http://www.cnn.com/2003/EDUCATION/09/09/sc...y.ap/index.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The nation's schools are telling an unbalanced story of their own country, offering students plenty about America's failings but not enough about its values and freedoms, says a report drawing support across the ideological spectrum.

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Those who have signed on include former President Clinton; Jeane Kirkpatrick, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and U.N. ambassador during the first administration of Ronald Reagan; and David McCullough, the historian and author. Dozens of scholars, professors, labor leaders and representatives of school groups have backed it, too.

As PD this is an accurate portrayal of the US. It could not be that liberals have taken over the public schools and are destroying this countries most valueable resource.... its children!

When I read a description of a report like that I admit I have a knee-jerk reaction to want to dispute it. A lot of that is due to the inevitable preprogrammed, sweeping idealogical statements of nonsense ("destroying this countries most valueable resource.... its children") that certain idealogues are going to make as they leap on that report as "evidence" that society is going to hell, yadayadayada.

Many of these people are every bit as determined as those they oppose that instruction to schoolchildren meet idealogical litmus test standards - they just differ on WHAT the standard should be.

When you get right down to it, however, there is a lot to the premise. Attempting to evaluate the actions of the European settlers of North America (or colonizers of Africa, Asia, and South America) from the perspective of 21st century values is every bit as moronic as continuing to teach the whitebread pablum they forcefed me when I was a student in the 60s. I don't think that teaching the history of the Vietnam war as "all bad" is of any value to students - any more than teaching the history of the Vietnam debacle with all the blemishes, warts, lies and deceptions glossed over is of value.

So, yeah, Mikey ... knowing the way that people like you will interpret that sort of a report does make me react in a certain way. Once I take a minute and think, however, I can see the truth in it.

I'd rather learn the facts, whether they say good things or bad things about this country.

A lot of nasty nasty shit has occured here, and we should be honest enough to face up to it. Of course, we are still the greatest hope for mankind, so that should be some comfort.

"The report calls for a stronger history and social studies curriculum, starting in elementary school and continuing through all years of schooling. It also suggests a bigger push for morality in education lessons.

"The basic ideas of liberty, equality, and justice, of civil, political and economic rights and obligations, are all assertions of right and wrong, of moral values," the report says. "The authors of the American testament had no trouble distinguishing moral education from religious instruction, and neither should we."
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Yikes. Talk about a fucked up two paragraphs. There should be a push for truth in education lessons, not a movement to slant it towards a particular idea of morals. Too many things in history happen in spite of or because of morals that got off track to entangle the two together.

Yes, that may be a list of 'assertions of right and wrong' in the second paragraph but how many administrations in the last 50 years in this country have utilized those values as anything other than a method to twist their actions into something that can be 'spun' into what suits the 'spinner'.

Everytime I watch JayWalking with Leno I cringe.

I agree completely.