This was copied off the internet (http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/1025). I couldn't state it better myself.
Parental Rights and Public Education
Sonja N. Bohm
July 07, 2005
If you have not yet heard of the cause for the separation of school and state, you soon will. It is no less a cause for freedom than the one Thomas Paine wrote about in Common Sense when he stated, "The sun never shone on a cause of greater worth." What is at stake in our time is the freedom and right of parents to see to the upbringing, well-being, and education of our own children. That right and responsibility has been usurped -- whether intentionally or unintentionally -- by our public school system. In The Rights of Man, Thomas Paine also states:
"All power exercised over a nation, must have some beginning. It must either be delegated or assumed. There are no other sources. All delegated power is trust, and all assumed power is usurpation. Time does not alter the nature and quality of either."
I submit that our public school system has assumed, and therefore usurped, the responsibility for the education of our children -- a responsibility that rightfully belongs to the parent. But assumed authority is not necessarily legitimate authority. First and foremost, just as our Creator endows each of us with unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (among others), we believe that God has also given parents the unalienable right to see to the upbringing and education of our own children. Unalienable means the inability to be transferred. Just as our right to be FREE can and should not be transferred to another person, so our responsibility as parents can and should not be transferred to another. We can delegate our authority, but never our responsibility.
But yet, many State Boards of Education continually refer to the responsibility of parents as being a "shared" responsibility between the parent and the school. This is misleading, however. I submit that it is an altogether separate and different kind of responsibility. Parents are responsible for the well-being of their children as a WHOLE -- to include seeing to their children's education... Schools are responsible for educating -- but only when the authority to do so has been delegated by the parents.
Because ours is a nation based on liberty, parents are free to raise their children based on their own belief system and principles. A parent's authority to see to their child's education is a recognized authority -- evident in the fact that parents are free to choose whether their children are educated publicly or privately. It is a parent's responsibility that their child is educated -- not necessarily by what means they are educated.
But the California State Board of Education goes one step further than to "merely" assume responsibility for a child's education. In a Parent Involvement fact sheet put forth by the California State Board of Education[i], the Board also appears to assume (or would like to assume) a responsibility of sorts over parents as well when it states:
"...efforts should be designed to help parents develop parenting skills to meet the basic obligations of family life [and to] prepare parents to actively participate in school decision making and develop their leadership skills in governance and advocacy. (Emphasis added.)"
This may seem on the surface to be a noble undertaking on the part of the public school system; but when considered more closely, it becomes evident that the Board of Education feels it necessary to develop some sort of standard -- not only for the education of our children, but for family life as well! And how long will it be until the State Boards of Education have the legal right to determine standards for parental obligations as they do presently for our children's educational standards? Have we reached a point where we have become so dependent upon the public school system for the care of our children (and not just for their basic education anymore!) that school officials have come to the conclusion that they need to also instruct parents on how to parent? While it is true that serious cases of neglect and abuse exist within some families, that is not reason enough -- and is in fact at its core un-American -- for the government to "supercede parental authority in all cases"[ii] as a result. This kind of usurpation has not taken place overnight, but over a period of time -- and right under our noses. And the resulting undermining of parental authority and degradation of family stability will continue to occur as long as we continue to allow it.
In a local PTA school bulletin it states, "if you want to have a voice," join your local PTA. Parents already have a voice -- whether they choose to claim membership to an organization such as the PTA or not. It is time to use our parental authority and take back our schools. If we continue to take the public school system for granted, we will continue to see a further erosion of parental rights and authority in this country. The continued rise in numbers of home schooling and private schooling families in the United States over the past two decades is due in no small part to the rising dissatisfaction with public schooling and its practices. Concerns about safety, curriculum, standardization, and religious liberties are just a few among many reasons for the growing "exodus" of families from public schools -- a testimony as well as a reaction to the rising usurpation of authority that the public school system has slowly and systematically been assuming since its 19th century beginnings in this country.
