His solution is to Abolish History Classes until an adequate remedy is in place.
Leaders in education, politics and other areas gathered in suburban Evanston Sunday to ask that the Illinois State Board of Education change the history curriculum at schools statewide, and temporarily halt instruction until an alternative is decided upon.
At a news conference, State Rep. LaShawn K. Ford said current history teachings lead to a racist society and overlook the contributions of women and minorities.
Before the event Sunday, Rep. Ford’s office distributed a news release “Rep. Ford Today in Evanston to Call for the Abolishment of History Classes in Illinois Schools,” in which Ford asked the ISBOE and school districts to immediately remove history curriculum and books that ‘unfairly communicate‘ history “until a suitable alternative is developed.”
Calls for Censorship
Who gets to decide which history books are unfair?
And what about statues?
Logical Solution
I came up with the logical solution to this problem on July 24.
Let’s just ban statues and be done with it. Books too. I am sure every book ever printed offends someone. Does the word Pizza offend anyone? If so, we need to ban pizzas.
I am really tired of all this nonsense.
Suitable Alternative Needed
We need a suitable alternative to state reps.
How about an outright ban on these overpaid, underworked bureaucrats who are the primary reason people leave Illinois.
It Takes 3 Weeks to Escape Illinois
We escaped Illinois and if you live here you should consider doing the same. We chose Utah.
Bear in mind that It Takes 3 Weeks to Escape Illinois.
Why?
All the U-Hauls are leaving. It takes three weeks to reserve a one-way out of the state.
“Everyone is leaving. No one is coming,” a U-Haul agent told us when we reserved a truck.
Why Utah?
I discussed Utah in my October 5, 2019 post Escape Illinois: Get The Hell Out Now, We Are
Mish
I guess it is too big a problem to solve https://testmyspeed.onl/. Thus, everyone works on trivial problems at the margin.
If you get rid of the history, & books, your virtually, getting rid of the “word – history”! Then, how would you know, what nationality you came from? So, we then, would have no color, no nationality, & we’d be all the same. So, coming from the Rep. Above, BLM wouldn’t matter would it?! Then why fight?
This gentleman is of no importance or relevance. When the pushback comes, it will be hard and will move these radical Marxist egalitarians back to the anonymity that they so richly deserve. To paraphrase Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes when a group pushes a political issue to the brink, they should not be surprised when they find themselves as recipients of an even stronger response.
“It Takes 3 Weeks to Escape Illinois”
The Democratic Party intends to bring Illinois to every state.
A friend of mine in Oregon who was late twenties told me that he was never required to study history. Nor could he read or write in cursive. He did not even know who Humphry Bogart was. So, I doubt that termination of history classes would even be noticed by the current crop of students. Funny yes? How they have disastrous test scores especially in math and sciences yet never hesitate to express a social media opinion on climate change which is a tricky subject even for scientists, or the efficacy of masks in stopping a pandemic which has been studied extensively over the years and found to have virtually no effect on the course of viral epidemics and pandemics, yet suddenly the “science” changed in just the last 4 months.
This guy is just giving parents one more reason to homeschool, as if they didn’t need any more.
I guess you can try to avoid modernity with homeschooling for a while, but eventually those kids grow up and go into the real world. They’ll end up resenting being handicapped with spoon-feeding of right wing propaganda when they see how much it handicapped them in their ability to do business and live in a diverse world that operates very differently from FOX News myth.
Jack,
You’re trapped in stereotypes. Anymore, the homeschool crowd is quite diverse.
Maybe you haven’t noticed it, but woke liberals are getting cancelled, if they say the wrong thing.
My children were homeschooled. They learned a wide variety of material. Both of them were National Merit Scholars. There is a reason why home schooled children tend to do well both in school and after; they have an educational environment focused on actual education, rather than politics.
Yes, there are a few neanderthals who choose homeschooling so as to brainwash their children, or so I have heard, but while I have met many, many homeschool parents, I’ve never met one of those. Every parent that I have met who made the choice to homeschool their children was very focused on giving their children the best, most complete education possible.
You made an excellent choice to do that.
