Anne:


I was hoping you could tell us why???

Why does North Korea currently teach its children the America is evil, or
radical muslims teach that all non-believers are enemies, and in the past the
Nazis taught school children Jews were evil, or the Catholic Church in the
middle ages taught muslim
s in the Holy Land was the devil come to earth mean it is right!!!!  I would
hope most of us could agree they are accurate.  What a scary proposition!!!
 So if someone teaches something.....it become irrefutable...does it
establish it as important because a generalized standard test says it is??

I was taught home economics when i grew up and not simple personal finance?
Both can be important so why the heck was only Home Ec offered???

We Americans are so comfortable with the feel good American History it is
part of why when you set out of our borders you feel the intensity of the
hatred and apathy folks feel for us now.  Why don't we poitn out those
delightful human flaws our great folks have, makes some all the more
admirable and others all the more interesting.

Why do we teach only the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence for
Jeffereson and ignore he held slaves and had illegitimate children with one
of them?

I was taught George Washington was a great General (learned later he was a
Great Leader of Men, but miserable military tatician - kinda a prerequisit to
be considered a great general I think).    I was taught Russia was the
biggest Evil in the World growing up in the late 1970s and early
1980s.....were they really?  Pseudo ally now.
How is it we portray Pearl Harbor as this heroic event - it was a horrific
defeat - one of the worst in our history with inexcusable negigence that led
to monsterous destruction and unexceptable loss of life.

SOLs are not a tool for learning or educating.  They are a funidng mechanism.
  Teaching children and young Americans the good, the bad and the interesting
in America is a wonderous thing.   I am as patriotic as any, but like to
understand both sides of the story and not bury my head in simplified
regurgiative "history" that apparently should be accepted at face value
because that is what is taught....

Tom McMahon


> If the Emancipation Proclamation wasn't a legal or moral action, why are we
> teaching our children that it was pivotal?
>                                         Anne


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