“Don’t know much about history…” If that describes your son or daughter and he or she attends Flour Bluff (Texas) High School, don’t get your hopes up that a change is forthcoming.
Corpus Christi NBC affiliate KRIS reports that one parent got a rude awakening when she checked a test her son had taken and found out who the school was holding accountable for the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Kara Sands, the parent, was so outraged over one question (“Why might the United States be a target for terrorism?”) and the “correct” answer (“Decisions we made in the United States have had negative effects on people elsewhere”) that she posted the test on Facebook, where it “spread like wildfire.”
The test covered the content in a unit titled “Remembering September 11. Students received in-class instruction by means of a video distributed by SAFARI Montage and a lesson plan developed by a company called CSCOPE.
The video is unavailable for inspection, but CSCOPE cheerfully provides PDFs of its lessons on its website. Interestingly, they appear on a page devoted to a defense by the company against charges that it promotes Islam and believes the Boston Tea Party patriots were terrorists.
Here is a fictitious “news report” from the lesson on terrorism (which includes information on the Boston Tea Party):
A local militia, believed to be a terrorist organization, attacked the property of private citizens today at the port. Although no one was injured in the attack, a large quantity of merchandise, considered to be valuable to its owners and loathsome to the perpetrators, was destroyed. The terrorists, dressed as natives and apparently intoxicated, were able to escape into the night with the help of local citizens who harbor these fugitives and conceal their identities from the authorities. It is believed that the terrorist attack was a response to the policies enacted by the occupying country’s government.
Here are the follow-up questions:
- Does this event in the news report meet the criteria of a terrorist attack? Why or why not?
- Does anyone know if this act is from a previous time in our history? (It is the Boston Tea Party.)
- Do you think that in the eyes of the British that the Boston Tea Party was a terrorist activity? Why or why not? Were the colonists justified in taking this action due to their beliefs? Is anyone ever justified in committing these types of activities? What drives people to do this type of activity? These are things that we will explore further.
Finally here is the first bullet under the “Explore” section of the lesson, which evidently is meant to provide the lesson’s educational payoff:
Many of you associate 9/11 with the first attack on American soil by foreign interest, but this is really not the case. Why it is deemed such is because of the shock and awe created by the death of over 3,000 people and the destruction of two structures that symbolized the United States predominance in the world. We are going to find out today though about some other events that occurred in the late 20th century that led up to that fateful day in 2001. [Emphasis added]
The first highlighted passage belies the claim that the CSCOPE doesn’t believe the Boston Tea Party patriots were terrorists. More important, however, is the fact that they want teachers (and in turn students) to believe that the actions of the American colonists were not only terroristic but different from the unspeakable carnage and massive property destruction of 9/11 only in degree. The second highlighted section makes it clear that CSCOPE seems to view U.S. “predominance” (another word for “imperialism”) as a causal factor for 9/11.
Meanwhile, representatives of Flour Bluff Independent School District say they stand behind the video but have changed the corresponding quiz because it may have caused confusion. They also maintain that Sands was the only parent to complain about the test, even though her post on Facebook received 1,662 likes.
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