Textbooks and school activities that promote destructive forms of multiculturalism are proliferating in U.S. public schools, funded by local and federal tax dollars, with alarmingly little notice or resistance from parents or education officials.
Non-educators who win election or appointment to school boards may be inclined to entrust supervision of instruction to administrators and teachers, lest they be seen as meddlers or even censors.
That might be a reasonable instinct in normal times, but board members who are oblivious to the growing injection of radical agendas into classroom instruction fail in their duty to be good stewards of our children’s education.
A prime current example is the widespread use of U.S. and world history textbooks that are actively glorifying Islam and sanitizing its radical elements, while downplaying or denigrating the Judeo-Christian roots of the United States and Western civilization in general.
The American Textbook Council (ATC), a scholarly organization that keeps tabs on textbook trends, found in a review of 10 of the most widely used junior and senior high school textbooks a concerted effort to cleanse jihad — the rallying cry of Islamic terrorists — of all belligerent connotations.
It is true that jihad has divergent meanings, some of which may have to do with personal religious perspectives. However, it is absurd to deny that it has anything to do with the concept of waging a “holy war” to secure the objectives of radical Islam.
Perhaps the most extreme pro-Islam revisionism is found in the History Alive series of secondary-school texts published by the Teachers Curriculum Institute (TCI). These textbooks have been used, approved or endorsed in a growing number of school districts in Illinois, California, Texas, Florida, Washington State, and elsewhere. The seventh-grade text defines jihad simply as “to strive,” explaining: “Jihad represents the human struggle to overcome difficulties and do things that are pleasing to God. Muslims strive to respond positively to personal difficulties as well as worldly challenges. For instance, they might work to become better people, reform society, or correct injustice.”
The TCI text goes on to describe jihad as sometimes involving a “struggle against oppression.” Thus, the textbook teaches schoolchildren that those targeted for terrorist acts such as the September 11, 2001, mass murder are, in fact, the oppressors.
Incredibly, History Alive devotes five full chapters, 62 pages, to putative accomplishments of Islam through the ages. One chapter focuses in great detail on such teachings as the Five Pillars of Faith, complete with elaborate illustrations.
While not as extreme as History Alive, many other widely used textbooks present a theme of universal Islamic tolerance, or what a Prentice Hall volume weirdly terms a “multicultural society.” Never mind that acceptance of other faiths runs counter to the widespread practice of Islam. Some of the texts completely gloss over the subjugation of women under Islamic law.