This dad doesn’t actually say that he does not want his daughter to know that Muslims are real, but he did say that he doesn’t want his daughter to learn about Islam because it is “a faith he does ‘not believe in.’” He refuses to allow his daughter to do the assignments in her word history class even though she will receive zeros on those assignments (see Gazette.net). Wow! That’s just what we need: more ignorance!
History News Network | Review of Edmund Fawcett’s “Liberalism: The Life of an Idea”.
It is unfortunate that most Americans are unaware of how important government support of science and technology was to the Founding Fathers. I have not read Tom Shachtman’s book Gentleman Scientists but it’s on my list of must reads. At a minimum, I hope this book is successful in bringing attention to this important subject. If any of you have read it please let me know what you think.
At the History News Network, Robert Zaretsky argues that the popular perception of history as “a how-to manual for avoiding past errors” is mistaken. In practice applying the “lessons of history” has rarely been successful. False analogies, faulty interpretations, and inadequate understanding of the past and present all contribute to the problem. Zaretsky points out, correctly I believe, that we turn “to the past for platitudes that parade as lessons.”
Despite his pessimism concerning history lessons Zaretsky still believes that history can be a useful guide in the present. Instead of turning to history as “a how-to manual,” Zaretsky believes that it is the stories offered by history that are valuable. Stories of the past, he insists, “offer, in effect, exercises in political and moral judgment.” As an example he turns to the lessons learned from Barbara Tuchman’s book The Guns of August by John F. Kennedy. According to Zaretsky, it taught Kennedy “that the greatest danger a political leader could run in time of crisis was ‘a mistake in judgment.’”
History News Network | What Can We Learn from History?.
History Chick in AZ 