ROUND AND ROUND

1984 is alive and well in the West.

I have a passion for history, I taught it at tertiary level, I wrote my Masters thesis on the history of a venerable institution in South Africa and I have read prodigiously about history for over half a century.

I currently teach many forms of history @ homeschooling. 

We have covered ancient history from Mesopotamia to the Post Modern era. 

We have studied the history of medicine from Imhotep to Asclepius to Hippocrates to Galen to James Watson and Francis Crick, we have studied the history of Geography/Geology/Earth  from Erasosthenes to Hanno to Marco Polo to Christopher Columbus to Galileo to Newton to Einstein, Werner Von Braun and today. 

In other words I love history; learning about it, teaching it, living it and it pains me to see how prophetic Orwell was in his denunciation of the impulse within the totalitarian worldview to shape history according to their prejudices. 

When I was a school teacher I noticed many inaccuracies in the Australian history text books, particularly regarding Aboriginal and Colonial times and of the influences behind Western civilisation. 

I have witnessed firsthand the teaching of these 'rewrites' and the way it shapes and often polarises ordinary Australians. As  a result of these observations I started my own research program to investigate such propagandist impulses and was on the verge of starting my Phd. in Education on this issue when circumstances intervened. 

In short I have despaired over the damage done to a subject I love and believe to have incredible importance in the shaping of worldviews, perhaps this is why there has been such an assault on the subject of History. 

This extract is but a tiny part of the continuing attack:

U.S. History textbook, The American Pageant, written by Thomas Bailey, David Kennedy, and Lizabeth Cohen, is also riddled with inaccuracies. That's according to Daniel Oliver, chairman of the board of the Education and Research Institute.

“Almost every other page” has liberal bias, Oliver charged during an interview with Townhall on Tuesday. His "favorite" example, he said, is the book's section on Alger Hiss. It's well known that Hiss was a communist who was supplying information to the Soviet Union, Oliver relayed. He was convicted of perjury in 1948. Yet, in The American Pageant, the authors write that Hiss was being chased by Richard Nixon, a “red hunter,” and that he got caught in “embarrassing falsehoods.”

Oliver calls the description "extraordinary" and "ridiculous." [Cortney O'Brien]

Propaganda disguised as history; unfortunately it is but the tip of an iceberg. Many, perhaps most, certainly a majority of those who have churned through the (academically plummeting) educational institutions over the past 3 decades have imbibed a warped view of the histories that have shaped our culture; Climate history, Natural history, Art history,Western history, Medical history etc....to be frank, I am not sure there can be any reversal of the trend. 

Perhaps the radicals on their long march have indeed won! 

If so they might not want what they finally get, in fact I daresay they will be horribly surprised at the results of their longings for Utopia, if the study of history has any truth to it.

P.S. For those who believe in an earthly Utopia where all things will be 'just great!'...consider that it was in the Garden of Eden that mankind first staged a revolution. There will be no peace this side of the second coming.