As the years go by, younger generations are learning about the horrors of 9/11, just as we all learned about the horrors of Pearl Harbor. Unfortunately, some schools are taking it upon themselves to distort history.
The Belleville (Illinois) News-Democrat reported that a school in Illinois has taken a rather unconventional approach to teaching about 9/11 — an approach that has one parent furious.
“She said, ‘What’s Koran mean?’ and I flipped,” said Rachel Seger, describing how she found out about the school’s lesson plans. “I said, ‘Excuse me?’ and I looked at them, and I said, ‘Oh my God.’”
“Some of these words, I don’t even know what they are: Ayatollah, caliph,” said Seger. “I don’t want her learning other faiths from school. If it would have just stopped at ‘This is their culture; this is where they go to church,’ fine. But when you get into the actual aspect of it, that’s where I’m drawing the line. That’s just going a little too far.”
Seger’s daughter’s vocabulary lesson included “jihad, Islam, Muslim, Arabia, Muhammad, Allah, hegira, mosque, Koran and Baghdad.”
Mark Halwachs, the superintendent of High Mount School, defended teaching about 9/11 in the context of Islam on the grounds that it somehow teaches tolerance.
“We have to present, with 9/11 or anything, it wasn’t a religion that did that. It was bad men that did that. I think you have to take moments like that and use them as teachable moments,” he said. “You have to look at the age group and your students, and to me you can talk about different things in the world and teach about tolerance.”
So teaching about Islam is “tolerance,” but teaching about Christianity is grounds for a lawsuit? That seems reasonable.
Seger said that in-depth conversations about different religions should wait until children are older and can understand what they are being told.
""When it comes to that, some of those terms should have been left off of there, or left to parents, or wait until they’re older. Wait until 16 or 17 and old enough to wrap her head around it. If they’re going to teach it, they’re going to teach all of it, not just the happy, good side of it ... and she’s not prepared to hear the whole truth,” she said.
Remember when teachers used to just teach history, not try to distort it to defend radical Muslim terrorists?
