The Victor Writes The History Texts

In 1999, by a six to four vote, six of the eight Republicans on the Kansas State Board of Education chose to "reject evolution as a scientific principle", excluding evolution from the state's science curriculum.

If you regard that vote charitably, as an effort to avoid classroom controversy by removing facts from school books, perhaps it stands as a precedent for the reinvention of Iraq's school curriculum:

The first indicator of what a Saddam-free education will look like is arriving this month, as millions of newly revised textbooks roll off the printing presses to be distributed to Iraq's 5.5 million schoolchildren in 16,000 schools. All 563 texts were heavily edited and revised over the summer by a team of US-appointed Iraqi educators. Every image of Saddam and the Baath Party has been removed.

But so has much more - including most of modern history. Pressured for time, and hoping to avoid political controversy, the Ministry of Education under the US-led coalition government removed any content considered "controversial," including the 1991 Gulf War; the Iran-Iraq war; and all references to Israelis, Americans, or Kurds.

I recognize that the Bush Administration is not sold on the notion that those who don't know history are destined to repeat it, but... really.

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