Word: hirshfields
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...gentleman named David Hirshfield was directed by the Mayor of New York City, a gentleman named Hylan, to investigate charges briefly advanced by Mr. Hirshfield, to the effect that histories in use in New York schools were pro-British. Mr Hirshfield's qualifications consisted of his office as Commissioner of Accounts of New York City and his obvious 100% Americanism. He had the further inestimable advantage of not being an historian. And he knew how to read...
That was about a year ago. Mr. Hirshfield has now finished his labors and made his report. He finds that eight of the history textbooks used in New York public schools are un-American and pro-British, and " fit only to be fed to the furnace." He further finds that the distortion of fact in these books is not accidental. It is due to the operation of a malign influence. It is the " international money power." Since the fact is not divulged by any of the texts, it is to be presumed that Mr. Hirshfield though of it himself...
...proof of the insidious power of these volumes Mr. Hirshfield quoted from Professor A. B. Hart's "School History of the United States" the statement that Samuel Adams "was a shrewd, hard-headed politician", and from Professor D. S. Muzzey's "An American History" the following passage: "A debatable question, namely, whether the abuses of the king's ministers justified armed resistance". Small wonder that Commissioner Hirshfield urged that these books be banned, for what school child reader of such partisan statements could ever resist the temptation to fly at once into the arms of the British Empire...
...School History of the United States" by Professor A. B. Hart '80 was among the books condemned by David Hirshfield, Commissioner of Accounts of New York City, yesterday in the report he made to Mayor Hylan. The objection was made on the ground that the history was anti-American and pro-British propaganda and should therefore be barred from the public schools of New York...
Professor Hart's book was among more than a dozen histories which were mentioned by Hirshfield, who charges that these text-books were written or revised by their authors during or after the war with a view toward destroying the traditional American patriotic views of the wars between this country and Great Britain. He sees the real purpose of the writers to be aiming at an Anglo-American union based on British rather than American superiority...