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Thursday, November 15, 2012

High Schools Teaching The War On Terror | toteachornototeach

High Schools Teaching The War On Terror | toteachornototeach:


High Schools Teaching The War On Terror

High Schools Teaching The War On Terror: 
The Atlantic Looks At A History Textbook 

What kids learn in school tends to change with the times, and some curricular regulations that are either antiquated or simply embedded in beliefs have raised eyebrows across the country as of late.
Yet regulation aside, in a layer of education that reaches students firsthand, is the textbook: the student’s omniscient manual in any given subject. Because these books dictate student knowledge and can shape perspective, their contents are sometimes the source of controversy. In Louisiana, for example, one commonly used textbook teaches students “the accumulated wisdom of the past from a biblical worldview.”
And while September 11 is a recent memory that many still live with, the attacks are a distant reference to schoolchildren today. As the event and its subsequent war have become “recent history,” The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf took to examine how high schoolers are learning about 9/11 and the years following.
His general findings: the threat of terrorism can be eliminated, the Patriot Act was not controversial and Iraq had