{"id":7694,"date":"2004-03-18T07:19:16","date_gmt":"2004-03-18T07:19:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/dumber_and_dumberer.html"},"modified":"2004-03-18T07:19:16","modified_gmt":"2004-03-18T07:19:16","slug":"dumber_and_dumberer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/dumber_and_dumberer.html","title":{"rendered":"Dumber and Dumberer"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the NYObserver, Terry Golway looks at his child’s history textbook<\/a><\/p>\n

\nImagine, for example, explaining the Berlin Wall to a bunch of 10-year-olds without mentioning the Soviet Union, the United States or the word “oppression.” Well, the non-judgmental authors of Exploring Our Land have managed that trick. They write that in 1945, “a group of countries” divided up Germany. “However, people kept trying to leave East Berlin.” Why? The book doesn\u2019t say. Besides, people move around all the time\u2014what\u2019s the big deal anyway? But 28 years later, the book informs young minds, “the people of East Germany changed their government \u2026 they decided to remove the boundary between East and West Berlin.”<\/p>\n

Freedom, oppression\u2014whatever! It is curious that the authors would choose not to mention the depredations visited upon East Berlin\u2014thus causing the pre-Wall flight\u2014for they certainly pull no punches in describing the evils of slavery in America and of white resistance to the civil-rights movement. This is how it should be\u2014which makes the bland, who-are-we-to-judge passage about the Berlin Wall all the more curious.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the NYObserver, Terry Golway looks at his child’s history textbook Imagine, for example, explaining the Berlin Wall to a bunch of 10-year-olds without mentioning the Soviet Union, the United States or the word “oppression.” Well, the non-judgmental authors of Exploring Our Land have managed that trick. They write that in 1945, “a group of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nDumber and Dumberer - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/dumber_and_dumberer.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dumber and Dumberer - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In the NYObserver, Terry Golway looks at his child’s history textbook Imagine, for example, explaining the Berlin Wall to a bunch of 10-year-olds without mentioning the Soviet Union, the United States or the word “oppression.” Well, the non-judgmental authors of Exploring Our Land have managed that trick. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7694\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}