Reference is made to my recent posting on the Fountain Valley (Ca) School Board meeting in which objections were made from the community to a particular textbook that gave a sanitized representaion of Islam to 7th grade pupils. Below is a letter to the editor of the Orange County Register newspaper from Mr Al Rowley, who wrote the previously-mentioned report. It is not yet known if the paper will publish Mr Rowley's comments.
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Editor: The reason this letter is late is because it has taken until today to obtain access to the FVSD's Board Policy regarding Supplementary Instructional Materials
AR
Re: Trustees won't use Islam Supplement: (July 24)
At their July 22 board meeting the Fountain Valley School Board rejected a brief supplement developed by the Advisory Council of "Textbook Alert". This is a group of college and university professors who are concerned about the mis-information regarding Islam contained in all of the nation's Grade 7 History and Social Studies Texts. There are a number of reports from very reliable sources that the information about Islam in these textbooks has been sanitized and propagandized. U.S. school children are first introduced to Islam and Islamic history in their seventh grade history course..
Eighteen speakers addressed the Board during the "public comments" phase of the meeting. Only one, a high school football coach, spoke against the Resolution recommending use of the supplement, but even he stated he "loved" the supplement but he just didn't think it necessary. A significant number of those who addressed the Board on July 22 were immigrants from Islamic countries, some ex-Muslims, some non-Muslim minorities. Each passionately warned the board about the dangerous mis-information about Islam which is being implanted in the minds of our children from textbooks which make false claims about Islam.
As reported by the Register on July 24, all five board members declared that the Board simply did not have the authority to accept supplementary materials which have not been adopted by the state. This is absolutely not true. There is no requirement that "supplementary instructional materials" such as this supplement must be state reviewed, endorsed, or adopted. We think they deliberately lied to try to evade any accountability for rejecting the supplement.
We have finally been able to obtain a copy of Fountain Valley School District 's Board Policy 6161.11 which addresses “Supplementary Instructional Materials”. It says, "The Board of Trustees encourages teachers to use supplementary instructional materials which are relevant to curriculum objectives and compatible with district goals and objectives". There is no statement that such materials must be state approved, because this is simply not the case. There is a warning that if a teacher thinks the material may be in conflict with district criteria that they should confer with their principal. There is also a warning against using copywrite-protected material without permission.
Why, we wonder, would the FVSD Board reject a reliable and accurate supplement which would correct untruthful information about Islam and supply important missing information...especially in light of a preponderance of evidence that the textbook information is in error and has been propagandized?.
Are these Fountain Valley School Board members afraid to face pressure from the Muslims among us? Are they so deeply committed to the "multiculturalism" which results in our inability to distinguish between right and wrong and good and bad? Or do the board's curriculum objectives and district goals actually include mis-educating our children and concealing the truth from them?
Or Is it because of their 17 year history of providing office space to the Council on Islamic Education which is widely recognized as the principle agency which has brought about the Islamization of America's textbooks. This Council, recently renamed the Institute on Religion and Civic Values, currently occupies a suite especially created for it on the second floor of the District’s administrative center in Fountain Valley. This, incidentally, is a relationship many feel is entirely inappropriate.
Al Rowley
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Comment: Mr Rowley brings up an important point as to why the Council on Islamic Education, now renamed the more inocuous-sounding Institute on Religion and Civic Values, is occupying office space in the school district's administrative center. If you Google the Institute of Religion and Civic Values and the Fountain Valley School Board, you will see that their address is the same in Fountain Valley. This, in my view, is an inappropriate relationship.
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10 comments:
The parents who object to the use of this textbook do have one option available for them, keep their children home until either the offending textbook is removed or the supplement is adopted.
This is a simple method of economics. The schools lose money for each day a child is out of school. A boycott like this could bankrupt the district.
This is also effective against Teachers Unions.
Reliable and accurate supplement?
