I have officially accomplished one of my 2010 blogging goals. If you remember, I set the following goal back in January:
Goal #7: Become a Paid Columnist Again
Getting writing gigs is tough these days. In order for me to get another paid column, I am going to have to perform here first. By focusing on quality articles here, hopefully it will lead to getting paid for quality articles somewhere else.
Well, today I was published at Pajamas Media. Here’s a taste:
While the untrained homeschool dad is teaching his children about American history from two authors who focus on facts, the trained teacher is busy educating students about how terrible America has been from its creation, because the author of their text “wanted to be a part of history.”
But then again, the students in the all important “brick and mortar” school may not even be burdened with learning history. North Carolina state education leaders recently floated the idea of starting high school level American history at 1877, foregoing all that unnecessary learning about the Revolutionary War or even the Civil War.
Why would this even be considered?
Rebecca Garland, chief academic officer for the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, says they are trying to “figure out a way to teach [history] where students are connected to it, where they see the big idea, where they are able to make connections and draw relationships between parts of our history and the present day.”
The Foundry, the Heritage Foundation’s blog, explained what that means:
By implication, nothing before 1877 has any meaning to students …
Early 20th century Progressives also taught that nothing before 1877 has meaning for today. In his new book We Still Hold These Truths: Rediscovering our Principles, Reclaiming Our Future, Matthew Spaulding recounts Progressives attack on America’s First Principles. The Progressives sought to remake America, so that the Declaration’s Founding Principles, the Constitution’s institutional structures, and the Civil War’s meaning as a victory for Founding principles would no longer ring true. The progressives argued that equal, natural rights were non-existent; government creates rights.
Between the leftist slant in the texts and the outright banishment of a century of American history, it is difficult to see how having the endorsement of the state government automatically results in a better education.
Let me know what you think.
