Ivy League Conservatives

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Pot, meet kettle. From Sweetness & Light:

A New York-based think tank is criticizing a high school textbook as being “too conservative.” The Center for Inquiry says the book, “American Government,” contains numerous erroneous statements, including one that scientists aren’t sure global warning exists. The center issued a scathing report about the book after a New Jersey high school senior raised concerns about its content. The book is used in some Arizona high schools, and the state Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Horne, says there’s no reason to pull it from classes. “The mere fact that a textbook may have a statement that can be argued about doesn’t mean anything because it’s up to the teacher to present the student with a lot of different sides about all kinds of issues,” Horne said. He added, “I wouild say the claims made for conservative bias are very mild, compared to the liberal bias that I see in most of the textbooks. To the extent it (the book) says that there’s a dispute about global warming, I would say it’s up to the teacher to present the students with the evidence and let the students make up their own minds.” Washington High School teacher Dan Darrow uses the textbook in his advanced placement government class and says, “To say it has a conservative slant, I think is incorrect.” Darrow says it is difficult to find a textbook without some sort of bias “because we’re talking about those issues that drive our society, those issues that are important to our society, that get to the fundamental root of who we are as individuals.” Darrow says he will continue to use the book to prepare students for the advance placement exam “which is what it was written for and what it’s intended for. It gives the basic fundamental ideas of what our government was founded on and what our government is about.” He plans to talk about the controversy with his students. “American Government” was written by John Dilulio, a University of Pennsylvania professor, and James Wilson, the Ronald Reagan Professor of Public Policy at Pepperdine University. The publisher, Houghton Mifflin Co., said it will work with the authors to evaluate the criticism.

Of course the recommended textbook would have included global warming as a proven fact–even though it’s not–so that this next generation will grow up believing it’s true.