“a memo sent to parents” and to the monkey boy

In my comments section on this post someone (I suspect that it’s Beelzeblog himself) has accused me of republishing an article full of errors and of committing slander, which is just too ironic because this is the identical pattern that emerged during the Southern Slavery scandal in 2003–2004. Wilson accused the newspapers of reporting errors and committing slander.

So this one’s for the monkey boy and the LMBC. It’s dated December 10, 2004, just one day after The News & Observer ran their original story. Please notice that Cary Christian School took action after reading the newspaper article, which is full of errors.

School drops slavery booklet
By T. KEUNG HUI, Staff Writer

Cary Christian School pulled from use Thursday a controversial booklet that critics say whitewashes Southern slavery. School leaders said they took Southern Slavery, As it Was out of the school’s ninth-grade curriculum after they learned about faulty footnotes and citation errors in the publication. In a memo sent to parents, school officials said they had not known about those findings until reading about them in The News & Observer on Thursday. “We apologize for this oversight and covet your prayers for our school,” stated the memo to parents.

Southern Slavery, As it Was is a 43-page booklet published in 1996 that attempts to provide a biblical justification for slavery. It asserts that slaves weren’t treated as badly as people believe. Critics have complained about some of the statements in the booklet, such as that slaves lived “a life of plenty, of simple pleasures.”

In the memo, school officials reiterated to parents that the school’s goal in the secondary grades is to present two sides of an argument. They also stressed that they don’t condone slavery.

One of the booklet’s co-authors, Douglas Wilson, is scheduled to speak at the school’s graduation in May. He wrote a book on classical education upon which the school bases its philosophy. With 623 students, Cary Christian is one of the largest Christian schools in the Triangle.

Staff writer T. Keung Hui can be reached at 829-4534 or khui@newsobserver.com.

Thank you.