In the words of author C.S. Lewis[iii]:
"Where the old initiated, the new merely 'conditions.' The old dealt with its pupils as grown birds deal with young birds when they teach them to fly; the new deals with them more as the poultry-keeper deals with young birds -- making them thus or thus for purposes of which the birds know nothing. In a word, the old was a kind of propagation -- men transmitting manhood to men; the new is merely propaganda. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more 'drive,' or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or 'creativity.' In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful. Know your rights!"
A wealth of information can be found with regard to parental/children´s rights and education by visiting any of the following websites/links:
Alliance for the Separation of School and State: http://www.schoolandstate.org/
Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA): http://www.hslda.org/
American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ): http://www.aclj.org/
California Home School Network: http://www.californiahomeschool.net/
Christian Home Educators Association of California: http://www.cheaofca.org/
Exodus Mandate: http://www.exodusmandate.org/
Home Education Magazine: http://www.homeedmag.com/
Personal and Political Empowerment articles by Larry and Susan Kaseman:
http://homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/weblinks/TakingCharge.htm
i] http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/ms/po/policy89-01-sep1994.asp (Last modified: May 03, 2005)
ii] Klicka, Christopher J. The Right to Home School, Carolina Academic Press, 2002, p. 40.
iii] Lewis, C.S. The Abolition of Man, Harper Collins, 2000 (1944, 1947), p. 23,26.
The opinions expressed within this article are the author's alone. This article is not affiliated with or sponsored by any person, group or organization other than the author.
Copyright 2005 by Sonja N. Bohm. Permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media if this credit is attached and the title remains unchanged.
This blog is my opinion. I like hearing from those with different opinions, as long as they are expressed respectfully. This is not an argument forum. Be forwarned. I am quite conservative where my opinions are concerned, although it is not my place to tell others what to do. We will all answer to God in the end.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Monday, April 27, 2009
History Alive! Medieval World
I want to start this post with excerpts from a letter from a parent whose child’s school used the book “History Alive! Medieval World” in his school. She goes only by the name Anne. This letter comes from a book called “From Crayons to Condoms” which is about the perversions the public schools are forcing upon our unsuspecting children.
“In November 2007, I caught a segment on Fox news on evening that piqued my interest. Sean Hannity was reporting on parents complaining about Islamic content in a middle school history textbook. He commented that in a Lodi, California, Public school you can’t mention Christmas, but you could teach Islam. At the center of the controversy was History Alive! Medieval World (HAMW), the book my own son was using in his seventh-grade history class at the public middle school he attends.
Until I saw a picture of the book on TV, I have to admit I hadn’t paid much attention to it. I was aware that California seventh-grade educational standards called for analyzing “the geographic, political, economic, religious, and social structures of the civilizations of Islam in the Middle Ages.” But I also knew that other religions, including Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism, are studied in the sixth grade. Although it did occur to me that there seems to be a disproportionate emphasis on Islam, I was skeptical that a textbook approved by the state of California for use in public school classrooms would actually teach religion (as opposed to teaching about religion in a historical context).
Because I wanted to see for myself what the brouhaha was all about, I asked my son if I could see his copy of HAMW. After poring over the chapters about Islam for the next few hours, I was shocked. I not only agreed that HAMW includes religious content that has no place in a public school, but thought the book was even more inappropriate than portrayed on Fox News. Not only did the book speak of angels and prophecies and praying with prophets in caves, but it contained inaccuragte information, as well as insidious anti-semitic content.
Some chapters had little to do with presenting historical fact and seemed to propagandize present day political issues. Fore example, the chapter titled “Muhammad’s Teaching Meets with Resistance” suddenly shifts from the year 619 to end with a remark that “to this day Jerusalem is a holy city for Muslims.” (Not only is this comment out of context, but it follows a passage that sounds like something from the Koran: “The horse then guided Muhammad through the seven levels of heaven, and Muhammad met Allah.”)…….
Following are excerpts from my response addressing both the teacher’s and TCI’s e-mails:
…N. has not addressed my primary complaint, i.e., that rather than teaching about Islam and the spread of Islam in the context of history per California standards, History Alive! contains overtly religious content inappropriate for a public school setting.
