Secular Talk on Pro-Slavery Textbook Used Today in Arizona Academy School

Unfortunately, school textbooks presenting a rosy, positive view of slavery for American school children do not appear to be a thing of the past. In this piece from 2014, Secular Talk’s Kyle Kulinski talks about the scandal over a couple of books used in the state’s oldest charter school, the Heritage Academy. They’re written by an activist, Cleon Scousy, and called The Five Thousand Year Leap and The Making of America. The secularist activist group, United Citizens for the Separation of Church and State, have complained that it pushes Christian nation propaganda and other Christian religious teachings. It’s been embraced by the largest of the 14,000 or so Tea Party organisations, which has hailed it as ‘a handbook of Tea Party ideals’. Kulinski compares this with the outrage that would be generated by right-wing media organisations, like Fox News, if a left-wing, progressive text book was produced, and was welcomed in similar glowing terms as ‘a handbook of progressive ideals’ from a left-wing organisation. The right-wing radio and TV host, Glen Beck, has also endorsed it, which Kulinski also points out should be a red flag to progressive activists and lawmakers. Beck’s extremely right-wing. He’s known for hysterical rants and breaking down in tears, because atheist pagan Socialists are coming for American freedom, and are about to put all good Christians in concentration camps. He’s stunningly bonkers.

Critics of the books have stated that it presents a very racist view of American history. Covering the American Civil War, it argues that slavery was beneficial for the slaves, and that racism only began with the incursion of Northern troops and their demands for equality for the slaves. Kulinski dispels the idea that this could just be a hostile interpretation of an ambiguous text by quoting a passage from the book that states that if coloured children ran about naked, it was from choice, and when the White boys were forced to put on shoes and go to school, they often envied the freedom of their ‘coloured playmates’. The book also blames the North for the Civil War, calling it ‘the War of Northern Aggression’. Kulinski is naturally outraged, and responds by saying that this is well beyond what is or should be acceptable, stating that perhaps the American Civil War should be ‘the War of Slave-Masters’ Aggression on their Slaves’, and pointing out that the North was justified in coming to put an end to it.

Kulinski argues that books like this are handicapping America’s children. By presenting such false views, they help to create a situation where America won’t get the patents her industries demand and the technical and scientific advances the country needs, and where its infrastructure will fall apart, as it’s doing now. America’s heading for the kind of dystopia portrayed in the film Idiocracy, where everyone in a future America is monumentally thick.

I don’t agree with all of his Kulinski’s comments. I went to a church school, and so don’t see anything particularly wrong with schools offering a Christian education to parents, who want it. We also had some excellent science teachers, so I can honestly say we were not stopped from appreciating science or studying it, including evolution. But this is a much more controversial issue in America, where Creationism is far more popular than over here.

But Kulinski is nevertheless right about textbooks like these damaging children’s education. It presents a racist view of American history as normal and beneficial, and so prevents the development of a truly just, multiracial society based on equal rights and justice for all, regardless of gender or skin colour. And extreme right-wing politics, which stress the importance of private enterprise over the state, are damaging the nation’s infrastructure through lack of investment.

I find it truly horrifying that such a view could still be taught now, in the 21st century, and am worried that some of the right-wing nutters over here will try to import such racism into our political discourse.

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Tags: 'Secular Talk', 'The Five Thousand Year Leap', 'The Making of America', American Civil War, Charter Schools, Christian Nation, Christians, Church Schools, Cleon Scousy, Creationism, Fox News, Glen Beck, Heritage Academy, Kyle Kulinski, Multiracism, paganism, Private Enterprise, Schools, State Infrastructure, Tea Party, Textbooks, United Citizens for Separation of Church and State