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...an August 9 dispatch from the AP's Jennifer Coleman about a chain of private schools whose curriculum is so "riddled with errors" that outraged judges and attorneys general in four states have acted to close them down. .....the course's only teaching material was a slim volume filled, Ms. Coleman continues, with howlers such as:
1. The United States has 53 states but the "flag has not yet been updated to reflect the addition of the last three states" - Hawaii, Alaska and Puerto Rico.
2. World War II began in 1938 and ended in 1942.
3. There are two houses of Congress - the Senate and the House, and "one is for Democrats and the other is for the Republicans, respectively."
Mr. Gossai's textbook should have been called History As She is Wrote – it is no wonder the various state law enforcement officials are so exercised. Here are some more textbook stunners:
4. Napoleon won the Battle of Waterloo.
5. Jihad means merely "to struggle," to do one's best to resist temptation and overcome evil.
6. Women earn only 71 per cent of what men do. (The former head of the Congressional Budget Office, economist June O'Neill, said that for employees "similar in their experience and life situations" there is practically no difference between men's pay and women's.
7. Sherman's troops burned Atlanta. (In fact they burned only the public buildings; most of the destruction had already been accomplished by Hood's Confederates.)
8. In the 7th century, Cordoba, Spain was an Islamic city, the Grand Mosque was already built, and the Crusades were in progress – all incorrect by one to four centuries.
9. These are historical facts – the Archangel Gabriel revealed God's word to the Prophet Mohammed, Adam built the Kabaa in Mecca, and jinns are made from fire and can be either good or evil.
10. There had been a $40,000 bounty for the capture of Harriet Tubman. (There is no evidence of one higher than $100, placed after she herself escaped.)
Science is not spared its share of errors:
11. A map shows the equator running through Texas and Florida. (I suspect this is a result of global warming.)
12. A picture of a compass shows east and west reversed.
13. Six orders of birds are listed, all of them fictitious
14. Memorizing the value of pi is an example of deductive reasoning.
15. A photograph of Linda Ronstadt is captioned: "silicon crystal"; in an earlier version of the textbook the pop diva was a "vacuum triode."
16. The moon's mass is 1/6 of the Earth's. (It is 1/81.)
17. Periodic tables do not include new elements years after they have been added.
As well as outright errors, there are biases and dubious interpretations:
18. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were "a married couple who held radical views."
19. American perceptions of the Japanese militarists were shaped not by real events – such as the Rape of Nanking, the Bataan Death March, or other Japanese atrocities – but by American "propaganda."
20. All of the American Indians are lumped into one homogeneous culture, all of the Europeans into another, and all Africans into a third, and each of them contributed equally to the present American culture. (Expect a massive re-write, now that Hispanics outnumber blacks.)
21. American participation in World War II is given 20 pages, while there are 26 pages about the home front, emphasizing discrimination against women and racial minorities.
22. George Washington is allotted six lines of text, compared to six and a half pages for Marilyn Monroe.
Besides items that are tendentious or flatly wrong, there are what we shall kindly call irregularities:
23. A prominent scientist is advertised as having reviewed the textbook for accuracy. (The scientist says he has never seen it.)
24. Its publisher contributes heavily to the reelection campaign of California's superintendent of instruction.
25. Of the textbook's listed authors, none were actually involved in writing or reviewing it.
26. Successive versions of the textbook, sold as new editions, are virtually unchanged and include the same errors and anachronisms, such as the same age for tennis player Venus Williams, wrong by two years in even the first edition.
27. The text and graphics includes large-scale placement advertising of private products such as Levi jeans.
28. There are repeated references to the publisher's own website on something called the interNET [sic].
This is only a sample of the errors, dubious interpretations, biases, and irregularities. How can so many be associated with Daniel Gossai's one "slim volume"?As it happens, we can blame him for only the first three. All the others are from textbooks that major publishers
like Prentice-Hall and Glencoe/McGraw-Hill have been selling by the tens of millions to public elementary, middle, and high schools throughout the United States. These examples, and dozens more, of how-not-to-write-a-textbook are readily available on the "interNET" at these and other sites... www.enterstageright.com...
Originally posted by Cygnis
Source Article blog
Orginal Alternet Article
1. Student-Loan Debt. Large debt—and the fear it creates—is a pacifying force.
2. Psychopathologizing and Medicating Noncompliance.
3. Schools That Educate for Compliance and Not for Democracy.
6. The Normalization of Surveillance.
These are just 4 of the 8 reasons, with semi-lengthy reasonsings as to why there will be no major protests or riots or other type events.
Please visit the link, and read the article. it's most enlightening.
The younger generations have been pressed upon in such a way, that to "question authority" or to "go outside the box" and "think creativly" are frowned upon.
The people at the top do not want free-thinkers, or those that question. They want people who will simply slave away.
The institutionalization of a majority of our systems has erroded the youths basic ability to see the forest for the trees. Standardised public education has robbed them of the ability to ask critical thinking questions, and creativity. Television has robbed them of creative thought, and self-entertainment (or discontent with the world around them).
Those that are outside the box get medicated. A friend of mine's son doesn't like to sit still, and pay rapt attention to the teacher at school. The school is telling her that she needs to have her son seen by a doctor and medicated.
It appears that fomr some time now that we have been being engineered for the worse.edit on 6-8-2011 by Cygnis because: (no reason given)edit on 6-8-2011 by Cygnis because: (no reason given)edit on 6-8-2011 by Cygnis because: (no reason given)
Originally posted by 547000
When you have bread and circuses why would you protest?
Originally posted by JewelFlip
reply to post by Cygnis
I think a key point that has been missed is the degree to which you will be punished for any form of protesting these days.
While there is the usual run of the mill being ignored, it means a lot more in this day in age to be ignored than it ever did before. If your protest has no media presence what-so-ever you feel very small. With social media being what it is, no mention at all is unbelievably discouraging. It may sound outrageously silly, but it is true to a degree.
Far more important though is how protests are dealt with these days. If you live in the Toronto area, you know what I mean. Peaceful protests are destroyed via a police line. Kids in Queens Park were beaten and put in detention centers for ages. If you don't know much about what happened during G20 in Toronto, look it up and be astounded. Don't hate me for saying it, but in this day and age its far too dangerous to protest. You'll have a record, and never get a decent job. If you protest you could be reduced to little more than minimum wage for a long while. People want prosperity, and if protesting kills that option - you'll likely opt out. There is a lot I'd like to change, but if no one else is willing to sacrifice I don't want to be the one who suffers for it for trying.