….Students in public school history classes should not be studying about the Koran and the Pillars of Faith in depth, any more than they should study the torah and the Ten commandments. Nor should they be asked theological cquestions, e.g., to comparing Allah to the God of the Jews and the Christians. It is just as inappropriate to ask public school students about God, angels and judgment from a Muslim perspective as from a Jewish, Christian or any other religious perspective.
…History Alive! definitely presents some of the material in a biased manner that portrays Jews negatively compared to Muslims… I also find History Alive! to be imbalanced in that there is no mention, for example, of the role jihad plays in the Crusades, military conquests and the spread of Islam, while the concept of dhimmi is glossed over as a “special tax” with no mention of the oppression or religious persecution it represents. Also, History Alive! interjects inappropriate political commentary, eg., an out of context sentence that states that Jerusalem is important to this day for Muslims in a section that is supposed to be about historical resistance to the spread of Islam…..
Just the other night I attended a program at my son’s school (not his class), entitled, “Islam: A Presentation for Parents.” What I saw was deeply disturbing. The students had difficulty distinguishing historical fact from religious myth and stories, as they told about Muhammad accompanied by the angel Gabriel, flying on the back of a winged horse to Jerusalem, praying with Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, and being carried up to heaven by Gabriel to meet god. Although these same students supposedly learned about Judaism and Christianity last year in sixth grade, they were not asked to build models of churches and synagogues, to research biblical prophecies, or to spend an evening telling teir parents about the Ten commandments or the gospel according to John.
Not that that would have been appropriate either. However, I am sure that if there had been a similar event about another religion in a public school,, there would have been a huge outcry. Therefore, I have to ask: Why a presentation specifically dedicated to Islam? I can’t help but wonder why teachers in America’s public schools are so intent on teaching American students about Islam, that they are overlooking our American Constitution, which not only guarantees freedom of religion, but is supposed to protect from the risk of religious indoctrination.”
Anne.
I decided to check out what I could find about this book. I found a table of contents at this website: http://info.teachtci.com/products/wProgramChapters.aspx?ProgramID=9. It has 8 units. Units 1, 7, and 8 deal with Europe, Unit 3 is about Africa, Unit 4 is about China, and Unit 6 is about America. There is a theme, is there not? It is all about countries, and what they went through during Medieval times. However, stuck in there between Europe and Africa is a unit dedicated to Islam. Islam is not a country, it is a religion. I found this odd, that there would be an entire unit devoted to a religion, when all the other chapters are about countries. So I looked deeper.
One chapter in the unit is devoted to a country, or more specifically a group of countries known as the Arabian Peninsula. This seems appropriate. The description says that the students study four environments – the desert, oases, the coastal plain, and mountains – to discover how they affected ways of life on the Arabian Peninsula. However, the entire next chapter is devoted to the “prophet Muhammad” and the students are required to create an illustrated manuscript that retells the story of Muhammad’s life in their own words. Imagine the lawsuits that would come pouring in if the chapter was about the life of Jesus, and the requirements were the same.
The next chapter is all about the teachings of Islam. The website won’t let you look further than the chapter titles and descriptions, so I can’t say firsthand anything about it, but from other parents in the book the letter came from say there is a huge emphasis on Islam. I am a nanny for a 13 year old girl. I was rather shocked when she came home one day with homework asking her to state what the greater and lesser jihad were in her life. Excuse me? I’d like to see homework come home asking her to relate the bible to her own life. Don’t think that will be happening anytime soon.
The next chapter is titled “Contributions of Muslims to World Civilizations.” In a book filled with countries and their struggle through the medieval time period, I fail to see the relevance of this chapter (not to mention the whole unit). Why are the Muslims so important that their religion must be taught in great detail to our children?
Take a look at a few links I found regarding the book. Wikipedia: History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond is a Middle East "history" textbook from Teachers' Curriculum Institute that was used by 7th grade students. The book is full of religious propaganda and states Muslim myths and superstitions as fact. When a reviewer on Textbook League asked an officer of TCI to tell him what the source or sources of the textbook was, the officer refused to reply.[1] A principal at Houston Elementary said that the book does comply with a California state standard that requires students to learn about diverse religions which is false.[2] The book's false information was brought up to the Scottsdale, Arizona school district when a mother of one of the students thought something with the book was wrong when she saw that Islam was the only religion with a timeline.[3] The book was removed from the Scottsdale, Arizona school district's curriculum in 2005.[4]
In the news (http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/4845): Parents against it characterize it as an insidious form of Islamic proselytizing - definitely not sitting well with a Marin County mother who spoke to PRB News.
She said, "I filed a challenge to the book as a concerned parent, primarily because I think the public school system has no business teaching religion.
"I don't want my son to be learning about religion -- his own, or any other -- at school via distorted and corrupted textbooks, and I am outraged that there is religious proselytizing in and through public schools," she added.
Her filing in a matter of record with Marin County schools, but she requested her name not appear in print for safety reasons.
The textbook she and others are concerned about devotes approximately one-fourth of its 400 pages to Islam data that contains "way too much" overt religious content, the Marin mom said.
While other religions are cast in a negative light, Islam comes across as benevolent and uplifting, she added…..
The Marin mom is not wavering from her quest for a closer look at the textbook by her school board officials.
She is undaunted in her request that the books in which she finds pro-Islamist propaganda be discontinued, as another school district in Scottsdale, Arizona so decided in 2005.
In a series of emails she shared with PRB News, the pattern emerged of teachers downplaying her concerns about bias, indoctrination, and religious stories being presented as fact.
In a statement to one teacher, she said, "I realize that some of you may be under the impression that I do not want my own child learning about different cultures or religions. Frankly, nothing could be further from the truth.
"While I believe that everyone should have the right to practice (or not) their religion freely and without persecution," she added, "I also believe it is unacceptable for children to be exposed to religious proselytizing at school."
She closed one e-mail response with, "Our children should not only not be ‘influenced' -- wittingly or not -- to accept Islam (or any other religion), they should be protected from such ‘influence' in our public schools."
Dawa.net (http://www.dawanet.com/methods/publicschool.dawapublic.asp): Schools are therefore fertile grounds where the seeds of Islam can be sowed inside the hearts of non-Muslim students. Muslim students should take ample advantage of this opportunity and present to their schoolmates the beautiful beliefs of Islam.
(I’m sorry, what? “The beautiful beliefs of Islam”???? What beautiful beliefs? That woman and children should strap bombs to themselves and walk into an area of “infidels” and kill themselves, taking all those nasty infidels with them? That all of America should be annihilated? I’m sorry, but I definitely do NOT want my children subjected to this kind of exposure.)
Dawa.net:
“The bottom line
We should use every opportunity to sensitize non-Muslim peers and school staff to Islam and to establish an environment in which everywhere a non-Muslim turns, he notices Islam portrayed in a positive way, is influenced by it and eventually accepts Islam with Allah's guidance, Insha Allah (if God wills).”
Blog comment: “The entries on Islam are incredibly dishonest--you would think by reading the description on Sharia law that it was a benevolent help to sustain joyful lives.” http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/comments/152422
http://www.textbookleague.org/tci-az.htm: “At the Mohave Middle School in Scottsdale, Arizona, students who took a 7th-grade social-studies course during the 2004-2005 school year were subjected to gross, prolonged indoctrination in Islam.
Much of the indoctrination was delivered in a corrupt schoolbook titled History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond, produced by a commercial publishing company that calls itself the Teachers' Curriculum Institute (TCI). The writers of History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond, by relentlessly presenting Muslim religious tales and religious beliefs as matters of historical fact, have striven hard to induce students to embrace Islam.
The heavy indoctrination material in History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond is concentrated in chapters 8 and 9. This material consists overwhelmingly of Islamic religious propaganda. It includes blatant preaching as well as deceptive claims and extensive fraudulent narratives dealing with the beginnings of Islam, the life of Muhammad, and the inception of the Koran. These claims and narratives are disguised as accounts of history. They actually are restatements of Muslim fables and superstitions.
