Back to school for you, kids! If you’re American, you might be spoon-fed the (historically dubious) notion that the Founding Fathers explicitly wanted us to be a Christian nation. But it could be worse: You could live somewhere else!
Foreign Policy has come out with a list of some of the most egregious lies in textbooks around the globe. Here’s some of the best propaganda:
Saudi Arabian textbooks, on the subject of religion:
“Fill in the blanks with the appropriate words (Islam, hellfire): Every religion other than _______ is false. Whoever dies outside of Islam enters _______.”
Russian textbooks, on the subject of Russian history:
“[Josef Stalin] acted entirely rationally — as the guardian of a system, as a consistent support of reshaping the country into an industrialized state.”
Chinese textbooks, on the subject of World War II:
“The fundamental reason for the [Allied victory] is that the Chinese Communist Party became the core power that united the nation.”
However, those of us in America probably shouldn’t cast the first stone. Our Spanish textbooks and our lessons about Thanksgiving are hardly the stuff of pure objective truth.