Distorted textbooks used to erode religious understanding??

Authors Warn That Many Textbooks Distort Religion By Lauren Green Jesus was a Palestinian? That's what one public school textbook says. Although Jesus lived in a region known in his time as Palestine, the use of the term "Palestinian," with its modern connotations, is among the hundreds of textbook flaws cited in a recent five-year study of educational anti-Semitism detailed in the book "The Trouble with Textbooks: Distorting History and Religion." Authors Gary Tobin and Dennis Ybarra of the Institute for Jewish and Community Research found some 500 imperfections and distortions concerning religion in 28 of the most widely used social studies and history textbooks in the United States. Ybarra, a research associate at the institute, called the above example "shocking." A "true or false" question on the origins of Christianity asserted that "Christianity was started by a young Palestinian named Jesus." The teacher's edition says this is "true." But even though Jesus is the founder of Christianity, the question ignores the fact that he was Jewish. And Ybarra said, "The Christian scriptures say that he preached in Judea and Galilee, not Palestine," a term that was used at the time as a less specific description of the broader region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. Ybarra says part of the problem is that publishers employ or contract with writers who are not experts in the subject, or they may use out-of-date information. Or they may bow to special interest groups. "They're under pressure from all kinds of minority groups, religious groups, and they try to satisfy everyone and that results in content that is dumbed down to the lowest common denominator," he said. "And so, in that process, things can be missed. Errors can survive." [Continue reading]

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