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Well, That Didn’t Take Long!
My son entered high school last week. In his American History class, the teacher wasted no time with the indoctrination: The very first assignment was a selection from the work of Howard Zinn. Before you suggest I summarily withdraw him from the school, let me say that I think this is a good thing. I want him to be exposed to progressive thought, the more ridiculous the better.
Furthermore, the assignment required the students to assess Zinn’s biases, which my son did with gusto. He told me it was absurd for Zinn to judge Christopher Columbus by modern standards. I couldn’t have been more proud.
Addendum: See my Comment #27. Although the teacher is definitely a progressive, I may have been too quick to judge, as he appears to encourage critical thinking, notwithstanding his bias.
Published in Education
Good for him, and good for you!
“Oh!” he replied. “Everything but America and Europe and Russia.”
“Oh, so none of the ones that matter”.
That’s what i was thinking. The teacher may be throwing the curve with his first pitch.
I was very proud of my youngest when at about age sixteen he talked a friend out of his Che T-shirt. It was not anything we had discussed more than once or twice, but he got the point.
Probably the most subversive thing one can do is teach a child to think for himself.
Sigh, yes, Prof Zinn gets high marks for creating the anti-exceptional American history, which for social activist purposes, serves anti-truth…
I try. :)
Columbus was white and white people should know better than to be imperialists or racist. But if white people are judged by a different standard isn’t that a racist moral superiority assertion about whiteness? [Insert reference to one of every third or fourth Star Trek episode where a giant alien computer crashes because Capt. Kirk drops a trivial contradiction on them.]
But if we judged Columbus by the ideas and mores of the late 15th century then would that make empire-building Cortez no better or worse than empire-building Montezuma? A white oppressor on the same moral plane as a non-white oppressor? No, white people should know better… wait..danger, racist assumption…does not compute…Kirk is the creator but the creator is flawed, V’ger is flawed…
Worse, apparently the Tlaxcalan, for example, preferred oppressive Spanish rule to having their teenage kids’ living hearts cut out on stone altars by (non-European) Aztec priests–go figure. Because they joined Cortez, they clearly had racial identity issues. That is the only possible explanation for their behavior.
If you could go back in time and you spoke Nahuatl maybe you would hear something like this as the Tlaxcalan geared up to attack Tenochtitlan and oust Montezuma: Honey, get out my good war club and pack me a lunch..we are finally gonna get a chance to go kick some Aztec butt with the help of these weird bearded strangers. Howard Zinn would be appalled.
Reminds me of my favorite revisionist history teacher.
I’m tempted to say, “don’t pee down my back and tell me it’s raining.”
In other words, I find all this very depressing. Sure, your son (and my kids) push back against this crap. Yay. But what about the other twenty* kids in the class who’ll drink this Kool-Aid, turn 18, and vote for the next Bernie Sanders?
On the other hand, David French at NRO gives me some comfort.
* I don’t remember today’s politically correct class size. Fifteen? Ten?
While it’s true that going to school in such a liberal environment can help train our kids to think critically and to stand up for their opinions, I still think the overall effect is pretty toxic. I was constantly fighting the liberal bias in our high school here. My son had a geography teacher who had the kids watch “The Day After Tomorrow” and fill out worksheets about the scientific lessons contained in it. When I emailed her to express my surprise and concern, she responded, “I am a geography teacher” (Gosh — I didn’t know that!), and proceeded to tell me that this bit of over-the-top science fiction was actually sound science. A social studies teacher taught her students that Castro was a great man, and she wore black on the day he stepped down. A chemistry teacher spent a full month on global warming indoctrination (complete with art projects involving carbon footprints, to help propagandize the rest of the student body), and when that unit was finally over, she moved on to a unit on hybrid cars. I constantly tried to educate my kids on the other side of the argument, but when they are swimming in that environment day after day, it can be a losing battle. All of my kids are now fairly liberal, and one is an anarchist (facepalm). I should have homeschooled them for those years. Any shortcomings I may have as a teacher do not compare to the shortcomings of their supposedly “liberal” education at our local high school.