While TCI's book disseminates and endorses Muslim legends and pseudohistorical fantasies in abundance, it ignores history. TCI's writers have scorned historical scholarship, and they have concealed everything that historians have discovered or deduced about the origins of Islam, about Muhammad, and about the emergence of the Koran.
By depicting the dogmas and fantasies of Muslim believers as history, and by simultaneously excluding the findings and deductions of historians, History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond subjects students to a sectarian double-whammy.”
I could go on and on and on, but I'm not trying to write a book here. Suffice to say, if you find that your child is using this textbook, lodge a complaint with your school district, and tell your child's teacher that your child will not be reading this textbook nor completing any of the accompanying assignments. It is your right, as your child's parent, to request a different, more appropriate textbook and assignments. Don't let your child's teacher tell you otherwise. That is your child being indoctrinated, not the teacher's.
“In November 2007, I caught a segment on Fox news on evening that piqued my interest. Sean Hannity was reporting on parents complaining about Islamic content in a middle school history textbook. He commented that in a Lodi, California, Public school you can’t mention Christmas, but you could teach Islam. At the center of the controversy was History Alive! Medieval World (HAMW), the book my own son was using in his seventh-grade history class at the public middle school he attends.
Until I saw a picture of the book on TV, I have to admit I hadn’t paid much attention to it. I was aware that California seventh-grade educational standards called for analyzing “the geographic, political, economic, religious, and social structures of the civilizations of Islam in the Middle Ages.” But I also knew that other religions, including Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism, are studied in the sixth grade. Although it did occur to me that there seems to be a disproportionate emphasis on Islam, I was skeptical that a textbook approved by the state of California for use in public school classrooms would actually teach religion (as opposed to teaching about religion in a historical context).
Because I wanted to see for myself what the brouhaha was all about, I asked my son if I could see his copy of HAMW. After poring over the chapters about Islam for the next few hours, I was shocked. I not only agreed that HAMW includes religious content that has no place in a public school, but thought the book was even more inappropriate than portrayed on Fox News. Not only did the book speak of angels and prophecies and praying with prophets in caves, but it contained inaccuragte information, as well as insidious anti-semitic content.
Some chapters had little to do with presenting historical fact and seemed to propagandize present day political issues. Fore example, the chapter titled “Muhammad’s Teaching Meets with Resistance” suddenly shifts from the year 619 to end with a remark that “to this day Jerusalem is a holy city for Muslims.” (Not only is this comment out of context, but it follows a passage that sounds like something from the Koran: “The horse then guided Muhammad through the seven levels of heaven, and Muhammad met Allah.”)…….
Following are excerpts from my response addressing both the teacher’s and TCI’s e-mails:
…N. has not addressed my primary complaint, i.e., that rather than teaching about Islam and the spread of Islam in the context of history per California standards, History Alive! contains overtly religious content inappropriate for a public school setting.
….Students in public school history classes should not be studying about the Koran and the Pillars of Faith in depth, any more than they should study the torah and the Ten commandments. Nor should they be asked theological cquestions, e.g., to comparing Allah to the God of the Jews and the Christians. It is just as inappropriate to ask public school students about God, angels and judgment from a Muslim perspective as from a Jewish, Christian or any other religious perspective.
…History Alive! definitely presents some of the material in a biased manner that portrays Jews negatively compared to Muslims… I also find History Alive! to be imbalanced in that there is no mention, for example, of the role jihad plays in the Crusades, military conquests and the spread of Islam, while the concept of dhimmi is glossed over as a “special tax” with no mention of the oppression or religious persecution it represents. Also, History Alive! interjects inappropriate political commentary, eg., an out of context sentence that states that Jerusalem is important to this day for Muslims in a section that is supposed to be about historical resistance to the spread of Islam…..
