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Title: History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond: with student notebook
ISBN: 158371376X
Author:
Bert Bower
Publicate Date: 2004-01
Publish: 2004-01
List Price: $46.00
Average Customer Rating: 2.0
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $49.95
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $38.00
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| Customer Review: |
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1: What about Special Education...?
I am a Special Education middle school teacher, and am struggling to use this adoption with my students - all of whom, in addition to struggling with visual/auditory processing and attentional issues, are significantly below grade level in reading.
Every week I have scavenged through the T.E., workbooks, and textbooks, looking for something at an appropriate level for my students... and every week I've had to spend hours modifying the content so it is comprehensible.
History Alive! does have some good points, and the experiential exercises are fun and meaningful if you have the prepatory/in-class time, and a big enough group of students. Although, in order to fully benefit from the hands-on exercises (i.e. see the "big picture" and actually retain information) students must understand the content of a particular chapter. The fault is not entirely with History Alive - my district clearly did not make a great choice about this sort of a History adoption for Special Ed.
This curriculum offers VERY little in the way of differentiated instructional support. At several points while reading the T.E., I've come across a little icon instructing me to go to page # __ for differentiated instruction. When I look at this section that's supposed to give me ideas about modifying content for Special Ed, ELLs, and below grade level readers, here's essentially what I get - "Frontload the vocabulary prior to starting the chapter."
Are you kidding me? Any good Special Ed teacher does not need advice to frontload vocabulary - it is a given! Though I don't expect any adoption to solve all of my problems or be effective for all of my students, I am quite disappointed by the extremely limited resources that History Alive offers.
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2: Lies, Lies and More Lies...
The reality of this book and its contents is that it contains LIES, not facts about Jews, Jesus and Christianity. Jesus was not a Palestinian. He was Jewish.
Interestingly enough, if people REALLY knew what Islam teaches (including Mr. Swing who apparently does not), they would be shocked to learn not only what the tenets of that religion are, but what devout Muslims are looking forward to: a world that is completely ruled by Islam and anyone who does not convert to it will be eradicated.
All it takes is to read the Quran, which is 114 chapters. Parts of the Hadith Literature should also be read through as well, in order to get a good overall picture of the type of bigotry, bias and hate-filled vitriol found within. Islam has no patience with anyone who is NOT Islamic. The outright lies and distortion of facts in this particular textbook speak for themselves about Islam and have absolutely NO reason to be in a classroom where the contents are presented as fact. It is far from being the peaceful religion that Muslims would have an unsuspecting world believe.
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3: Islamist Propaganda - Wake Up America to What Our Children Are Being Taught!
I recently spent several hours closely reviewing the Islamic content of this 2005 California Middle School textbook "History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond" published by Teachers' Curriculum Institute (TCI).
I was shocked, appalled, and outraged by the politically correct distortions, inaccuracies, propaganda, and outright lies and that I read! The text painted a rose colored picture of Islam and the Prophet Muhammad and failed to cover any of the negative aspects of Islam such as the fact that it contains a radical Islamist ideology that has declared war on the West and whose stated goal is total world domination (History is repeating itself - Islamofascism is more dangerous that Nazism of the mid-20th Century) under an Islamic Caliphate.
I concur wholeheartedly with Ms. Lappen's accurate and timely review and assessment of this textbook. All Americans should be outraged about this whitewashed version of Islam that is being taught to our young and impressionable children! Moreover, I find it very disturbing that TCI and the California state school system have facilitated the targeting of our children with this propaganda under the guise of education.
I applaud and support Ms. Lappen for having the courage to speak out on this issue of great importance to our national security. - Concerned in California
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4: It takes a propagandist to understand propaganda
I am a social studies teacher in North Carolina and use this textbook in my class. I teach sixth grade, so I only touch on the subject of Islam in my curriculum, but I have found this book to be an excellent resource and teaching tool. To use the textbook properly and to understand what it teaches, one must take the History Alive! training. I had that training two years ago and fell in love with this book. I have done lots of begging and borrowing to get a class set of these books and the supplementary materials for my students. I do teach an introductory unit on the five major religions and use this book as a resource for that. I do not believe that a middle school textbook is the place to go into the fundamentalist sects of the five major religions, but rather a place to teach the basic beliefs of the mainstream followers of each religion. Important terms and beliefs are treated properly in the History Alive! textbooks, from Hinduism to Islam and everything in between. For any reader who is concerned that this book contains propaganda, I would caution you to do your own research and understand that to focus on Islam in terms of terrorism would in itself be propaganda. If we are to look at Islam in terms of terrorism, we should also examine Christianity, Judaism, and all other religions in terms of fundamentalism and terrorism. I have found all TCI products to be very straightforward and fact based. Please consider this textbook and its supplementary materials for use in your classroom if you are a teacher.
