Christian education and the search for morality - Christian school textbooks

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Sept, 1994 by Don Boys

Another criticism of the Christian school texts concerns the treatment of American Indians. Nevertheless, they were not the "noble red men" so often seen in today's TV and movies. Some kept slaves (and ate them during hard times), poisoned streams, practiced fornication, and killed without conscience. In Mexico, human sacrifice was common. Public school texts never deal with those facts because they want to change students' attitudes to fit the New World Order.

The Christian school text is correct when it states: "The Indian culture typified heathen civilization--lost in darkness without the light of the gospel." While some tribes were somewhat humane, they did not produce an enlightened, productive, and lasting civilization. The fact is that some Indians were good, some were bad--like all people--but it does truth a disservice to insist that Indians in general were Noble Savages.

It is a fact that the Indians had all the natural resources such as water, trees, iron, gold, silver, etc., yet did not produce much except a society where private property was almost unknown, adultery was common, and children died by the thousands. When the white man came, with all his admitted sins, he dug the ore out of the ground; cleared the forests; defended himself and his family; built cities, roads hospitals, schools, and churches; and produced a standard of living that is the envy of the world to this day. Why didn't the Indians do that or something similar during the hundreds of years before Columbus? Does simply asking that question make one a bigot?

Critics accuse the publishers of Christian school texts of selecting literature books that feature "mediocre authors." It is said that "Extravagant and non-scholarly assertions and generalizations abound." No informed individual would make that accusation. Actually, the public school texts are guilty of mediocrity.

The Hudson Institute did a study of 63 public school texts and found they used "scare" tactics, "misinformation," and "sloppy writing." The texts "present statistics and population projections from the early 60s. Editors make no note of outdated information, nor do they bother to correct flagrant errors and distortions. A 1981 text-book uses figures more than 20 years old for life expectancy in India." What was that about non-scholarly assertions in Christian texts?

How about the public school texts that tell students that slaves chopped sugar cane in the American Southwest? Sugar cane in the Southwest? Or, how about the one that stated the English fought the British in the American Revolution? Then there was an illustration showing a colonial mother who had an electric range in her kitchen! Does that qualify as "sloppy writing"? How about the public school text that blames the U.S. for the Cold War, Korean War, and Vietnam War? Is that scholarly? The same text characterizes liberals as "charismatic," "compassionate," "dauntless," "honest," "good," and "eloquent," while conservatives are "reactionary," "shrewd," "undiplomatic," "inflexible," "sniping," "hateful," etc. What could motivate authors to twist history unless it was to brainwash the minds of children so they would be ripped away from their historical and religious moorings?