Does Van Loons “The Story of Mankind” have an anti-Christian bias?
Unfortunely, I have not read the entire book, so I can’t give as complete an answer as I’d like. Those who originally put together the curriculum considered a lot of history books. There were several things to consider–readability, literary quality, and not least–availability. But our over-arching principle was always to keep our program as close as possible to what we thought the PNEU would have done. Van Loon does have an anti-Christian bias that is not easy to ignore, so far as I can see. The only two choices are to deal with it as you go, or not use the book. There are not many choices for a comprehensive world history book at this reading level–which may explain why Van Loon won the Newberry Award for this book. We had to choose from among those few that were available, and we chose this. That doesn’t mean it is ideal, and it doesn’t mean you have to use it. Not every chapter is offensive, and most of what I’ve used/read so far with my kids (we skipped the first few chapters) h