It sounds like just another piece of unbalanced propaganda, which satisfies those who wish to demonize Islam, but not those who want the entire story, the good, the bad, and the ugly, warts and all, renaissance of art and science, anti-Jewish and sponsoring the flourishing of Jewish culture, the whole story.
Textbooks and supplements shouldn't draw the conclusions for students at all. It should provide a framework for students to do independent research projects in libraries, and provide a variety of perspectives, with the teacher demanding references, bibliography, sources.
Better yet, let's just abolish text books.
Islamic Infiltration and Subversion of Western Education: http://crombouke.blogspot.com/2010/01/islamic-infiltration-and-subversion-of.html
Siarlys,
You mention those who wish to demonize Islam. I have just read an eloquent piece by a Muslim apostate which I am conidering cross-posting. It reminds me that we should differentiate between engaging in honest discussion and criticism about Islam and being hateful to those who are Muslims. I think there is a difference.
Better yet, let's just abolish text books.
I can get behind this. Maybe the math department would want to keep theirs though. I can say that the English lit textbooks are crap - with a few good stories interspersed. A lot of the stuff is just "excerpts", which in my mind is useless.
What would we do without people like Al Rowling who go over these books, do the research, and take the trouble to get the supplements and go to the school board meetings and write to the editors and so on? It really bugs me that the school board and the newspapers are so oblivious and simply ignore the complaints.
I am really grateful for people like him (and Gary who does the same thing).
Without people like Al Rowling we could get on with educating our kids.
As for "those who want to demonize Islam," I refer to anyone who argues that terrorism, enslavement, and dictatorship are inevitable and inherent in the Islamic faith. These are evils every religion has shown susceptibility to, based on part on an interpretation of religious texts, and in part on absorbing local cultures and past practices from "the world."
Siarlys,
Without people like Al Rowley, these practices would go on in the dark without public knowledge.
You are corret that other religions have their dark chapters and verses that are troublesome. Yet, today, there is only one major religion that is engaging in violence worldwide and killing people in the name of that religion. It has to be dealt with, hopefully by decent Muslims, but if not, we have to act in self defense. How can we defend ourselves if we don't recognize and acknowledge the threat?
"today, there is only one major religion that is engaging in violence worldwide and killing people in the name of that religion"
Wrong on two counts.
First, Islam is not engaged in violence worldwide. A rather small cadre who claim to speak in the name of Islam, who are loathed by millions of Muslims, is doing so. I would equally point out that the Crusades were not evidence that "Christendom is engaged in violence worldwide and killing people." After all, when they took Jerusalem, they killed every Christian who had been peacefully living there under Islamic rule.
Second, a substantial number of Hindus, many of them well connected to the second most powerful and sometimes ruling party of India, engage in similar violence and pogroms against Muslims. I mean, Muslims who voluntarily CHOSE to remain in India, rather than join the lemming migration to Pakistan, who live hundreds of miles from Srinagar or the Pakistani border.
Come to that, no major religion in the world is more inherently racist in its most fundamental precepts than Hinduism. But, I have known many very gentle Hindus who don't practice such racism at all.
Now, shall we pin the atrocities by "The Lord's Resistance Army" in Uganda on Christianity as a faith? I didn't think so. I wouldn't either.
Siarlys,
In all honesty, I don't know much about the Hindus, but if they are engaged in violence against others-Muslims, isn't it confined to India? I don't hear about Hindus engaged in international terrorism.
Sorry if I seem to single out Muslims in your view, but if you are trying to argue that there is nothing unique about Islam in the world today, you can't win that argument. Yes, Christianity (Catholics) engaged in the crusades and the Inquisition, which was bad. The point is that these things are ancient history. Christianity went through the Enlightenment and had a Reformation, which Islam did not. For the umpteenth time, I concede that most Muslims are not involved in violence, yet Islamic terror and hatred is a worldwide problem at the present time. Personally, I would like to see the good Muslims rise up and eliminate the bad actors. (and I don't much care how they do it.)
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