The rich don’t have enough money to support government spending. The poor don’t have it either. The middle class pays until it is destroyed by taxation.
They’re primarily paying by way of being the victims of debasement theft these days.
The propaganda machine has long since realized the propaganda value of “progressive” nominal “taxation.”
That’s how the denizens of the Theft-Racket-on-the-Hudson get to preen around pretending to be “net contributors.”
I’ve always understood that the overarching problem in America is the decline of the middle class. I guess it is too big a problem to solve. Thus, everyone works on trivial problems at the margin.
Pretty much. It’s a combination of people who cannot comprehend the enormity of modern financial crimes and those who cynically avoid the topic to either focus on their pet projects or purposely steer regular people into despising each other.
If anybody believes school history is the biggest problem facing our society, they’re nuts, and the same goes for people obsessed with anything related to religion, race, or other wedge issues.
I believe that school history is the single biggest issue, but only because I value freedom. Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it. Those that don’t understand the value of freedom are doomed to lose it.
We are lucky to have been born and to have lived in a time where freedom has existed, but make no mistake, most people in history have not had freedom. People who don’t know history tend to take freedom for granted, and that leads to the problems we are seeing today, the rise of facsism on the right and and on the left.
“Everyone” with any wealth and power, owes absolutely all they have, directly to the very robbing of that middle class, which has led to its decline.
Both parties, All “leaders”, all “job creators,” all those with any wealth…. Including the members of the teachers’ unions, which are doing their darndest to ensure members of the middle class remain too pliantly dumb and indoctrinated to not recognize this trivially fundamental truism, upon which the entirety of progressivism and financialization is fully, 100% dependent.
The “middle class” was closed to large portions of American society based on the color of their skin and various other characteristics.
Middle class, as well as rich, is open to any American citizen, who puts in the effort.
The Orwellian party is about to create an Atlantis moment.
Or, more accurately: Both idiots-and-idiots-only parties, have to such an extent destroyed absolutely every single trace of anything at all worth preserving in what was once America, that the whole country is just sitting here crying for a Taliban takeover and recivilization. Most are just too dumb to understand it.
John Oliver just did a great piece on this very topic:
I think the representative was trying to attract attention with the title of the press release (which seems to have been somewhat effective), but this is an issue that does indeed need to be addressed.
And it was a fantastic episode.
In the strict sense, everything is history, so if you abolish it, we would know absolutely nothing. Math and Physics are obviously part of the white male power structures. In the end, if we continue in this vein, we will only be able to have lessons about race. What a great way to overwin racism, have everything be about nothing else than race…
Math and physics you can figure out. Then you can use them to build a time machine to go see history.
hmmm this would be in my syllabus https://www.amazon.com/This-Vast-Southern-Empire-Slaveholders/dp/0674737253
numike – I would go back farther than that. We are accustomed to viewing slavery as an American phenomenon. Indeed it goes back to Europe before the US was ever established. It was an Atlantic wide system. If you really want to explore the genesis of slavery my syllabus would be “The Diligent” by Robert Harms.
Much earlier than that and still practiced in Africa, not forgetting the million or so europeans taken along the barbary coast either.
Proposals of this kind are efforts by politicians to remain relevant when they have no useful ideas about how to deal with more immediate problems like the health and welfare of all citizens. I don’t mean to disparage the evils of racial prejudice but there are times when we should attack our problems in order of priority.
Racism and other forms of discrimination have a direct impact on the health and welfare of a large proportion of citizens. Such problems are central to them, in fact.
We can’t even agree on what the news is anymore. Anything that happened more than 20 years ago might as well be ancient fairytales. We are living in post reality reality.
The truth is not arrived at by consensus.
There is a sad truth in what you say. Welcome to the Disinformation Age, where each person can have their own “truth”.
As an Indian-born US citizen, I find it all ironic. My culture in South India was desecrated by invaders from the outside for hundreds of years. Now I go watch a movie on civilizations on youtube and they think civilizations started with Europe and the Middle East. Truthfully, we know the original humans came from southern Africa and migrated north from there but there is also DNA showing that these people got to southern India (which I have in my DNA). Until the idiotic white man stops thinking that civilizations started with him, I as a person who came from the original civilizations of mankind, won’t stop calling it a lie.
