If cigarette packs are required to have pictures of diseased lungs, college brochures should be required to have pictures of graduates working at Starbucks." - (attributed to Daniel Lin, posted to Facebook by Jim Davidson): quoted at "Higher Education Fraud"

http://www.two--four.net/weblog.php?id=P5170

... Christopher Columbus went from hero (founder of

the New World) to villain (insensitive colonialist) in one

generation. Thomas Jefferson went from "celebrated

idealist" to racist slaveholder." Yet, ironically, a new

kind of rigidity emerged to replace the old. In the

interest of focusing on the history of those long ignored,

textbook publishers became subject to the enormous

pressures of special interest groups and political

oversight aimed at keeping the American story even-

handed and politically correct.

" 'By the 1990s there had to be a certain percentage

of each race or minority group in the books, either

in the text or illustrations,' says Tim Paulsen, a

Manhattan textbook editor. 'By the same token, religion

and God all but disappeared - despite the fact that

religious beliefs were a key to colonialist exploits

as well as the founding fathers' rebellion.' [...]

"... [N]ew kinds of errors began to stalk the industry.

Columbia University historian Jack Garraty discoved the

problem when he noticed that Henry Hudson was missing

from a revised edition of one of his popular history texts

(first published in 1982). 'They had a Spanish explorer

named Esteban Gomez as the first European to sail on the

river that was named after Hudson,' recalls Garraty, who

at the time had never heard of Gomez. 'But there is no

evidence that Gomez had ever sailed on the Hudson,'

Garraty laughs. 'And he wasn't even Spanish. He was

Portugese.'

" ... 'They wanted to sell the book in Texas and

California,' explains Garraty of the decision to

alter his work, 'so they needed Hispanic people

in the book. They put a lot of stuff in there that

I never heard of.' ...

" 'We have to realize that children see themselves in

history,' explains Stephanie Hirsh ... general editor

of "Texas, the United States and the World." ... 'The

more they see themselves in the story, the more they

connect. Sometimes you have to sacrifice the real

story to be inclusive.' - _In Search of America_ by Peter Jennings &

Todd Brewster [2002], ch. 1 "God's Country"

[Of grade school textbooks (time frame 1980-1995):]

A day without sunshine is like, night.

99 percent of lawyers give the rest a bad name.

For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism.