“The Appallingly Bad History Taught at Fundamentalist Schools”

Among the several blogs that I follow is William Trollinger’s Righting America: A Forum for Scholarly Conversation About Christianity, Culture, and Politics in the US.

His most recent post, titled “The Appallingly Bad History Taught at Fundamentalist Schools,” is a review including brief excerpts of a new book  by Kathleen Wellman titled Hijacking History: How the Christian Right Teaches History and Why It Matters (Oxford, 2021).

Here is a brief excerpt, but I encourage you to look at the blog — or, better yet,  buy the book — to see the long list of shocking, Right-Wing punditry that passes for “objective” American history in far too many private, Christian schools:

If you know anything about history, this post will make you laugh and/or cry.

And/or make you angry. 

And the latter emotion is particularly appropriate.

In her book, Hijacking History: How the Christian Right Teaches History and Why It Matters, Kathleen Wellman (Professor of History at Southern Methodist University) reports on world history textbooks produced by Abeka Books (published by Pensacola Christian College), Accelerated Christian Education [ACE], and Bob Jones University Press [BJU]. These textbooks are popular among fundamentalist homeschoolers and are often adopted at fundamentalist Christian schools. 

For example, the Answers in Genesis K-12 school, Twelve Stones Academy, uses the BJU text.

Wellman heroically examines these texts in great detail. Why did she subject herself to such a painful task? As she notes in her introduction, these fundamentalist textbooks

have an influence that has extended far beyond the confines of fundamentalism . . .  Their views, as indeed the textbooks insist, increasingly define American Christianity. These curricula’s narrative of Christian history has been grafted onto right-wing political and economic positions. And right-wing political interests have promoted these views. (2)

Here are just a few examples from Hijacking History:

• “These textbooks label [ancient] Africa the Dark Continent . . . ‘the fear, idolatry, and witchcraft associated with animism’ [Abeka text] prevented African economic and cultural development” (74).

• “The Abeka curriculum claims the Greeks made no progress in science, even though Greek scientific works set the standard for virtually every science for over fifteen hundred years . . . [More generally, Greek] civilization was fundamentally flawed, and their efforts ultimately produced no benefits.” (83)

Click here to see the entire post.

The continued replication of the repulsive racist, colonialist, imperialist trope describing Africa as “the Dark Continent” illustrates both the longevity and the currency of a western imperialist mindset in certain sectors of American society.

Furthermore, aside from the fact that the African continent was once populated by thriving, complex, urban-centered civilizations, I am stunned to discover that there are history textbooks asserting that the ancient Greeks never produced anything of “any benefit”?!

My, oh my.

No wonder Donald Trump has hoodwinked so many conservative Christians in

this country (many of whom are heavily invested in the Christian school and home schooling movements).

No wonder many parents are raising a ruckus and protesting at local school board meetings against Critical Race Theory and multiculturalism in the classroom.  These are the families fleeing public schools for the same Christian academies and home school networks now using horrible history texts.

And the dumbing down of America, particularly American evangelical-fundamentalism, continues unabated.

We are well into the dark ages of American cultural history.

Thucydides could teach them all a thing or two about history, while a little time with Aristotle could help them learn how to use their minds.