“Wherever they went, the Christians brought with them their love of art,
beauty and learning. From about the eighth to the eleventh century, their
culture was superior in many ways to that of Arabic Islam.”

That passage from a New York State Regents Exam reading selection is, of course, a shocking example of the state indoctrinating and pressuring school kids with subjectively skewed history to favor one religion over another. It is, plainly and simply, a misuse of state authority.

At least it would be. But the actual line from a Daniel Roselle piece entitled “A World History: A Cultural Approach” actually reads like this:

“Wherever they went, the Moslems [sic] brought with them their love of art,
beauty and learning. From about the eighth to the eleventh century, their
culture was superior in many ways to that of western Christendom.”

That really is just as wrong. The state really does have no business strongly suggesting to kids that one religion is “superior” to another. Doing so certainly doesn’t promote mutual respect and tolerance.

Daniel Roselle has every right to write what he believes — but would his work have ended up on a state Regents exam if he wrote the opposite?