Mike Huckabee Runs a Childhood Education Scam Called “Learn Our History”
By: Shannon Ashley
Tags: Marketing, Politics, Culture, Parenting, History

It took time for the coronavirus guide to finally arrive. When it finally came in the mail in early July, I was right about it being a pretty small and flimsy little book. It was more like a pamphlet than any actual “guide.”

This was fine. Again, I only paid a dollar for the booklet, and then for whatever reason, I assumed that this book was only a dollar because it was a special edition guide for the pandemic. I mistakenly believed that the followup guides would be worth the cost.

As it happened, my daughter wasn’t particularly interested in the coronavirus guide once we got it. At 6 years old, I knew her interest waxes and wanes on a dime, so I decided to hold onto the booklet and see what the other, more expensive books were like.

Shortly after receiving the coronavirus guide, Learn Our History charged my card twice. Both charges were for $20 and some change. I was pretty damn surprised to receive another flimsy little booklet a week or two later. For a little more than $20 apiece, these books were a serious rip-off.

I didn’t even look inside the second booklet. It was called A Kid’s Guide to the Presidential Election. I simply set it aside for later, and then emailed the company to cancel my account.

When I didn’t get a response to my email, I left a comment on their Facebook page that canceling should be easier. Within a couple of days, they emailed confirmation that my account had been canceled.

A week later, the third booklet arrived — The Kids Guide to the Discovery of America.

I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that at this point, I hadn’t actually read the booklets. I simply set them aside to read to my daughter at a later date. When she went back to school in mid-August, it seemed like a good time to start reading through those guides.

But before I would actually do that, I happened upon another Facebook ad from the company, and this time, it was an advertisement that was all about the 2020 Election. If you ordered the special election guide, you’d also receive a bonus Trump guide.

Something about the phrasing in the ad made me click the link to make sure it was the same company I’d dealt with. Sure enough, it was the same “Learn Our History” company, but its message completely floored me.

The actual trumpbundle.thekidsguide.com website

There are a lot of red flags. You’ll notice that the first thing the website says is “Help your kids learn the truth about President Trump…”

Oh boy, I thought as I took in the imaging and scrolled down to the random white mom’s “testimonial.”

"I ordered this for my daughter who’s in the fifth grade. She studied the Trump presidency in school, but her lessons were biased like the media. The Kids Guides and video lessons are great! And she just LOVES the Everbright Kids magazine!! What a wonderful package! She looks forward to both each month—Thank you!" — Sandy D., Orlando, FL

If you keep scrolling on the website, the propaganda keeps on coming.

The actual trumpbundle.thekidsguide.com website

It reads:

The mainstream media is no friend to President Trump. As he campaigns for reelection this year, here’s your chance to get our *FREE* Patriotic Kids Gift Bundle to help your kids learn the truth about President Trump and his accomplishments in office! Our gift bundle includes "The Kids Guide to President Trump" and a very special "America Blasts Off!" issue of the brand-new EverBright Kids magazine, and you get them both for just $1 s&p each! The Kids Guide to President Trump is unbiased and will help your kids learn everything there is to know about our president, from his election in 2016 and his greatest accomplishments as president, to his 2020 reelection campaign. As an added bonus, we’re giving you unlimited access to the “Great Again: Restoring Faith In America" streaming video and digital workbook from Learn Our History! What’s more, the special issue of EverBright Kids magazine will help your kids celebrate America, and enjoy oodles of great content and activities that will keep them entertained for hours! As part of this special offer, your kids can look forward to a new Kids Guide covering an important topic for kids about once a month, including an accompanying streaming video lesson and digital workbook, all for just $15.95+$4.95 s&p. Plus, we’ll send your kids a new issue of EverBright Kids magazine each month for only $5.75. You can cancel at any time. And, if you’re not 100% satisfied, let us know within 90 days to receive a full refund of your purchase price. This special offer is only available while supplies last, so why not give your kids a gift they’re bound to enjoy? Order this exclusive Patriotic Kids Gift Bundle now!

