Teaching history in England and America

art credit: indianexpress.com

  

James Delingpole’s “History Teaching Has a Dangerous Left-Wing Bias” is mostly about teaching the history of England, but he references NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s put-down of the USA from a day or two ago: “We’re not going to make America great again. It was never that great.” 

The teaching of history in America more and more shares Gov. Cuomo’s guilt-ridden perspective. And I am thinking of all the Confederate and Founding Father statues and plaques that are being torn down, which will ultimately result in history text books filled with blank pages and lies. Delingpole concludes his article:

Apart from being objectively untrue – the historical achievements of the Anglophone empires and their various scientists, inventors, writers, painters, explorers and warriors far, far outweigh their defects – this approach is also insidiously dangerous.

There’s a reason why young Victorians were raised on GA Henty novels with titles like Under Drake’s Flag and Winning His Spurs. The narrative of national pride filled young men and women with the confidence to go out and achieve extraordinary things on behalf of their great nation.

There’s a reason, too, why young Americans used to pledge allegiance to the flag.

We’re encouraged by the modern left to pour scorn on such outmoded jingoism. But it was nothing of the kind: just people uniting in love of their country and recognising that it was a cause worth fighting and dying for. The less you value your nation’s history and traditions, the less you feel they are worth defending. Such negativity is a recipe for decay and defeat. It’s so obvious, so well-documented that only a left wing historian could be deluded enough to imagine otherwise.

The full article is on Breitbart here.

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