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KKK Praised in Text used in State-Funded Christian Schools
Nessie a Plesiosaur? Louisiana To Fund Schools Using Odd, Bigoted Fundamentalist Textbooks
Bruce Wilson print page
Sun Jun 17, 2012 at 09:31:01 AM EST
"the Ku Klux Klan in some areas of the country tried to be a means of reform, fighting the decline in morality and using the symbol of the cross... In some communities it achieved a certain respectability as it worked with politicians."- from Bob Jones University Press American history textbook
This 2012-2013 school year, thanks to a bill pushed through by governor Bobby Jindal, thousands of students in Louisiana will receive state voucher money, transferred from public school funding, to attend private religious schools, some of which teach from a Christian curriculum that suggests the Loch Ness Monster disproves evolution and states that the alleged creature, which has never been demonstrated to even exist, has been tracked by submarine and is probably a plesiosaur. The curriculum also claims that a Japanese fishing boat caught a dinosaur.
On the list of schools approved to receive funding through the new voucher funding, that critics warn could eventually cut public school funding in half, are schools that teach from the Christian fundamentalist A Beka Book, Bob Jones University Press, and Accelerated Christian Education curriculum.
What's in that curriculum? Last year, researcher Rachel Tabachnick and I co-produced a 35-minute documentary on the spread of a similar voucher program in Pennsylvania and other US states, titled "School Choice: Taxpayer-Funded Creationism, Bigotry, and Bias". Embedded at the end of this post is an eight-minute video segment from that documentary with scans from material in currently used A Beka Book and Bob Jones University Press texts (in this May 25, 2011 story Tabachnick provides quotes from those textbooks.)
MORE:
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2012/6/17/9311/48633
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/06/17/1100746/-KKK-Praised-in-Text-used-in-State-Funded-Christian-Schools
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Frustratedlady
(16,254 posts)If not, this will help them achieve that honor(?).
Gov. Jindal is such a stalwart champion of smarts.
Loch Ness Monster? Are you kidding? Do they advance to UFOs?
Response to Frustratedlady (Reply #1)
Post removed
Solly Mack
(90,780 posts)"the Great Depression was exaggerated by propagandists, including John Steinbeck, to advance a socialist agenda."
"God used the 'Trail of Tears' to bring many Indians to Christ."
The Wielding Truth
(11,415 posts)
EFerrari
(163,986 posts)Solly Mack
(90,780 posts)"Teenagers studying for the certificate, which is taught in about 50 private Christian schools in the UK, spend half their time learning from evangelical US textbooks. The curriculum is based on the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) programme, which describes its ideology as "Christian fundamentalist".
Jonny Scaramanga, who was a pupil at a school in Bath that used the textbooks, has complained to Naric that the books tell pupils that the Loch Ness monster "appears to be a plesiosaur" and helps to disprove evolution.
The textbooks also state that apartheid helped South Africa because segregated schools "made it possible for each group to maintain and pass on their culture and heritage to their children".
One of the textbooks tells pupils: "Have you heard of the 'Loch Ness Monster' in Scotland? 'Nessie,' for short has been recorded on sonar from a small submarine, described by eyewitnesses, and photographed by others. Nessie appears to be a plesiosaur."
awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)Looks like they are getting a foothold over there, too 
Solly Mack
(90,780 posts)awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)When Canadians tried to emulate us. Now the Brits are doing it.
GarroHorus
(1,055 posts)
spanone
(135,871 posts)coalition_unwilling
(14,180 posts)sad commentary on the current state of affairs.
I've actually had some of these evangelical nutcases tell me with a straight face that radio-carbon dating is just a technique Satan uses to deceive man away from faith.
You can't argue with that type of craziness and so I don't bother trying any more.
freshwest
(53,661 posts)awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)And not 22. It is going downhill too fast.
Curmudgeoness
(18,219 posts)how these students will be able to pass standardized tests.
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)they'll just go on to Bob Jones, or Liberty, or Regent (f/k/a CBN) University, or Patrick Henry College (designed especially for fundie homeschoolers), and from there to the halls of the next repuke administration, a la Monica Goodling. 
drm604
(16,230 posts)Are there any lawsuits protesting this use of tax dollars?
hootinholler
(26,449 posts)Back in the day the KKK was widely popular as a civic organization.
