February is black history month. You may only be dimly aware of this fact, but if you have children in school, they probably are acutely aware of it.
Indeed, black history month is one of the shrewdist ideas the American left ever concocted. That’s because, although most school systems don’t start teaching American history per se until around the fifth grade, black history is taught every February from first grade (if not earlier) on.
This means that before children learn about America’s incomparable positive history, they have the worst aspect of our history drummed into them. Thus, school children are left with the clear impression that the central fact about America is an evil one — slavery and its awful aftermath. By contrast, most parents probably believe, as conservatives do, that the central facts about America are overwhelmingly positive — e.g., our status as the first and foremost constitutional democracy and our several triumphs over dark European forces.
Thanks to black history month, among other leftist distortions, most parents may have quite a different view of America a generation from now.
If my experience with the public schools is typical, there is only one remedy — teach American history to your children and start doing this when they are very young.
UPDATE: In honor of black history month, I’ll re-post this Mirengoff family story, regarding the odious Mary Frances Berry:
When my older daughter was in the sixth grade, she asked me for information about Berry. She needed to write a report on a major contempory African-American figure for black history month, and her teacher had suggested Berry as a subject. I responded, disingenuously, that it might be difficult to find much information about Berry, but that Alan Keyes (then running for president) would be on C-SPAN later in the evening. After listening to a typical Keyes oration, my daughter concluded it would be foolish to write about anyone else. I wonder how many school children ended up writing about Berry after being led to believe that she was some sort of latter-day Rosa Parks.
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