I immediately pulled out the couple of Kids’ Guides I had at home. Somehow, I’d misplaced our election one, but I still had the pandemic and Discovery of America booklets.

While the Coronavirus Guide wasn’t too terrible, there were definitely a few contentious points, like when it claimed the pandemic would be over “soon,” that handwashing was the most important method of prevention, and that masks weren’t recommended for healthy individuals. I also found it interesting that masks were discussed and dismissed on the same page that told kids not to panic.

Okay, so, maybe they hadn’t been able to update the guide which would have likely been viewed as more accurate back in March. Maybe. Even so, receiving a booklet in July that said masks were not recommended was pretty annoying.

Despite its claims that the virus was serious, most of the graphics suggested that COVID-19 is really no different than influenza. It spent a lot of time talking about how viruses spread and mutate in general terms, and showed stock photos of white folks who looked like they had a cold or flu.

The Kids Guide to the Coronavirus

The Kids Guide to the Coronavirus

The Kids Guide to the Coronavirus

After reading about the weird “Trump bundle,” I suspected there was more to it than a simple failure to update their information on the virus.

So, I pulled out the other booklet, The Kids Guide to the Discovery of America. And that’s when I realized I’d made an enormous mistake.

The Kids Guide to the Discovery of America

The Kids Guide to the Discovery of America

The Kids Guide to the Discovery of America

The Kids Guide to the Coronavirus is iffy, but The Kids Guide to the Discovery of America is another ballgame. It features page after page of white-washed, powder sugar-coated revisionist history about Christopher Columbus and colonialism.

Take a look at these gems:

Columbus' discovery came at an important time and, unlike the Vikings, who didn’t stick around for very long, it set the stage for other Europeans to explore and settle the New World. They brought with them the culture, values, and traditions that make America great, including ideas like democracy, capitalism, and personal freedom, which are based on European culture, and its laws and religion, which come from Judeo-Christian traditions. Even if his wasn’t first, Columbus' discovery changed the world forever, and is one of the most important events in history!”

Reading that passage made me cringe. The euro-centric mindset came through loud and clear.

“Not everyone benefited from the Columbian exchange. Unfortunately, the Columbian exchange also included diseases and violence. Because they had been isolated from the rest of the world for so long, Native Americans' immune systems hadn’t been exposed to diseases that were common in the Old World, and many of them died from diseases like measles and smallpox. Many European explorers also used violence to achieve their goal of colonizing the New World. While some Spaniards tried to make sure that the Indians were treated well, they could do nothing to prevent the spread of disease, and fifty years after Columbus' discovery, the Taino people were almost completely wiped out.”

In the entire guide, Columbus is praised as a smart and impressive “entrepreneur.” There is no mention of his atrocities or abuse of native people.

“Columbus was not the first person, or even the first European to ‘discover’ the Americas. So, should Columbus get all of the credit? No, of course not! But that doesn’t mean we should overlook the importance of his discovery, either. Even though many vibrant cultures already existed in the Americas before Columbus, and even though Leif Erikson and the Vikings were the first Europeans to visit the continent, the reason we celebrate Columbus Day each October is because without Columbus' discovery, America as it exists today couldn’t have happened. The explorers and settlers who followed Columbus brought European culture, values, and technology to the New World. Societies in North and South America are based on democratic values, Judeo-Christian religious traditions, and other laws, customs, and traditions brought from Western Europe. Without Columbus, the United States might never have existed, and without the United States those values would have never been able to inspire billions of people around the world to take its example and cherish their own rights. That’s why we celebrate Columbus Day. Columbus himself represents all of these values. Even though he ‘discovered’ the Americas in the names of the King and Queen of Spain, Columbus was an independent spirit and entrepreneur who was determined to find a way to fulfill his dream of reaching Asia by crossing the ocean. While he didn’t quite do that, he could never have imagined how much more important what he did discover would be!”

Wow. What an incredibly biased and archaic interpretation of American history, huh?