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5: Pure propaganda
In recent years, the both the American Textbook Council (ATC) and The Textbook League, respectively, have documented bias and evasions in world history textbooks on the subjects of militant Islam and Islamic terrorism. Of particular note is ATC's piece, Islam and the Textbooks. Critics agree that grammar, middle and high school textbooks misrepresent Islam past and present. They contain fallacies and untruths about jihad, sharia, slavery, status of Muslim women, terrorism, and tolerance.
Textbooks make no distinction between sharia and Western law, and pretend that women are making great strides in the Islamic world, when all evidence indicates otherwise. Social studies textbooks ignore the global ambitions of militant Islam. They fail to explain that Muslim terrorists seek to destroy the United States and Israel. They omit geopolitical goals that include theocracy and world domination by religion.
This book is no exception. Like many others, its crafting was guided by Islamic organizations that manipulated the system to get the publisher to advance their Islamist agenda. As the ATC notes, for years, publishers have ignored -- "stonewalled" -- those who have pressed them about motives, funding, legal status, and strong-arm tactics on the part of their Muslim "consultants." Because of these issues, a controversy is swirling around this relatively new seventh grade book in the California schools. As yet, it remains unclear whether California schools and textbooks will correct Islam-related errors and tell the truth about terrorism or succumb to the potent Islamist lobby.
This history text was piloted in Scottsdale, Arizona. But there, the school district pulled the book from classrooms in April 2005 after parental complaints about its Islam-related content, according to the East Valley Tribune.
The privately held, Palo Alto-based Teachers' Curriculum Institute is hard at work in the lucrative California textbook market, promoting its status as a local company, good for California's economy. But according to ATC, "The student edition is an ill-written product printed on the cheap" with amateurish accompanying materials. The workbook is an example of those exceedingly poor "accompanying materials."
The book's front matter credits Ayad Al-Qazzaz as its chief author-advisor on Islam. A professor of sociology at California State University, Sacramento, Al Qazzaz is a Muslim apologist and, writes ATC, "a frequent speaker in Northern California school districts promoting Islam and Arab causes." He also co-authored the Arab World Notebook, issued by the Arab World and Islamic Resources (AWAIR), "an opaque, proselytizing 'non-profit organization' that conducts teacher workshops and sells supplementary materials to schools," according to ATC.
In other words, in this book, TCI is peddling "dictation from Islamist sources."
Copyrights prevent me from extracting large sections of the book here, but the ATC reproduces portions of its lessons on "Jihad" and "Shari'ah: Islamic Law." Before buying or recommending this book for your schools, please visit the ATC website to read its report and see extracts from the student edition, copyright 2005, pages 101 through 103.
Writes ATC, "They should put speculation to rest about what California's seventh-grade students may learn about Islam. At the very least, the passages are incomplete. More precisely, they are dishonest. Neither passage explains the essentially religious nature of the subject. It ignores any challenge to international security and western-style law. The treatment is lyrical and loaded, echoing and copying the language of domestic Islamist tracts."
Jihad, the textbook teaches, "means 'to strive'." As for the warlike meaning of Jihad, this textbook offers a blatant whitewash.
Similarly, the book describes "Shari'ah: Islamic Law" as "the path to be followed," and pretends that Sharia is no longer followed in most of the Muslim world, but that it simply outlines "Muslims' duties towards other people. These duties can be broadly grouped into criminal, commercial, family, and inheritance law." The text says nothing about the Sharia's intolerance towards women and non-Muslims.
In short, this book contains Islamist propaganda.
This is not surprising, since Stanford professor Joel Beinin filled TCI's Middle East committee with such ideologues as Betsy Barlow (a U.S. coordinator for the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center), Glenn Perry (of Indiana State) and Kamran Aghaie and Abraham Marcus (both of the University of Texas).
A final caution: TCI evidently enjoys a close relationship with the Islamic Networks Group (ING), a Muslim propaganda agency based in San Jose, California. The IGN website formerly connected to several Islamist websites including a propaganda outlet in Madinah, Saudi Arabia. Its website is devoted to corrupting American history--and endorses TCI textbooks. The ING promotes no other schoolbook publisher.
TCI writes textbook entries and social studies curricula to meet standards in 20 states, including California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
--Alyssa A. Lappen
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