The talk2action link doesn't discuss the context from the text, but judging by the other stuff I can't imagine it being reasonable.
zeemike
(18,998 posts)But that is not something we need to learn about in school....they should be known for their fruits.
And I see no need to include that in a text book for any other reason that to make them seem more acceptable.
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)Kind of reminds me of the fundies not wanting to teach about evolution.
How about we teach kids about everything that actually happened, even if it makes us uncomfortable?
patrice
(47,992 posts)ProgressiveEconomist
(5,818 posts)That statement is "TRUE"??!!
What is the matter with you?
I'd like to think that only the last part of the quote in the OP registered in your mind--that you just skimmed the quote rather than inhale its full stench of genocidal rasicm.
SaB2012
(101 posts)Just as it was true of many groups and individuals in history and today who had and have other, far more unsavory views and goals. That's why I agree that context matters.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)SaB2012
(101 posts)Unfortunately, it doesn't change the fact that these two lines lack context, but are still factual nonetheless. The Klan DID try to reform things and address "immorality," but they failed utterly.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)that the klan were social reformers.
the klan was born in the defeated south & its purpose was to stop reconstruction, terrorize blacks who tried to assert their rights, and return the south to the control of racists, with blacks as indentured labor.
every subsequent incarnation of the klan has had a racial motive.
they are and were a racist terrorist group.
SaB2012
(101 posts)HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)whose history has absolutely no redeeming features.
SaB2012
(101 posts)Thankfully, actual educated, degreed, respected and long-standing historians disagree with you.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)SaB2012
(101 posts)I was thinking more along the lines of accredited universities.
Archae
(46,345 posts)But they couldn't give up their hatred, and their own people did them in thanks to a sex scandal that exposed the money and political scandals.
They tried and failed to reform anything because of these other issues. Pointing out that they tried to reform things hardly qualifies as "praise."
Response to SaB2012 (Reply #27)
Post removed
SaB2012
(101 posts)Defending known history regarding one small aspect of the Klan (an aspect which failed, incidentally) hardly qualifies as a legitimate reason to accuse me of being "a secret apologist for the KKK." Quite frankly, it just makes you look ignorant and inflammatory.
FLAprogressive
(6,771 posts)HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)People who tell themselves they're supporting Americanism when what they're supporting is racism.
RainDog
(28,784 posts)religion as justification for racism. only a racist god would support this bullshit and, if god is racist - then god can't be god, it seems to me.
"the Ku Klux Klan in some areas of the country tried to be a means of reform, fighting the decline in morality and using the symbol of the cross... In some communities it achieved a certain respectability as it worked with politicians."
- from Bob Jones University Press American history textbook
This doesn't seem to qualify as blatant "praise" and having only a couple of lines cited (one partial) smacks of quote-mining. Better to provide at least an entire paragraph to give a better context. I mean, the rest of the paragraph or section may vehemently denounce the Klan's racist activities and if someone from the right points that out, it would make Talk2Action look like chumps at best and dishonest at worst. It would also help to cite the exact name of the textbook.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)Response to HiPointDem (Reply #24)
Post removed
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)immigrant, anti-jews, anti-catholics.
The Klan philosophy of “100 percent Americanism” rested primarily on three attributes: belief in a philosophy of white supremacy; adherence to Protestant or “American” Christianity; and the superiority of native-born Americans.
Given Oregon’s long history of racial exclusion and the fact that almost 90 percent of the state’s population in the early 1920s was native-born, white, and protestant, Klan organizers had little trouble enrolling new members. These kleagles played to the economic, religious, and political concerns of “ordinary” middle-class citizens by stressing the threats posed by immigrant labor, “foreign” religions, and communism.
In addition, the KKK’s militaristic culture enhanced its appeal among members of other organizations structured along strict hierarchical and ideological lines. Recognizing this fact, the Klan organizers directed their initial recruiting efforts at local law enforcement officials, protestant clergy, and members of fraternal groups such as the Masons and the Elks.
http://www.ohs.org/education/oregonhistory/historical_records/dspDocument.cfm?doc_ID=417F3549-9486-7453-D7A35663D4DC0529
"purification of politics" = getting the race-lovers out.
"strict-morality" = no race mixing.
"better enforcement of prohibition" = pandering to the protestant churches that supported prohibition.
the klan was a terrorist, racist outfit from its beginnings and throughout its history. that you're trying to paint it as some kind of social reform group tells me all i need to know.