Color has nothing to do with what made this country, it was hard work and discipline. your attitude is one of entitlement. Just because you carry the DNA of the cradle of civilization is meaningless. If India was so great you would still be there.
That’s funny. It is actually more meaningful then you will ever know. Go look up which immigrants or even ethnic group are the most productive in America and why they have the highest per capita income of any race. And there is such a thing called migration. You think people started coming here in 1950 ?
Your statement is a picture-perfect manifestation of straight white male privilege. Completely ignorant of the experiences of people outside of that limited worldview.
And embracing the “meritocracy” myth to boot.
How anyone can look at the mediocre-at-best leadership in government and the private sector in this country in 2020 and deduce that “hard work and intellect pay off” is simply emblematic of the power of the meritocracy myth and the hold it has on people. It’s a religion, not an observation.
Why do so many Indians move to Western Cultures ……….and yet very few people from all other countries around the world never consider India as a place they want to live.
Easy. There are over a billion people. Competition for resources is possibly the worst on the planet. Same goes for China.
His model is NOT based on DNA. LOL. It simply is a mathematical model he simplified.
The descendant of the most common ancestor to about 80% of the global population lives in Afghanistan. His blood was actually drawn and verified by the Genographic Project around 2003 as being the superset of the greatest migration of mankind. It wasn’t from just a few thousand years.
It will always be a mathematical model because samples are never complete, nor does it answer who gets to claim being origin of civilisation. As I guess you are looking from the point of view of exclusion then the further back the better, because you cannot have Aryans claiming Dravidian achievements ? That’s fine by me also, my point was to watch how people react when you signal interelation 🙂 .
I think it is widely agreed that known civilisation started after the the last glaciation, around 8000 years ago. In India the Mehrgarh culture (evolving into Indus valley) is among the oldest known, coinciding with Mesopotamian and early pre-historic Egyptian civilisation. The old europeans were not up to much then as far as known so you could say civilisation (organised civil reality) started in the whole middle-east/ north India.
The Dravidian of southern India and say the Vedda of Sri Lanka are not regarded amongst the first civilisations though.
From around 1500 bc on there were migrations, indo-aryan north to south. Near east towards europe from around 1000 bc, indo-european as well to northern europe. I’m not going to argue which culture or people brought what wrt to India, the decline/evolution of Indus valley is disputed.
Even before that in europe was say the Almagra culture, the first shifts to organised society going back to at least 5000 bc, or to 35 000 bc even if you subscribe to the idea that paleolithic evidence suggests forms of organisation that could be described as technical if not of tribal organisation or order. At 5000 bc technology was travelling around the Mediterranean. I mean where do you start ?
Really my point is that no-one invented civilisation, different facets appeared amongst different people at different times. Ideas and technology was shared and then expanded upon. All the directions are common at a base level, which is survival and success. In europe would they have eventually learned methods and technology similar to elsewhere, over millenia ? Probably. Was the first geometric placing of two huts, or the creation of a basic overseen social order the be-all of civilisational origin , had it not occurred elsewhere in different forms at the same time or earlier even?
So the claim to being origin of civilisation is a little far fetched, no matter who is claiming it. What people can do is claim to be more civilised, and the west in aggregate does not nescessarily win there, but when you look at how average people are though, well the west is quite civilised all the same, maybe too much so… is civility what it is made out to be ?
The Indus valley civilisation was apparently long and peaceful though.
Much of the old european population was replaced or add-mixed also, and the culture is part nordic or tribal post-roman renaissance mixed with imported science then expanded on to reach the heights of technology we have today. That does not make western culture better, it is what it is, just as in India you have caste systems and smaller conflicts, so others achieved superiority at various times and conquered, be it arab or british or portuguese etc. Actually Indians and British get along reasonably well for whatever reason, considering.
The relevant issue is not, as in never ever, what other people’s kids are reading. But rather that some taxfeeder is aware whether other people’s kids even exist, much less whether they can read or not.
