NOT THE FINEST HOUR

Surprise, surprise, historians have found glaring errors in a textbook claiming that African Americans fought in large numbers for the South during the Civil War.

A number of additional errors have been found in other textbooks being used in some Virginia classrooms, since the state ordered a review of the books, the Washington Post reports.

Among the textbooks' errors are claims that the Confederacy included 12 states and the U.S. entered World War I in 1916. Five professional scholars reviewed the books, with three of them finding "disturbing" results. State officials are scheduled to meet January 10 to review the results.

"I absolutely could not believe the number of mistakes -- wrong dates and wrong facts everywhere. How in the world did these books get approved?" said Ronald Heinemann, a former history professor at Hampden-Sydney College who reviewed "Our Virginia: Past and Present." The other book mentioned in the report was "Our America: To 1865."

Heinemann added that the book "should be withdrawn from the classroom immediately or at least by the end of the year."

Five Ponds Press, a small publisher in Connecticut, is responsible for the books in question. The Post reports that the publisher e-mailed to say the "historians' critiques," as the Post put it, will be included in the books' next printing.

The Post first reported the errors back in October. The author, Joy Masoff, defended her work, telling the Post, "As controversial as it is, I stand by what I write. I am a fairly respected writer." But when it came to one of the Civil War's most controversial themes -- the role of African Americans in the Confederacy -- she relied primarily on an Internet search, according to the report. And the results were based on the work of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a neo-confederate group based in Tennessee.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/12/historians_find_myriad_errors_in_va_history_textbo.php?ref=fpb

First of all, fairly respected writers should not be writing textbooks for children.

We have a glut of PhD’s and this fact has confused that honored achievement of old.  I never personally made over $60 grand in one year and I went to a State University when our country felt education was important enough to minimize tuition for the masses.

So I am not by any means an elitist.

But officially accredited professors who have not just achieved status but prestige as well should be writing our goddamn textbooks.

When I went to the university law school, there were only two law schools. Irony of ironies a graduate of our night law school ended up being appointed Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court by a president who despised Harvard, Yale and all of the elite schools in this country. Hahahaha  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_E._Burger

We were told that the University of Minnesota Law School was a top university law school because it had professors who appeared as authors on basic law texts read all over this nation, even at Harvard and Yale.

We were informed that the University of Minnesota Law School had the seventh largest law school library in the country—at a time when that meant something.

I bring all this up because times change.

Who gives one goddamn how many books are at a certain college or university when you can be in some Community College in Podunk and have access to just about any text you wish to access?

And it has been my opinion that because of the magic of the world wide net, we need to permit our students access to the greatest lecturers in the world.

In college I would sit and listen to lectures that the professors had crafted over decades and tweaked from time to time; I could have witnessed these lectures on some screen in this day and age and I could have played back the portions of the lectures I questioned.

Normally, you would go to three lectures a week and there would be two sessions a week with a T.A.—someone working on a Masters degree or a Doctorate. Tests would be delivered at these sessions and questions would be asked and answered.

The T.A. could be of more importance today than the professor.

And of course, colleges and universities have become money making machines and present us with a system that I abhor, but that is a subject for another day.

Now I noted in some recent post that the Obama Administration has recently appointed one of the single most ill prepared persons in a supervisory capacity at the DOJ. http://dagblog.com/reader-blogs/positions-how-get-properly-jobbed-8325

She had a degree at some JC University and a law degree at Robertson’s pretend Law School where I assume they teach the merits of the Dred Scott Decision and the horrors of Brown v Board.

This enraged me. It would be like appointing Gonzo to the U.S. Supreme Court.

So I am back to standard texts for the State of Virginia. I mean this series is written by a right wing nut that got her materials from the net. WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?

That does not even get into the real issues concerning propaganda spewed about Negroes fighting for the Confederacy and the U.S. entering WWI in 1916 by a Democratic Fascist President.

And believe me, I am no fan of Wilson who resegregated DC and presented Birth of a Nation in the White House to a group of Southern Racist pricks.

ACCREDITATION

We do not want fairly good writers preparing texts for our children.

WE NEED EXPERTS WRITING OUR TEXTBOOKS; EXPERTS IN THE PARTICULAR AREAS OF STUDY THAT ARE PRESENTED IN THOSE TEXTBOOKS.

In history texts, there are going to be political issues. I mean certain ‘facts’ can be presented in certain ways to create a view of history. We will never get away from that conundrum.

Great historians have portrayed Lincoln as a racist, Wilson as a socialist, LBJ as a socialist…

That will be with us always. And you have to recall that youngsters rebel anyway and they do not necessarily eat up the portrayals that they read in high school texts. They rebel.

But dates concerning our establishing a  Constitution, or dates concerning our entry into wars or dates relating to economic downturns…there should be no squabble concerning these matters.

Jefferson Davis was President of the Confederacy and Lincoln was President of the so-called Union—even though Abe was duly elected as President of the United States of America pursuant to the dictates of Federal and State Constitutions.

But governmental funds should not be paid to ‘fairly good writers’. I mean whether or not someone is a fairly good writer should be in the eyes and minds of the beholders.

How in the hell can a text book be registered as a text when the writer gets the year—let alone the month—of our entry into a WORLD WAR wrong?

How in the hell can a text book be certified as the script for our children’s futures, when it wrongly maintains that the African Americans in 1860 CHOSE to fight for the Confederacy?

We can’t let the Feds get into this mess. We have enough problems. But the State of Virginia should not receive one dime of Federal Funds for publishing such crap.

And I have not even reached the issues surrounding our mathematic texts or our geology texts or our meteorology texts or our physic texts or our astronomy texts…

Should fairly good writers be employed to write texts concerning Physics?

Forget biology class, I mean should we have sections of our texts on physics that discuss  minority held arguments that the earth is 6000 years old?

Do we give ‘both sides of the story’?

Frankly I think that discussions concerning global warming belong in our high school classes. We are stuck with presenting ‘both sides’ as long as other environmental issues are presented such as clean air and water.

I would not mind if some 19th century censured version of Shakespeare were presented in Junior High School. Who cares?

The so called baby boomers were presented with all sorts of censorship and propaganda concerning this and that and a lot of us rebelled. That was a good thing.

But A squared plus B squared = C squared. I mean that is a fact. Sure you can get into the issues surrounding curved space and all that, but if you wish to build a pyramid you had better stick to that formula.

And if you wish to have some grasp on the issues surrounding WWI you had better get the dates right.

There have been some good signs concerning this new era of propaganda.

Peggy Noonan, who I despise for a number of reasons, has spoken out against Sarah Palin for her moronic musings. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/06/peggy-noonan-sarah-palin_n_779624.html

Many of the educated right, including Brooks, have attacked many idiocies expressed by the tea partiers. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/30/us/politics/30bai.html?scp=4&sq=david%20brooks%20&%20Palin&st=cse

George Will has really disappointed me but I credit this all to senility which I have experienced personally. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/17/AR2010021703507.html

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/04/george-will-on-austan-goolsbee-obamas-econo-man/?scp=1&sq=george%20will&st=Search

How do we render accreditation for our textbook writers? And who should authorize funding for these text books on the federal level?

I do not know the answers to these questions but I do not wish for fairly good writers to be telling our youth that Black folks fought for the Confederacy in droves (freely) and that the socialist Wilson brought us into WWI in 1916.

We can do better than this.