Oh, the Textbooks are Already Talking About Trump!

Twitter: @yoalexrapz

So I was on Facebook this morning when I noticed a friend shared this article from Fox news. One of the students is sounding the alarm on how the text book is depicting Donald Trump and his supporters. So let's have a look! 

The book is an advanced placement book called, "By the People: A History of the United States" by James Fraser. (This is a sample text being sent out to schools, it hasn't been published for use as of yet)

Liberal indoctrination in schools has been a big issue in recent years, with parents upset by things like white privilege worksheets, worksheets on Islam, school walk outs that don't seem to accept not all students share the same opinion, etc. The issue is real, the jokes are usually viral, and parents are starting to wonder what to do next. 

Then we hear about this text book. So let's go over some of the pieces the article from Fox quotes.

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"Clinton's supporters feared that the election had been determined by people who were afraid of a rapidly developing ethnic diversity of the country ... They also worried about the mental instability of the president-elect and the anger that he and his supporters brought the nation," the book stated.

Here's the problem. That statement is true. The Clinton supporters do believe Trump supporters are racist and that Trump is mentally unstable and that we are all just angry all the time. The text here doesn't say "Trump is mentally unstable" or "Trump is a blatant racist." I need more context from the book to judge on whether or not this was an opinion, but as is, this is not an opinion... it is fact. The clipping isn't about Trump... it's about Hillary's supporters. 

If we look back all the way to when it became clear Trump was going to be the GOP nominee, you will recall the statements, signs, and other manure put forth by the Clinton supporters. And it's been a never ending volley ever since he won the election. Being a history book, I don't take issue with this statement being in there in a discussion about the election. It was a historic election. And this garbage was a huge portion of the campaign, the election, and the time following. So if they are going to discuss the campaign and all in the book - as they should - then all of that actually does need to be covered because it was such a huge part of the entire campaign. I mean, Hillary called Trump supporters a basket of deplorables. Like it or not, it was part of the campaign. 

The text also classified the president's supporters as "a mostly older, often rural or suburban, and overwhelmingly white group."

Again... this isn't wrong. Hillary didn't bother campaigning in a lot of the "fly over" states that Trump won, and he needed those states to actually win. Hillary was popular in the city hives because cities usually are full of hive mind mentality and usually go liberal. So yes, Trump took a lot of the suburban areas and rural areas. Known fact. 

Pew Research did their own analysis of the 2016 election. While Hillary didn't do as well as Obama did with minority groups, she still got more of them than Trump did. Same with the age. The amount of democratic votes from young people declined in 2016... but she still got a majority of them. The female vote was a lot closer, with something like 46% of voting women voting for Trump. Which is why, I would guess, they didn't include "male" in that statement.

By those statistics, the clip is actually correct. Trump did better with white voters than minority voters, and most of those votes came from non-city voters. It probably could have been worded better with some of those statistics added in, but the fact is that in text book form this would open a rabbit hole where students would want to know the demographics of every election. Without the time or space to cover all of that - and probably because of the lack of records and how invalid those demographics become the further back in history you go - the author chose to just say that Trump's voter base was mostly white and mostly from non-city areas. Not an incorrect statement. 

So while I agree that liberal indoctrination is an issue and we do need to get back to teaching our kids how to think and not what to think, I do believe this particular instance is not, in fact, a sampling of that bias. It was a truth of the 2016 election and recorded fact. You may not like how it was worded or that it was brought up at all, but it doesn't change the fact that it is truth.  

Now. Let's look at the pictures from Twitter, shall we? Because the pace is about to change. 

The highlighted areas:

Slide 1: They were largely white males, more so than any presidential cabinet since Ronald Reagan (speaking of his cabinet nominees) - Yes, this is also a fact, but not one that I think is critical information. Unlike the demographics of voters and the beliefs of the left, this is a statement that doesn't hold much weight on history other than trying to make the case that Trump is racist and sexist, which is an opinion. A good counter balance to this could possibly be that some Hillary supporters turn on minorities and women who support republican candidates, deciding it is OK to toss slurs in these cases, and could be a reason why more minorities and women don't publicly show support for the right. Just my two cents.

Slide 2: The whole second paragraph, I'm not going to type all of that out. You need it all to get the context of the highlighted areas. This is also an opinion. Race relations did not improve under Obama. Many folks think they got worse. And no one ever claimed seriously that it was a "post-racial era." It was during the Obama years that the simple of act of a white person breathing became racist. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, bananas, air conditioning, etc. all became either racist or sexist. This isn't "post-racial." This is "escalating tensions."

The Black Lives Matter section on Michael Brown is also an opinion. It is being depicted in the "escalating tensions" fashion instead of stating facts and letting students come to their own conclusion about the case.  They seem to have left out the part where Michael Brown was trying to get the police officer's gun away from him after having committed a robbery before being shot. The entire thing is written in a way that gives the students only the information they need to form the opinion that this was a race driven act by a racist police force.

Slide 3: Lots of references to the social fabric tearing. Again, not a wrong statement. That was an ugly election. The rest of the paragraph seems to paint a picture of Hillary having been unfairly treated, though, thus losing the election because she was abused. No mention of her lack of campaigning in rural areas or her insults towards just about anyone who wasn't living in big cities. 

We already discussed the highlighted areas at the bottom of the page.

Slide 4: Wow. His "not very hidden racism." Again, this is an opinion. A very biased opinion that a lot of people don't agree with. The highlights on this page seem to be painting a good portion of the USA as being racist and only voting for Trump because they don't like diversity. Because, again, if you don't vote for the democrat it isn't because you don't like their policies of tax them to death and take away more freedoms while convincing them it's for their own good. You must obviously hate anyone who isn't white, Christian, straight, and male. 

Fox went tame on this one and chose to highlight pieces of text that weren't technically untrue or opinion statements. So from their article on it, it seems like this student was being over sensitive. From looking over the rest of this, I'd have an issue with this text book as a parent. Because, as already stated, I would want my children being taught how to think, not what to think. I want my kids learning how to come to their own conclusions, and this text book does not offer that chance. From missing information to outright biased opinion, this is not a text book... it's a current events book that has no place in school as a guideline for education. 

This is, hands down, a liberal indoctrination book. And the parents need to stand up against this. Even if you are anti-Trump, your concern here should be that your children are not learning the all important skill of forming their own opinions and conclusions. Your kid should be doing their own research, not being handed an opinion. And if you are OK with this, then you aren't doing your child any favors. Teach your kids to think. Make them stand behind their own opinions. And don't force feed them an opinion.