Teaching young people about peace is appropriate, and if it is a political agenda...so be it. Also, I currently have a cousin serving in Iraq, and my little sister is being shipped to Iraq next month, and let me be very clear that they would love to send any children they may have to a school that teaches that peace, justice, acceptance, and tolerance are to be normative standards of behavior expected of each individual, which is exactly what the pieces outlined on the website are seeking to do. Is that a political agenda...sure. But more importantly its a humane agenda. Just think of everone in the world received a like education.
But let's be clear, any and all education we receive in the public school system is politically grounded. It is impossible to have a-political education. Our history books are clearly slanted (often to the point where they have questionable accuracy) to portray U.S. history (and world history) from a Euro-centric point of view with little to no analysis of the impacts of genocide, internment, slavery, etc. etc. etc. except as side notes or weakened to a level of passivity that makes it seems as if bad things happened but no one was truly responsible (check out Lies My Teacher Told Me, A People's History of the World, or any of a number of truly excellent books that outline just how political public education really is).
Or how about we stay away from the hot button History class and talk about Math and Science. In Math and Sciences classes our students are taught basically that anything and everything we know about Math and Science was developed by the Ancient Greeks and later Europeans either omitting or dismissing the enormous contributions to math and science by the Arabs, Indians, Persians, Babylonians, Mesopotamians, Egyptians, etc. and ignoring the mathematical advances and discoveries of the Mayas (who, for example invented the 0 during the same period as the Northern Indians did). Astronomy, geometry, calculus, trigonometry etc. would not have advanced without the significant contributions made by non-white, non-Western scholars (in some cases a thousand or more years before Western science stumbled upon...or blatantly took from non-Western science and mathematical discoveries). If you'd like more information on just how broadly non-Western science and math have been dismissed and omitted PURPOSEFULLY please check out the book Lost Discoveries: The Ancient Roots of Modern Science by Dick Teresi, which is an excellent account of just how political our math and science education has been.
So I'm a little confused as to who gets to make the decision about exactly what political agenda is taught in school. And I fully support a secular group that wishes to instill values of peace and justice in our public schools.
-Brandon Lacy -Powderhorn Park
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