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Article: Asking the BIG Questions:.(Great Irish Famine)
- Article from:
- Social Education
- Article date:
- September 1, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 National Council for the Social Studies. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Teaching about the Great Irish Famine and World History
IN MARCH 2001, an educational columnist for Newsday (New York) dismissed the New York State Great Irish Famine Curriculum Guide as another effort to promote ethnocentric history and the idea that the United States is little more than "a pastiche of different peoples, linked mostly by a Constitution and a system of interstate highways."(1) The columnist cited Chester Finn, Jr., a long-term opponent of multiculturalism, who insisted, "If we invite every faction in our society to insert their own best or worst episode from history, there will be no end of it."(2)
The New York Times had a different take ...