Rebecca Klein, education editor of Huffington Post, reviewed the textbooks written for and used in Christian schools and found that they repeated the lies of Trump and the far-right. Because of vouchers, many of these Christian schools receive public funds.
Klein wrote:
Christian textbooks used in thousands of schools around the country teach that President Barack Obama helped spur destructive Black Lives Matter protests, that the Democrats’ choice of 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton reflected their focus on identity politics, and that President Donald Trump is the “fighter” Republicans want, a HuffPost analysis has found.
The analysis, which focused on three popular textbooks from two major publishers of Christian educational materials ― Abeka and BJU Press ― looked at how the books teach the Trump era of politics. We found that all three are characterized by a skewed version of history and a sense that the country is experiencing an urgent moral decline that can only be fixed by conservative Christian policies. Language used in the books overlaps with the rhetoric of Christian nationalism, often with overtones of nativism, militarism and racism as well.
Scholars say textbooks like these, with their alternate versions of history and emphasis on Christian national identity, represent one small part of the conditions that lead to events like last week’s riot at the U.S. Capitol, an episode that was permeated with the symbols of Christian nationalism. Before storming the Capitol, some groups prayed in the name of Jesus and asked for divine protection. They flew Christian and “Jesus 2020” flags and pointed to Trump’s presidency as the will of God. The linkage between Christian beliefs and the violent attack on Congress has since pushed evangelical leaders to confront their own relationship with Trump and their support for the rioters...
Representatives from BJU Press and Abeka did not respond to inquiries about how many schools use their products. However, a 2017 HuffPost investigation found that about one-third of Christian schools participating in private school choice programs used a curriculum created by these two publishers or a similar company called Accelerated Christian Education, amounting to around 2,400 schools. The number of schools using these company’s products that do not participate in a voucher program likely amounts to thousands more. (Voucher programs allow students to use taxpayer funds to attend private schools.) …
HuffPost’s previous investigation of these textbooks found that they also dismiss evolution as junk science, characterize Nelson Mandela as a “marxist agitator” who helped drive South Africa to “radical affirmative action,” and suggest that Satan hatched the idea of modern psychology. Many of the schools that use these books also ban LGBTQ students and families, and the books repeatedly condemn homosexuality. At one point in an Abeka textbook, slavery is described in purely economic terms, saying that “slaves seemed to be better investments than indentured servants.”
“I absolutely thought of these textbooks when watching what played out last week,” Wellman said. “It’s the anti-science culture, anti-elite, the identification of Christianity with military culture.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Christian textbooks echo Trump?
The echo comes after
The word that is stated
If echo were faster
It still would be dated
What happened on January 6th at the Capitol confirms more than ever that we must invest in well funded, quality education that serves all students. The future depends on all of us learning to work together and accept each other. “Alternate facts” and white washed history serve no purpose other than to exclude and diminish anyone that is different. Our society will be stronger if we are more inclusionary, not exclusionary.
PBS has released lesson plans to accompany Amanda Gorman’s inspiring poem which was recited at Biden’s inauguration. One message of the poem is that we need to unite and learn to work together. The title of the poem is “The Hill We Climb.” https://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/lessons-plans/lesson-plan-discuss-22-year-old-amanda-gormans-inaugural-poem-the-miracle-morning/
. . . more right-wing twisted abuse of Christian politics. CBK
“suggest that Satan hatched the idea of modern psychology.”
I kind of agree with this one except that I would replace Satan with snake oil salesmen. Grit, Rigor, empathy training, SEL etc are simply belief systems that someone is trying to sell to the masses and the “experts” doing the “research” are peddling junk science for profit. Psychology is a study….not a science.
LisaM I think our need for the Security and Certainty of the Absolute is a bigger part of the problem. We really have trouble living in the humble and tensional “in-between” where we do know some things, but not others . . . but that’s where we are.
All science, including the human sciences of psychology and sociology, are still young and DEVELOPMENTAL, especially where their philosophical foundations are concerned.
Take what you can, leave the rest behind, and keep open for new and better meaning to emerge, including for education. That’s how science works . . . and human beings are not rocket science. Rather, we are much more complex than that. CBK
All sciences are doubtful, but some sciences are more doubtful than others.
And that some fields can even be considered science is highly doubtful.
Ironically, the folks who speak with the least doubt/greatest certainty are often precisely hose involved with the most doubtful “sciences” (eg, economics)
This is a sad state of affairs, fighting against President Biden’s vitally important effort to achieve a working-together unity in our dangerously divided nation, intentionally or not.
How does seeding disunity achieve, in any way, the goals of education?
Using lies to influence the thinking of young students makes one wonder if any values, other than what they learn at home should be taught in school until students have learned the skill of critical thinking.
Christian schools, violating Christian principles, by using deliberate untruths to teach their young students values by which they are expected to live their lives, is an insult to Christianity itself.
The fact that they are able use public education funds is a further insult, one that should be addressed by the newly appointed Department of Education.
Perhaps the users of these textbooks will mis-interpret them the same way they do the Bible.
How can one know that something is a misinterpretation of a book that was written thousands of years ago by many different people and translated and even rewritten many times?
There are still raging debates about the meaning of the US Constitution about which there is a great deal of known historical context (eg, regarding the people who wrote it).
Much of what is in the Bible has no such external context, so one must rely solely on what is in the book to interpret it.
Christine Hayes puts this really well: “The Bible is not a book. It is a library.” These books were written by many different people over a thousand and a half years and are often later combinations and retellings of earlier texts and oral materials. And yes, with ancient documents, there are issues of interpretation. However, much light can be shed on them by application of historical context from other sources, including anthropology, linguistics, other literature of the time, etc. For example, we know that the serpent in the Genesis story isn’t Satan, however much the Bible-thumping uneducated might think so, because similar stories of the serpent adversary of the central, male god figure were current all over the ancient Mideast and Greece and because the Satan story was a much later development. The same light can be shed on the Biblical texts as on other ancient, historical texts if one subjects them to the same sort of scrutiny. And we know that the Hebrews who created the earliest Biblical texts believed not that there was one god but many, with theirs being the most powerful, and we know this because that’s what the texts actually say if you line the pieces up in chronological order, according to when they were produced. Yes, there are problems of interpretation, but they aren’t as great as one would think if one took seriously not the actual scholarship but the fantasies that people have about these texts.
And they can be lined up chronologically because languages change over time, and one can compare the language of the texts and pieces of texts (in addition to studying event references in them) to figure out when they were produced.
Rebecca Klein’s articles are must read for me. She’s the main reason I check out HuffPo.
What else would one expect from the American Taliban?
I have posted several times. I cannot understand how people who CALL themselves Christians can support Trump who is the antithesis, absolute antithesis of everything that Jesus ever taught? One of the most intelligent students I ever had said something to the effect they major on the minors. For me, that seems to fit.
Gordon Wilder In my view, the so-called religious right has hijacked Christianity . . . and beat it to a pulp that better matches their misshapen, hateful interior lives aka: souls. CBK