[Mr. Enge is a member of the Carson City School Board. He formerly taught history at Carson High School, Carson City, Nevada.]

Liberal historical myths and misrepresentations are hobbling America to face the dangers of the 21st century. The relationship of the past in framing perspectives of the present to determine the future has never been clearer. At the same time, public schools in our country continue to turn students off to history as a subject, leave them with erroneous and negative views of their rich heritage, and unprepared for the requisite critical thinking skills needed as citizens to defend against clear and present dangers.



The heart of the problem is history textbooks. They are a product of having government in the role as providers of education. It has created an unnecessary, artificial, ideological game in textbook publishing and selection. We should recognize conservatives not only face an uphill battle to have legitimate concerns addressed during the selection process of history textbooks in public schools, but should question the fundamental legitimacy of the flawed assumption that government approval and purchase of textbooks will produce a quality product.



Centralization and coercion are the hallmarks of liberals, necessary to advance their agenda at taxpayers’ expense, while choice and voluntary interactions are their bane and undoing. We need to end the utilization of history textbooks as a vehicle for proselytizing students by propagating the slanted views of what Ann Coulter fittingly and accurately referred to as the Church of Liberalism.



American public secondary education at times resembles Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 world pervaded by circular, nonsensical bureaucratic logic of irrationality. It should not then come as a surprise that history textbooks are reflective of such a disconnected and insulated system where political correctness buries accuracy and image manipulates substance.



A creative middle school textbook, History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond 2005, definition of jihad is an example. It explains, “The word jihad means ‘to strive.’ Jihad represents the human struggle to overcome difficulties and do things that would be pleasing to God. Muslims strive to respond positively to personal difficulties as well as worldly challenges. For instance, they might work to become better people, reform society, or correct injustice.”



This talk show, self-help description of jihad grasps at an obscure, non-conventional meaning to hide its standard and common use as justification for terrorism being blessed by Allah. Jihad by the History Alive! definition sounds like a peaceful progressive movement. Islam’s human rights abuses of women, slavery, militant expansions, conversions by the sword, and massacres are commonly sanitized by public school textbooks. 



In stark contrast, Western civilization, America, Christianity and capitalism are too often portrayed in negative terms by the same history textbooks. Western achievements are ignored or minimized, leaving young minds uninformed and ashamed of their cultural heritage. The liberal penchant for self-loathing is not simply inaccurate, but extremely dangerous when it becomes a running theme for history instruction.



A young Abraham Lincoln pointed out the duties of citizens and the dangers America faced in 1838. He emphasized the blessings inherited from the generation that fought in the Revolutionary War to secure and establish our great nation, obligating his generation to pass this legacy on to the next generation unprofaned. His words are as valid for us in 2008.



Lincoln went on to dismiss foreign invasion as the instrument of destroying America, concluding, “At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”



This is not to advocate “blind” patriotism. Rather it is incumbent upon us to transmit to our posterity the full depth and texture of history, free from the current political and academic fads of trashing and bashing America. Stalin, who knew better than most, explained to H.G. Wells in a famous interview that education was a weapon. Let us not turn it on ourselves.