Just the other night I attended a program at my son’s school (not his class), entitled, “Islam: A Presentation for Parents.” What I saw was deeply disturbing. The students had difficulty distinguishing historical fact from religious myth and stories, as they told about Muhammad accompanied by the angel Gabriel, flying on the back of a winged horse to Jerusalem, praying with Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, and being carried up to heaven by Gabriel to meet god. Although these same students supposedly learned about Judaism and Christianity last year in sixth grade, they were not asked to build models of churches and synagogues, to research biblical prophecies, or to spend an evening telling teir parents about the Ten commandments or the gospel according to John.
Not that that would have been appropriate either. However, I am sure that if there had been a similar event about another religion in a public school,, there would have been a huge outcry. Therefore, I have to ask: Why a presentation specifically dedicated to Islam? I can’t help but wonder why teachers in America’s public schools are so intent on teaching American students about Islam, that they are overlooking our American Constitution, which not only guarantees freedom of religion, but is supposed to protect from the risk of religious indoctrination.”
Anne.
I decided to check out what I could find about this book. I found a table of contents at this website: http://info.teachtci.com/products/wProgramChapters.aspx?ProgramID=9. It has 8 units. Units 1, 7, and 8 deal with Europe, Unit 3 is about Africa, Unit 4 is about China, and Unit 6 is about America. There is a theme, is there not? It is all about countries, and what they went through during Medieval times. However, stuck in there between Europe and Africa is a unit dedicated to Islam. Islam is not a country, it is a religion. I found this odd, that there would be an entire unit devoted to a religion, when all the other chapters are about countries. So I looked deeper.
One chapter in the unit is devoted to a country, or more specifically a group of countries known as the Arabian Peninsula. This seems appropriate. The description says that the students study four environments – the desert, oases, the coastal plain, and mountains – to discover how they affected ways of life on the Arabian Peninsula. However, the entire next chapter is devoted to the “prophet Muhammad” and the students are required to create an illustrated manuscript that retells the story of Muhammad’s life in their own words. Imagine the lawsuits that would come pouring in if the chapter was about the life of Jesus, and the requirements were the same.
The next chapter is all about the teachings of Islam. The website won’t let you look further than the chapter titles and descriptions, so I can’t say firsthand anything about it, but from other parents in the book the letter came from say there is a huge emphasis on Islam. I am a nanny for a 13 year old girl. I was rather shocked when she came home one day with homework asking her to state what the greater and lesser jihad were in her life. Excuse me? I’d like to see homework come home asking her to relate the bible to her own life. Don’t think that will be happening anytime soon.
The next chapter is titled “Contributions of Muslims to World Civilizations.” In a book filled with countries and their struggle through the medieval time period, I fail to see the relevance of this chapter (not to mention the whole unit). Why are the Muslims so important that their religion must be taught in great detail to our children?
Take a look at a few links I found regarding the book. Wikipedia: History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond is a Middle East "history" textbook from Teachers' Curriculum Institute that was used by 7th grade students. The book is full of religious propaganda and states Muslim myths and superstitions as fact. When a reviewer on Textbook League asked an officer of TCI to tell him what the source or sources of the textbook was, the officer refused to reply.[1] A principal at Houston Elementary said that the book does comply with a California state standard that requires students to learn about diverse religions which is false.[2] The book's false information was brought up to the Scottsdale, Arizona school district when a mother of one of the students thought something with the book was wrong when she saw that Islam was the only religion with a timeline.[3] The book was removed from the Scottsdale, Arizona school district's curriculum in 2005.[4]
In the news (http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/4845): Parents against it characterize it as an insidious form of Islamic proselytizing - definitely not sitting well with a Marin County mother who spoke to PRB News.
She said, "I filed a challenge to the book as a concerned parent, primarily because I think the public school system has no business teaching religion.
"I don't want my son to be learning about religion -- his own, or any other -- at school via distorted and corrupted textbooks, and I am outraged that there is religious proselytizing in and through public schools," she added.
Her filing in a matter of record with Marin County schools, but she requested her name not appear in print for safety reasons.
