{"id":1377,"date":"2005-04-18T17:05:06","date_gmt":"2005-04-18T22:05:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com?p=1377"},"modified":"2005-04-18T15:31:24","modified_gmt":"2005-04-18T20:31:24","slug":"who_writes_the","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/2005\/04\/18\/who_writes_the\/","title":{"rendered":"Who writes the history books?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whoever holds the pen, that’s who. As we’ve all heard<\/a>, there have been lots of protests (some turning violent) in China, over the version of history found in some Japanese school textbooks. As anyone who, like me is a fan of Zinn’s “A People’s History<\/a>” knows, you must always remain vigilant against inaccuracies in history and social studies. Some desis in the D.C. suburbs have been doing just that. As reported in the Washington Post<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n

Fairfax County businesswoman Sandhya Kumar teaches her three daughters about other countries, cultures and religions. She wants them to take pride in their Indian heritage and Hindu faith — and to respect and understand other views. \n
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\nBut when Kumar of Lorton scanned several world history textbooks recommended for Fairfax County schools, she worried that students would come away with a distorted and negative impression of her homeland’s culture. \n
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\n“I thought the American children will think India is some Third World country with pagan beliefs and backward thinking, not a forward-thinking country,” Kumar said. \n
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\nShe and dozens of other Indian American parents launched a campaign to change the way their history is taught in Fairfax, the nation’s 12th-largest school system<\/strong>. Their lobbying has prompted school officials to rethink presentations of India and Hinduism in classrooms and has sparked efforts to develop a more sophisticated and thoughtful curriculum.<\/blockquote>\n\n

So what in particular was inaccurate in the textbooks?<\/p>\n\n

Balaji Hebbar, a George Washington University religion professor who was one of three scholars hired by Fairfax County to review the books cited by the group of Indian parents, said he and his colleagues found few factual errors. But he said the lessons boiled down a complex culture to “karma, cows and caste.” <\/strong>\n
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\n“It’s as if I were making a picture book of the United States, and I took pictures of the bad parts of D.C., the run-down parts of New York City and the smoke stacks of Cleveland and left out the Golden Gate Bridge and the Statue of Liberty,” Hebbar said. “I would be telling the truth, but I would only be telling half the truth.”<\/blockquote>\n\n

The very open and gracious way in which the school district responded to the parent’s concerns is quite encouraging to me, especially in light of all the craziness<\/a> that usually seems to undo the educational system in this country instead of helping it become better.<\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whoever holds the pen, that’s who. As we’ve all heard, there have been lots of protests (some turning violent) in China, over the version of history found in some Japanese school textbooks. As anyone who, like me is a fan … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1377"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1377\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}