New York — American Jews have always thought that education was sacrosanct. They also believed that the textbooks used to educate American children were accurate, factual, unbiased and up-to-date.
Unfortunately, this is not the reality in American education today. Ironically, we — who are known as the “People of the Book” — have paid little, if any, attention to school textbooks during the past decade and have inadvertently permitted the diminution, obfuscation and even falsification of Jewish history to become the norm in American textbooks today.
If asked to name the three major world religions, students should be able to respond without much difficulty and with chronological accuracy “Judaism, Christianity and Islam.”
That wouldn’t happen if they used the book “World History” (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1990) whose glossary includes Buddhism, Church of England, Hinduism, Lutheran Church, Taoism and Islam, but excludes Judaism, Jews and Hebrews. When it does address Jewish history, it starts with the Book of Exodus, thereby eliminating Genesis, which establishes our biblical birthright to the land of Israel.
No publishing house should deliberately spread anti-Semitism into our classrooms. Yet, the authors of “Sources of the Western Tradition” (Houghton Mifflin, 1995) included virulent literary excerpts that reinforce negative stereotypes about Jews and teach students to look at the Jews through the eyes of their worst enemies.
Similarly, the authors of “Elements of Literature” (Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1999) contribute to the introduction of anti-Semitism into classrooms by using Jonathan Edwards’ hellfire and brimstone sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” to teach English syntax. How can this particular text do anything less than contribute to the increase in anti-Semitism in Bible-belt classrooms? And the connection to 21st century American English syntax is spurious, at best.
Privileging of Islam
As unsettling as these examples are, there is one trend in education that, if left untended, may change the very fabric of our society. In recent years, American education has shifted from its Judeo-Christian orientation to the promotion of Islam as the dominant world religion.
“Across the Centuries” (Houghton Mifflin, 2000) is the textbook that best illustrates this. It teaches Judaism and Christianity only insofar as they relate to Islam and gives students exercises that actually have them “practicing” Islam, rather than studying it.
In fact, Islam seems to be the driving force in American education today, especially after 9/11. This textual privileging of Islam has one aim: to sanitize and aggrandize Islamic history. To ensure this end, publishing houses — such as Houghton Mifflin, Prentice Hall and Glencoe/McGraw Hill — have brought on consultants on Islam from the agenda-driven Council on Islamic Education and the Middle East Policy Council.
In addition, global studies and world history textbooks teach revisionist history of Israel from biblical times to the present, maintaining, as examples, that the 1948 War for Independence left the Palestinians without a homeland and that Jewish settlement dates to the time of Palestine (“World Geography: Building a Global Perspective,” Prentice-Hall, 2002).
The most outrageous influence of Islam on the teaching of the history of Israel is to be found in the article “Israel, Palestine and Teaching” in the on-line, Milwaukee-based journal for teachers Rethinking Schools (Volume 16 No. 4 Summer 2002; see Chronicle Nov. 29, 2002 issue).
This article identifies Israel as the primary aggressor in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, endorses revisionist Israeli history and Muslim propaganda, and calls for school curricula to demand U.S. cancellation of foreign aid to Israel.
Whether these inclusions and exclusions, errors and obfuscations are editorial aberrations or systematic bias can only be determined by careful and consistent textual analysis.
Eight years ago, Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, decided to address that issue and to make textbooks used in K-12 classrooms a priority. At that time, Curriculum Watch was started and an Academic Advisory Board, comprising leading academics and scholars, was given the charge of reading and correcting books.
Over the years, we have done important and pace-setting work with textbook publishers. Some are cooperative, others not; but the truth is that the publishing houses have little contact with the Jewish community.
It is time for all that to change. We, the “People of the Book,” must embrace the challenge of keeping our nation’s textbooks free of error and bias. As citizen advocates, we must ensure that American education is sacred and not profaned.
Dr. Sandra Alfonsi, a professor of romance languages at St. John’s University, is the National Chair of Curriculum Watch, sponsored by Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America.
Loading ...