mandating acceptance some of the time.
However, adapting, which I think this APUSH move was designed to do has push back…
Part of the issue is the College Board has such a tight grip on the data that no one can do studies without specifically partnering with the CB and that seriously limits the ability to show off. I made that point at the AP US Government and Politics reading this summer and they listened. A little.
Wally Ballou
@Mnemosyne: Feature, not bug. The last thing these people want is for kids to get into those uppity, indoctrinating liberal secular colleges that Santorum warned them about.
Bostondreams
@Mnemosyne:
Normally I would agree, but he is fighting the changes to the APUSH curriculum. The problem for him is that now he can’t say that he has taught that curriculum for decades and is an expert.
RSA
@Villago Delenda Est:
“What do you mean I can’t get AP credit for my American Hagiography class?”
karen
We have ALWAYS been at war with EastAsia.
Lurking Canadian
@CONGRATULATIONS!: now, now, this is a school. Let’s not quibble and argue over who owned who.
mikefromArlington
John Galt sucks!
My new bumper sticker
mikefromArlington
Or maybe…
Who is Santa Claus?
Felonius Monk
I guess all traces of the American Revolution will be wiped from our history books, if these clowns and their ilk prevail.
Can we all say “F*ckng Idiots”.
Matt
Meanwhile, another less lazy commenter could probably find a dozen essays from the wingnutz of Jefferson County bemoaning the “ideological indoctrination” in our schools.
Matt
@Felonius Monk:
Don’t you know, anti-colonialism is terribly un-MERIKAN. ;)
samiam
If only there was some sort of organization already in place that could do something like that. Such as the US military and their special forces for example. Just spit balling mind you.
But no…we should create an entirely new private organization of mercenaries instead. Yea that’s it.
samiam
‘Epistemic closure’ sounds like another way to say ‘confirmation bias’ among wingnuts.
I prefer ‘Obama derangement syndrome’ when specifically about one of their Obama consipiracy fantasies. Pretty much comprises 80-90% of their ‘epistemic closure’ talk these days.
JGabriel
RawStory:
Honestly, I’m pretty sure that’s something I learned from experience – not AP History.
JGabriel
samiam:
Actually, it’s about never getting information from any source outside the conservative media bubble. You can’t really be biased against the truth if you’ve never heard it.
That’s not to say conservatives would all become moderates if they ever heard the truth (although it does happen every once in a while, c.f. John Cole).
PurpleGirl
Although the thread is dead, I have to note this: By these peoples’ logic, we then wouldn’t teach about the Italian Anarchists of the 1920s and the presence in the US of Sacco and Vanzetti. Or that many early gun laws were in reaction to Sacco and Vanzetti.
samiam
@JGabriel: I disagree. I don’t think Fox creates these conspiracies. I think they are just telling their viewers what they want to hear. All the people on Fox are basically very good actors. Most don’t believe most of the red meat nonsense they spew daily. It’s just a job to them. A very lucrative job.
If Fox news did not exist then wingnuts would need to create it. If it disappeared tomorrow all the websites would quickly fill in the void.