Good Monday Morning!
1. Questions – Is it just because I am older that I am intrigued by our history? Or, is it because I am searching for the truth and don’t believe politicians anymore? Why do I get a sense that the Dems seem to support the minorities and the Republicans don’t? How did I learn what I know?
2. Thought – In politics, the white electorate had become so racist by 1892 that the Democratic candidate, Grover Cleveland, won the White House partly by tarring Republicans with their attempts to guarantee civil rights to African Americans, thereby conjuring fears of “Negro domination” in the Northern as well as Southern white mind. From the Civil War to the end of the century, not a single Democrat in Congress, representing the North or the South, ever voted in favor of any civil rights legislation. The Supreme Court was worse: its segregationist decisions from 1896 (Plessy) through 1927 (Rice v. Gong Lum, which barred Chinese from white schools) told the nation that whites were the master race. (Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen)
AND: In spite of the fact that I taught History for many of my 30 years as an educator, i can’t say that I’ve read many History textbooks because I’ve always worked with a sense that it’s my responsibility to craft the lesson, and I’ve been given the autonomy to do it. As such, I can’t speak to the quality of the textbooks that are out there and how they present History to students.
While I haven’t read many text books, I have read much of Lies my Teacher Taught Me and what strikes me is the hypocrisy of Loewen’s argument. While he criticizes the textbooks for the bias implicit in the neglect of textbook authors, he himself engages in a similar bias – effectively promoting a socialist agenda through his selection of the lies he attacks and characters he challenges or embraces. Why choose Woodrow Wilson, who actively fought against socialist and communist ideas in Latin America, instead of FDR? Why choose Helen Keller over McCarthy? There are lies being told about every historical figure in order to paint them in a certain light and promote a certain ideal. Loewen has simply tapped into our natural cynicism and the national mistrust of authority that has been nurtured by the press since the Warren Commission. His attacks excite our spirit and empower us to engage an enemy. That enemy, in his mind it seems, is Christian Western Civilization. His humanist view finds a ready foot soldier in the modern graduate of our high schools and colleges. The very same young men and women who will and are teaching the next generation. Unfortunately, while he claims to long for teachers who will inspire their students to think, it is more likely that he will only succeed in inspiring them to think only as deep as the notion that everyone should get the same amount of property or opportunity or education or treatment. They’ll then think that human beings are so selfish and evil that they can’t be trusted to treat one another fairly, so we need a government who can oversee and direct all of our moves. Socialism must be tyrannical, and you and I will lose our right to think, pray, speak, or do in any way that moves contrary to the government sanctioned standard.
He’s right, we must teach our students to think, but as long as the teachers who take on this responsibility are a product of the educational system and, which is worse, the Teaching programs at many of the modern colleges, we are doomed to have an illogical and short sighted populace.
“Do good – Without judgment.”
rem – “I’ve never let my schooling interfere with my education.” (Mark Twain)
Question & Thought & ANDs.
