Teach Your Children History

I am reading an article entitled teaches your children history, and I could not agree more. True story, my oldest daughter is entering 8th grade, she just finished seventh, in the school district we live in, 7th - 9th grade is junior high. My daughter (I know, dad, paybacks) is what I like to refer to as the most ‘tree-loving hippie” you have ever meet. Take all of my political views and reverse them and you have my oldest daughter. Some examples of what I mean:

When packing for a school camping trip, I purchased “bug spray”, since I know that during the time of year -- she would be eaten alive by mosquitoes -- as she was packing her bag she proudly held up the can in the air and said, “Mom, first of this is an aerosol can -- hello -- ozone layer…. And I am not going to go into the bug’s home and kill them.” You can image the look on my face!

When debating war, my daughter brought to my attention that if we do not take care of the land we have and not worry about bombing other people, then we will not have any trees or wildlife and we will not have a land to defend

She loves all, sensitive, and when she is not planning a career of teaching, she is going to go to school to be a vet. -- you get the picture.

Back to my story, she is in Social Studies in 7th grade; she comes home and poses the question, “I want to know when white history month is”. My response, of course, “you should ask your teacher.” After sitting down and finding out where this came from, which I think is important -- you know talking to your kids… It seems that this was during Black History Month, and a week during the month -- they devote their studies to Celebrate Diversity Week (where not only do they have the students fill out a packet (appx 30 pg ) of garbage, they have people from different cultures come in and share w/ the students (of course cultures -- other than white).

My daughter did ask, and she was asked to stay after class, and threatened detention for being “smart”. Now, you know that I of all had a huge problem with that and addressed the teacher; he informed me and my daughter that they celebrate or study white history a majority of the time and that this is time set a side for the other contributors.

My daughter didn’t let it die, she had a slumber party a month later and they were playing a game where everyone put in a question anonymously and when drawn, they all write down their answers and they are read out loud. I was making dinner while this took place in the living room, so of course was paying attention, not even aware of the question that my daughter put in the bowl. The answers that the other “white” girls gave were alarming:

“We don’t deserve our history, we were mean to others”
“Our history sucks”, was given twice.
“Others history is more important ‘cusp we took the Indians
land and had slaves”
“There is a white history month”

Pretty sad, it is time that you may want to teach your children history of our country and make sure that it isn’t re-written history being taught to your children.