I retired from teaching after 40+ years in secondary schools. I always thought it was improper for me to proselytize, so most of my students had no idea that I am conservative. However, more and more I grew frustrated to learn that my colleagues had no problem in advancing their progressive agenda. In this case, the teacher seems to have pulled a Scott Adams move, but it takes a lot of home discussions to counter eight hours a day of left-leaning thinking. Parents, beware.
This is interesting. I went to the reviews and found this!
“So many scholars found factual errors with the book that on 8/9/12, the publisher ceased publication and distribution of the book, and is actually recalling it from retailers. That’s really all that needs to be said about this book.”
With our first kid, I failed to keep pace. (Back then, Mrs. Probable Cause was more concerned about acrimony ruining dinner, than about the fall of Western Civilization, so my opportunities were limited.)
Eventually, I had to put the kid in private school. Today, the kid is a staunch conservative, but we spent thousands of dollars that we’ll never see again.
#2 Son just started at McGill. His anthropology course is evaluating ancient cities. First text? Karl Marx. Because, of course, all of history is best understood through the prism of Class Struggle.
I advised him to go ahead and stop worrying about his grades or knuckling under to the nonsense. It is good to learn how to make a strong case in a room full of people who all disagree with you.
I took a very enjoyable course in the early 1990s with a poli sci professor who was an ardent Marxist. He did not get a lot of people willing to challenge him or fail to take Marxist dialectic seriously and kind of seemed to find it refreshing.
One of my daughter’s teachers told her that the military was for losers…didn’t realize that both of her parents were retired Air Force. He was also a coach….and his team didn’t do too well that year. I thought about going in for a conference and introducing myself as Colonel Herring but decided he wasn’t worth my time.
Homeschool rocks.
I’m surprised that in the class and in the comments here there isn’t more room to hold two non-conflicting views at the same time: (1) that Columbus’ explorations were heroic and incredible, and (2) that what he did to the native populations was reprehensible, and the fact that they occurred in a time period in which people would have judged his acts differently doesn’t take away from the capacity of high school students to think critically about them.
Also, you know how rabid we Americans get about Columbus Day. It’s one of the biggest…oh wait…
Columbus Day was actually not a recognized national holiday at all until the 20th century. He was a Spanish explorer, you see, and we grew out of English colonies. (It might make more sense to hail John Cabot?)
Regardless, this new date appeared on the calendar during the FDR administration in part because the Knights of Columbus had lobbied so hard for a Catholic figure to be recognized as integral to US History. (Chris did open the floodgates to the New World, after all.)
Catholics were a growing and important voting block for Democrats in the North. So… Wa La!
It’s seriously ironic today that if one is seriously disturbed by Columbus, one is probably a Democrat.
The dude did some good things and some bad things. Both should be understood and studied.
(Siiiggggghhhh.)
Indeed, I’m not sure that my son picked the correct position. But I’d rather he pick “hero” than “villain”. The reality is – as it usually is – somewhere in between.
Not sure what Washington and Louisiana have to do with voting blocks in the north. :-)
I am definitely speaking in generalities, Johnny, but Louisiana was an anomaly in the South. Catholics were viewed with extreme suspicion in this period even though Al Smith won the Deep South states in 1928. (Republicans were viewed with deeper suspicion. :) )
I am a Catholic, but this is just the truth.
If I recall correctly, he was an Italian sailing with a Spanish commission. With the two nationalities and the Catholic connection you have a few different special interest groups he can appeal to.
Too, true, Matt. Too, true.
Sorry, I guess you missed my little joke. You said, “Wa La” – which are the abbreviations for Washington and Louisiana. Not that funny, I admit.
Oh, Johnny! That was actually pretty cute. I’m just not that bright. Or quick on my feet. :D