Why Johnny is Reading Islamist Propoganda?
Commentary by Terri Leo:
This is an excellent article. And this is what I have been saying for years. It is especially good reading for those in our legislature who seem to think publishers don't have agendas and so we need to give them free reign over textbook content instead of leaving that decision in the hands an elected representative SBOE.
I have a textbook on World Civilizations, currently used in Texas schools, that I frequently show to people to illustrate editorial bias and viewpoint discrimination. Among other things, Israel is marked on the map as "Israeli Occupied Territory". Jews get one sentence in the whole book. Christianity gets two short paragraphs-both of which are negative and one blatantly false. There is chapter after chapter on Islam, the cover of the book even has an Islamic theme. I went through the textbook and highlighted in yellow every time Islam was mentioned (and unlike other religions it is always mentioned in a positive light) I could have just dipped the book in yellow, it would have saved me the time. One section even talks about how Islam is a religion that elevates the status of woman more than other religions! Think about this statement.
It is a shame that students won't really get a proper and balanced perspective, nor will they really be able to study and understand World Civilizations using this textbook. How will they impact their culture, if they don't understand their culture? What an exciting and interesting textbook this could have been.
Excerpt from this article:
He said other texts and publishers for which he's found a basis for criticism include "Human Heritage: A World History" by Glencoe/McGraw-Hill; "A Message of "Ancient Days" by Houghton Mifflin; "Across the Centuries" by Houghton Mifflin; "Heath World History: Perspectives on the Past" by McDougal Littell; "Ancient World" by McGraw-Hill School Division; "Making Thirteen Colonies" by Oxford University Press, "World History: Continuity and Change" by Holt, Rinehart and Winston; and "World Cultures: A Global Mosaic" by Prentice Hall, among others.