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TO A FRIEND
Revising history,
Censoring BC/ADBy Julie M. Quist
The alert parent may notice textbooks replacing the dating acronyms BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini, Latin for "in the year of our Lord") for the soul-less BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era). That’s a colossal cultural shift.
That shift is a case study in the new centralized education system, set in motion in 1994 with the passage of the federal “Goals 2000: Educate America Act.” The 10th amendment prohibits federal involvement in education. We catch a glimpse of the Founders wisdom as we ignore and violate it, and as a federal education system takes form, gains power, and subsumes independent schools.
School board candidates weren’t elected to eliminate the centuries-old dating system. What’s a Common Era? It’s an empty phrase manufactured to strip us of our priceless heritage – the historical fact of the birth of Christ as a central point in human history.
The National History Standards introduced BCE/CE when they debuted in 1996 with federal funding and in response to Goal 3 of Goals 2000, “Students will become competent over challenging subject matter…in history.” When Goals 2000 passed, government suddenly had authority to define “challenging subject matter.”
The History Standards, the Federal Curriculum, weren’t well received in 1996. In fact, the ensuing controversy caused an uproar that resulted in the U.S. Senate opposing them on a vote of 99 to 1, calling them un-American. That vote would slow the standards down by about ten years, Diane Ravitch of the Hoover Institute lamented.
Ten years later states are adopting the Federal Curriculum into their state standards, and publishers are inserting them into textbooks.
A lesson to nonpublic school parents: Ignore public education at your peril. When public schools have adopted BCE/CE, your children will also lose their heritage. You have a personal stake in public education.
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