Last week, we learned that American students aren’t exactly excelling when it comes to learning history. The National Assessment of Educational Progress found that young people in the U.S. are actually less proficient in American history than any other subject.
Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum thinks he knows the source of the problem.
“How can we be a free people? How can we be a people that fight for America if we don’t know who America is or what we’re all about? This is, in my opinion, a conscious effort on the part of the left who has a huge influence on our curriculum, to desensitize America to what American values are so they are more pliable to the new values that they would like to impose on America.”
Well, that’s quite a conspiracy theory, isn’t it? Those rascally leftists got together, decided to impose “new values” on the nation, and determined that the best way to smooth the transition is to weaken school curricula and make students ignorant about American history.
I’m not sure whether to be annoyed by the nonsense or impressed with Santorum’s creativity.
In either case, it’s worth keeping in mind that it’s right-wing activists who seem eager to re-write history curricula, downplaying the parts of reality Republicans don’t like.
Judd Legum added, “As ThinkProgress has repeatedly documented, the right-wing is systematically manipulating and distorting history textbooks to match their ideological agenda.”
Maybe this is an example of inadvertent projection on Santorum’s part?