The textbook she and others are concerned about devotes approximately one-fourth of its 400 pages to Islam data that contains "way too much" overt religious content, the Marin mom said.
While other religions are cast in a negative light, Islam comes across as benevolent and uplifting, she added…..
The Marin mom is not wavering from her quest for a closer look at the textbook by her school board officials.
She is undaunted in her request that the books in which she finds pro-Islamist propaganda be discontinued, as another school district in Scottsdale, Arizona so decided in 2005.
In a series of emails she shared with PRB News, the pattern emerged of teachers downplaying her concerns about bias, indoctrination, and religious stories being presented as fact.
In a statement to one teacher, she said, "I realize that some of you may be under the impression that I do not want my own child learning about different cultures or religions. Frankly, nothing could be further from the truth.
"While I believe that everyone should have the right to practice (or not) their religion freely and without persecution," she added, "I also believe it is unacceptable for children to be exposed to religious proselytizing at school."
She closed one e-mail response with, "Our children should not only not be ‘influenced' -- wittingly or not -- to accept Islam (or any other religion), they should be protected from such ‘influence' in our public schools."
Dawa.net (http://www.dawanet.com/methods/publicschool.dawapublic.asp): Schools are therefore fertile grounds where the seeds of Islam can be sowed inside the hearts of non-Muslim students. Muslim students should take ample advantage of this opportunity and present to their schoolmates the beautiful beliefs of Islam.
(I’m sorry, what? “The beautiful beliefs of Islam”???? What beautiful beliefs? That woman and children should strap bombs to themselves and walk into an area of “infidels” and kill themselves, taking all those nasty infidels with them? That all of America should be annihilated? I’m sorry, but I definitely do NOT want my children subjected to this kind of exposure.)
Dawa.net:
“The bottom line
We should use every opportunity to sensitize non-Muslim peers and school staff to Islam and to establish an environment in which everywhere a non-Muslim turns, he notices Islam portrayed in a positive way, is influenced by it and eventually accepts Islam with Allah's guidance, Insha Allah (if God wills).”
Blog comment: “The entries on Islam are incredibly dishonest--you would think by reading the description on Sharia law that it was a benevolent help to sustain joyful lives.” http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/comments/152422
http://www.textbookleague.org/tci-az.htm: “At the Mohave Middle School in Scottsdale, Arizona, students who took a 7th-grade social-studies course during the 2004-2005 school year were subjected to gross, prolonged indoctrination in Islam.
Much of the indoctrination was delivered in a corrupt schoolbook titled History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond, produced by a commercial publishing company that calls itself the Teachers' Curriculum Institute (TCI). The writers of History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond, by relentlessly presenting Muslim religious tales and religious beliefs as matters of historical fact, have striven hard to induce students to embrace Islam.
The heavy indoctrination material in History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond is concentrated in chapters 8 and 9. This material consists overwhelmingly of Islamic religious propaganda. It includes blatant preaching as well as deceptive claims and extensive fraudulent narratives dealing with the beginnings of Islam, the life of Muhammad, and the inception of the Koran. These claims and narratives are disguised as accounts of history. They actually are restatements of Muslim fables and superstitions.
While TCI's book disseminates and endorses Muslim legends and pseudohistorical fantasies in abundance, it ignores history. TCI's writers have scorned historical scholarship, and they have concealed everything that historians have discovered or deduced about the origins of Islam, about Muhammad, and about the emergence of the Koran.
By depicting the dogmas and fantasies of Muslim believers as history, and by simultaneously excluding the findings and deductions of historians, History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond subjects students to a sectarian double-whammy.”
I could go on and on and on, but I'm not trying to write a book here. Suffice to say, if you find that your child is using this textbook, lodge a complaint with your school district, and tell your child's teacher that your child will not be reading this textbook nor completing any of the accompanying assignments. It is your right, as your child's parent, to request a different, more appropriate textbook and assignments. Don't let your child's teacher tell you otherwise. That is your child being indoctrinated, not the teacher's.