The Washington State Klan during the 1920s was part of the second of three waves of KKK activity in America. The second KKK was founded in 1915 and gained significant membership immediately following World War I. Though short-lived, it was a powerful anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, anti-radical, white supremacist organization that promoted "100 percent Americanism." The second KKK claimed over 4 million members across the country; briefly dominated state legislatures of Colorado, Indiana, and Oregon; and in 1924 shaped presidential politics and helped pressure politicians to pass the most severe immigration restriction in the history of the United States. Following immigration restriction and a series of leadership scandals, the second KKK collapsed and was largely moribund by 1928.
The second KKK was a mass movement that invoked the memory of and built upon the first KKK, which was a terrorist organization founded by white supremacists in the U.S. South. The first KKK's violent "night riding"-- in which hooded vigilantes used lynchings, whippings, and torture to intimidate recently freed slaves and their white allies -- played a crucial role in the disenfranchisement of African Americans at the end of the Civil War in the 1860s and 1870s and laid a foundation for the rise of Jim Crow segregation in the 1890s and 1900s.
The second KKK also helped train some of the leaders who later formed the third KKK, a mainly Southern organization that rose up in the decades after World War II to murder and terrorize people in African-American communities, particularly civil rights movement activists. Klan members' hoods, white robes, and burning crosses made them icons of American white supremacy and terrorism, and their legacy haunts us to this day.
http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/kkk_intro.htm
SaB2012
(101 posts)that you're trying to paint it as some kind of social reform group tells me all i need to know.
I'm not trying to paint them as anything other than what they were. That YOU are trying to paint me as some sort of apologist for the Klan simply because I am defending one small fact about them is, quite frankly, abhorrent and pathetic. The fact of the matter is that this is what they were in part and all your caterwauling to the contrary and trying to smear me won't change that fact. The Klan DID try to be reformers, but as they were, at heart, a terrorist organization as you very correctly state, they failed utterly.
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)SaB2012
(101 posts)Some things are not quite as simple as some people think they are. It's true that the Klan's activities were largely vigilantism/terrorism, but to ignore everything else they did -- no matter how misguided it was -- does a great disservice to history.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)what are these other wonderful things that they did?
they killed people, they harrassed people, they terrorized people, they helped pass racist legislation & shut down the labor movement in the 20s.
they didn't do anything but evil.
SaB2012
(101 posts)Just take that one phrase and rip it completely out of context. That makes you look oh-so-rational.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)doesn't mean every person in it was a racist/terrorist, just as every person who joined the nazi party was a jew-killer. plenty of people will join murderous groups if it seems useful career-wise -- without having any personal murderous impulses.
that doesn't change the fact that the kkk was a racist terrorist organization & its purpose was ethnic cleansing & keeping non-whites in their place.
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)a racist nor a terrorist, if the only thing the organization does is commit acts of racism and terrorism?
Would you join a murderous organization to further your career? I certainly wouldn't.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)was a segregated society where black people were lynched & murdered for stepping out of line. the kkk was an organization whose purpose was to uphold that order, which the majority of whites supported -- i.e. a racist, murderous order supported by a racist, murderous political group.
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)the new america they're creating.
UnrepentantLiberal
(11,700 posts)
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)
revolution breeze
(879 posts)I had just moved from Los Angeles to rural Mississippi (image a town with no McDonal and no stoplights). That summer the Klan was holding a rally in town. They spent the day in their robes and masks standing on street corners handing out flyers. I was 14 years old and that was one of the most frightening sights I have seen in my life, those men, standing for a "cause", yet they were such cowards they could/would not show their faces. If there had ever been a racist thought in my being, it disappeared at that moment when I saw actual evil and cowardice.
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)they're called "heritage studies"!!
http://www.bjupress.com/category/heritage-studies-christian-school-curriculum
The difference, of course, is that history is reality-based. 
HooptieWagon
(17,064 posts)Sen. Walter Sobchak
(8,692 posts)There is a long running gag between my family and a Japanese family that basically amounts to showing one another the most fucked up things we can find in our respective homelands. After having been taken to a Japanese sex shop I really thought I would never again take back the crown... but this book just might do it.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)patrice
(47,992 posts)that outfit at an extremely expensive little private school that specialized in PROGRAMMING "special needs" kids, but mostly just kept their butts in the seats, and made sure that they took their meds, until they could be passed along.
