Letters: Schools teach ugly view of America

In his Jan. 5 letter, “Try moving country forward, not backward,” Victor Rodgers seems to believe that the central story of American history is that our founding fathers came to this continent to take the land from the natives and that, even after slavery was abolished, Americans continued to discriminate against the formerly enslaved African-Americans.

Our schools have carefully avoided teaching that America, beginning with its founding fathers and despite its problematic racial history, started out and has continued to grow as the nation to offer the greatest degree of freedom and opportunity to all of its citizens, compared with all the other nations that ever existed during the entire history of mankind. Our public school teachers stress everything that America did wrong, as did most other nations in the days of slavery, as if that were and is the overriding objective of this nation’s existence.

What really distresses me is why the local PTAs have allowed educators to so badly misinform and jade the minds of our young people that so many believe the drivel that Mr. Rodgers regurgitates in his letter to the editor.

This story was originally published January 26, 2017 at 5:56 PM with the headline "Letters: Schools teach ugly view of America."