Understanding all the cultures of the world is certainly important, and much can be learned from them. On the other hand, understanding one’s own culture is of particular importance as well. Thus, in my opinion, all countries should teach the history of the entire world, but they should each include a particular emphasis on their own history, and the problems specific to it. The US certainly has issues where it can improve, but so does every other culture, including India.
More ignorant thoughts coming from the stupid gallery. I wonder how much Kool-Aid LaShawn has consumed
Welcome to anarchism Mish!
Anarchism has exactly zero to do with taxfeeders running their retarded mouths about what other people’s kids should and should not be doing. Had we a proper anarchy, the morons wouldn’t have the faintest idea whether anyone else even had kids. Much less whether any such kids were reading Shakespeare, the Quran or Mein Kampf.
I wasn’t specific enough, sorry. As an anarchist myself, I was welcoming Mish to the idea that we’re all anarchists when it comes to our feelings of government interference in our lives.
I thought my giveaway was writing “anarchism” instead of “anarchy.”
Maybe he could educate his constituents on the history of the Democratic Party as well, the party that supported going to war to defend the right to enslave human beings, the party of Bull Connor and George Wallace.
Don’t forget educating kids about Lee Atwater and the GOP’s white supremacy strategy from the late 1970s, as well as the Republican Party’s opposition to immigration and diversity.
He’s a Democrat wanting to revise “history teachings”, of course he will do everything he can to educate people about the evils of the Republican Party—do you seriously doubt that?
Would you all prefer our children be taught misinformation and outright lies? This is an issue that needs to be addressed – there’s some real crapola being peddled to our children.
History is written by the winners. I wonder what our history books will say about our “pacification” of Iraq.
Get them while they are young!!!
Not true. Confederates wrote lots of history that was BS hence the Lost Cause myth. Japan outright lies about their WWII history to their students.
A lot of the lies and distortions being taught is being pushed by social justice warrior teachers.
The answer to your question for most Americans is “yes.”
The same people mocking the rep for noting that the “history” taught in schools is mostly trite white supremacist propaganda bristle and lose their you-know-what when someone proposes teaching kids about Harriet Tubman, Harvey Milk, Betty Friedan, Larry Kramer, Angela Davis, Malcolm X, and a host of other historical figures who profoundly shaped culture and history.
I have always wondered how Columbus ever got put on such a high pedestal anyway. I don’t blame him for the plight of the Native Americans but for how they got misnamed “Indians” in the first place, because it was a bumbling idiot that sailed in 1492. He’s definitely part of history but seriously, a hero?
“At a news conference, State Rep. LaShawn K. Ford said current history teachings lead to a racist society and overlook the contributions of women and minorities.”
…
State rep, eh?
Just burnishing his resume for higher office by playing to the mob. Once he gets to DC, he’ll be able to line his pocket like the rest.
…
“Everyone is leaving. No one is coming,”
…
Just the productive ones. I’m sure the slackards looking for a handout are still there.
No own comment box, so here…
Spain more upset going on, the retired king who led the country for forty years announces he is leaving the country, is being projected as exile or self-exile by various due to legal and media cases against him. Sad day, he respresents a great deal to a lot of people, and an epoch.
The new king has not his authority or experience. Will be some upset from this, leaves a further power vacuum. Will be seen as attempt at mitigating damage to monarchy, but will also be taken as weakness. Those who are royalist (many) see the cases against him as a low shot, royalty being in a way its own element.
For what a picture is worth, on the left the present king of Spain, on the right anti-monarchy left-wing leader.
Ah, a comment box on this story, still not available on the others Yet.
I agree with you Mish, it’s all nonsense. History can’t be changed. If we don’t have access to it we can’t learn from it.
Edit I didn’t see your above post until after I posted this one.
How many native Indian languages can your son speak? Does he read Arabic or Chinese of Spanish? If not, is it not logical that he reads more English books than Mongolian? If Christopher Columbus had not sailed to the Americas, you would not even exist.
Christopher Columbus didn’t speak English.
Comments are back up.
There was a denial of service attempt on the Maven based on spam comments.
It is possible they need to be taken down again.
Just a little homebrew attempted censorship, no doubt.