Mary Harvey

My real rating of this sorry excuse for a history textbook is a 0. This was my high school history book for a classical Christian homeschool program that I was in from elementary school till graduation with prior history books of the same ilk. For so long I thought my lack of history knowledge was due to my struggle to connect with history overall and/or trauma based memory loss. Out of curiosity, I started doing some research and found out that while both of those are valid options, there’s also now a third option. The third option is that there were parts of our history that just weren’t taught, and if they were it was with obscene omissions, inaccuracies which point to a lack of proper research, or a lack of desire to accurately represent select differences between different cultures (even worse intentionally with malicious intent) as was also pointed out in a separate review. The more that I have continued to learn about American history, the more I discover exactly how much was either hit with a blur feature so hard it turns lots of important facts into vague generalizations, removed entirely, or deconstructed and then woven into something with a lovely pattern on the front to cover up the ugly truth of knots on the back. I find it atrocious (but not surprising) that it is more important to the founder of this curriculum and the educators who teach it to push their religious and politically based opinions that they chose a history book that eradicates and distorts our history along with including complete inaccuracies to brainwash the students and leaving them increasingly unaware of the genuine truths of the history of America. A cover branded with the American flag brazenly labeled “A Patriot’s History of the United States of America” with an unnecessary prologue about why it needs to exist, but it’s “unbiased” would be a laughable contradiction if it wasn’t such a tragedy. Preaching love to all people, encouraging students to seek the truth, telling us to question everything while teaching us from cherry picked history, mocking those who struggled without any help offered, and every subject that can is further saturated with Christianity. My education in history suffered, my view of the world suffered, my thoughts, my actions, my feelings suffered. It’s begun to make me want to look even further down the curriculum rabbit hole to see where else truth was substituted with political alignment and religion. Please do better.