Parents cannot always rely on public schools to do their job. Textbooks are tailored to please the largest customer, the liberal California textbook committee. Teachers, for the greater part, drop the ball further.

One of my son's history books had only three paragraphs on World War II but had enough room for two full-page color pictures showing Bill Clinton and Maya Angelou. Fortunately, my son had a teacher who put together his own curiculum with articles and research papers that he collected over the years and on the topics where the textbooks failed.

Many students are not as fortunate, as evidenced by this sample of ninety students tested in San Francisco high schools.

If high school juniors' answers to a World War II questionnaire were strung together, here's how history would look:

World War II took place in 19-something, when Theodore Roosevelt was president and the Germans claimed to be the best race.

Hoping to aid Third World countries, the United States joined the war to stop racism and end the dispute over Jews.

The head of the Nazis was a killer named Hitler whose evil partner, Mussolini, was president of the USSR. Ultimately, the war ended with the bombing of Iwo Jima and Hitler's suicide. Then a treaty was signed.

To make it worse, San Francisco city leaders never want to honor our military or teach that it has made people free throughout the world.

Parents need to be more involved and demand that their children get the education necessary to make livings and to learn history so as to avoid making mistakes of earlier generations. Education departments and teacher's unions need to start caring less about their power and more about "the children."

When will they start?

Posted at 03:50 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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