Don’t Allow the Tennessee Tea Party to Remove Pieces of History From School Textbooks

Education, Petitions — By Victoria Rosenthal on January 24, 2012 6:42 am

Target: The Tea Party of Tennessee

Goal: To prevent the Tea Party of Tennessee from removing important pieces of history from our children’s textbooks.

The Tea Party of Tennessee has proposed a request to remove certain pieces of history from school textbooks as of January 11th, 2012. Suggesting that it is beneficial to cut out any incidents of slavery and genocide that happened in the United States history is ludicrous. Blocking access to this information via books will not erase history, it will only embarrass those supporting these efforts.

Failure to teach our children the history of our country is not acceptable or fair. It is unfortunate that these events did happen, but it is educational from the standpoint of watching how morals, ethics, and lifestyles changed as our world did throughout the years. This showcases how different our world could be in another century or even just a decade or two. Past generations have been able to learn about this material and understand that these events no longer happen in the same context as they did in history long ago. There are plenty of Americans who are still extremely proud of where they live and where the United States has come from, regardless of how embarrassing it is that we once considered owning other people and killing entire peoples acceptable.

This plan to “erase” history also opens up heated discussion for future censorship of the history of our country. Who will decide what history is acceptable to teach to children and what is not? This is a ridiculous burden that should not even have to be discussed because history happened and the people that live in this country have a right to learn about it.

PETITION LETTER:

Dear Tea Party of Tennessee,

United States history should be left intact, without censorship of specific events simply because you don’t deem it acceptable to teach to children. It is difficult to believe that you considered all the repercussions if this were to actually happen. Textbooks are not the only source of information to students. There are millions of citizens who were educated about U.S. history to the full extent. This information would surely make its way to future generations as well. The internet is also filled with information about just about any topic. Children today are very technology oriented and could easily do their own research only to find conflicting information from what you provide them. Contradicting school and their own findings could be terribly confusing and only cause more problems than simply learning about the events that actually happened in this country.

Do not censor our children to the history of this country. Despite the horrible events that were acceptable in those times, children can benefit greatly from seeing just how much we have progressed from that period in time and how bright this makes the future appear. Enlightenment and education should never be taken away from children.

Sincerely,

[Your Name Here]