One of the least talked about ways that the Right Wing has infiltrated our daily lives is by brainwashing our children in the classrooms. It's been happening since big business got more influence in the direction of our public education's curriculum somewhere between 1890-1920.
Since then our history textbooks have been less about injecting actual history so much as they have blind patriotism into the ever molding minds of our children.
The America we think we all know is a group delusion. This group psychosis is from years of flag waving, non-controversial white washing of our history to take out most of the bad things America has done and present a glowing view of a country that is always good and always right.
It white washed the history of Christopher Columbus who committed genocide against the Arawak Indians. It purposely omitted that the Pilgrims, who supposedly suffered from religious persecution back home, came and did the same to Indians. They also directly and indirectly killed most of the neighboring Indian tribes through their own actions and through diseases they brought over that the Indians' immune system could not adjust to.
They spent years demonizing John Brown, a white man who fought battles to end slavery by calling him insane. They avoid slavery as a major factor in the Civil War and even try to re-frame it as a battle for Southern Rights. In fact they're even worse on Reconstruction in which they treat as a short phase where blacks were given some power and failed and the white Republicans that supported them were somehow incompetent and unpopular.
None of that is true but history textbooks aren't meant to tell you the truth. Truth would have you questioning the system.
For this very reason history textbooks never talk about social class either.
As James Loewen put it in his terrific book, "Lies My Teacher Told Me" (from pages 205-206):
Ultimately, social class determines how people think about social class. When asked if poverty in America is the fault of the poor or the fault of the system, 57 percent of business leaders blamed the poor; just 9 percent blamed the system. (Some replied "don't know" or chose a middle position.) The largest single difference between our two main political parties lies in how their members think about social class: 55 percent of Republicans blamed the poor for their poverty while only 13 percent blamed the system for it; 68 percent of Democrats, on the other hand, blamed the system while only 5 percent blamed the poor.
-snip-
Many teachers compound the problem by avoiding talking about social class. Recent interviews with teachers "revealed that they had a much broader knowledge of the economy, both academically and experientially, than they admitted in class." Teachers "expressed fear that students might find out about the injustices and inadequacies of their economic and political institutions." By never blaming the system American History courses thus present "Republican history".
This is entirely true. Republican history, and I'll re-frame this to RIGHT WING HISTORY since the Republican party was filled with different thinking people during Reconstruction, is the embodiment never blame the system because the 'rich deserve their wealth and the poor deserve their struggles' philosophy. This is what they stand for to their core.
These textbooks wave the flag much like FOX NEWS does, hoping the flag waving will distract you from the fact that they just spouted hate speech, slandered someone or totally lied and distorted facts.
In the history textbooks the facts ignored or distorted involve anyone of a different race (slavery was not that bad, Indians liked how they were treated, etc) or religion. This is evident when Christians are portrayed as believing in a civilized religion while any other form of religion, while equally provable as Christianity is, is considered some barbaric fools' religion. Native Americans worshipped animals and are mocked at times for it. Egyptians worshipped cats and the sun, Greeks had gods with different powers, Romans worshipped completely different gods until Constantine used brutality and needless wars to slaughter Christianity into power during the Roman Empire.
But as much as textbooks avoid religion, it is their tone towards other beliefs when describing other cultures that is condescending and sends the wrong message.
Another pro-right wing/pro-corporate view is that Unions are considered corrupt and useless old relic that are unnecessary now (although as we have seen with outsourcing and corporate greed in the past 30 years, strong unions are needed now more than ever). This view is pushed continuously in many different history textbooks.
These textbooks, the ones that are in classrooms around the country, are mind numbingly simple and boring. A presentation of partial facts and anecdotes done in a way to make kids grow up learning to respect and love their country.
What is the benefit to this? Those children who move on to college find themselves over their heads when confronted with an entirely different history they had not learned about.
The benefit comes to one group of people. Keeping people from finding out about the injustices of America when it comes to race and gender (or at least watering it down tremendously), our military actions abroad, or the inequalities of social classism creates passive students. Passive students never have the urge to fight back against the class war they are having waged against them every day. The rich stay atop the heap and nobody will take them or their dynasty families down.
To this point I am unaware of the extreme Right taking over our textbooks and inserting revisionist current history in there but you can tell it's just a matter of time. When Ronald Reagan died the mainstream media, owned mostly by a handful of right wing media moguls, glossed over the man as if he were a Saint. All of the class warfare he waged on the poor was lost to time. His efforts to arm Iran illegally (part of the problem we have there is our penchant to arm all sides of the conflict there out of sheer greed. Our monetary gains trump common sense policy and have angered, rightfully so, many citizens of the involved countries we did this with in that region) gone. No big deal now.
That was the first sign that modern history will be revised. There is an old saying that says "History is written by the winners". Well there are no bigger winners than the rich who own the publishing companies.
Last year we saw this revisionist version of right wing history make its way to ABC as a "docudrama" in "The Path to 9/11". It was bad enough that the movie ignored all the facts and blamed Bill Clinton for the whole attack while absolving George "You've covered your ass" Bush from his Administration's ignorance to warnings, but they went a step beyond TV.
They actually tried to distribute this to schools through Scholastic which has long been a trusted source for learning materials and book sales for schools for decades. Thankfully Scholastic pulled their materials and reworked them to avoid the controversy in this presentation.
In Japan, Right Wing textbooks have been distributed and caused all sorts of anger from neighboring countries. It too, whitewashed atrocities committed by Japanese troops in favor of blind Nationalism.
The outrage to the textbooks there should give Americans a template in which to show their own dissent towards what our children and their generation will be taught.
Rest assured though, the next ideological battlefront will be in the classrooms. In some respects they're already winning. A poll a couple years back asked high school students if "Freedom of the Press goes too far", to which 32% of students said yes. 36% thought Newspapers should get Government approval to run stories. Now all jokes about how close the lapdog media is to this concept aside, those are incredibly high numbers for high school students who are supposed to be taught about the strengths of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
That 30-35% is pretty close to the same number of people that support Bush and one could make an inference that many of those students probably are children to Bush Supporters and FOX NEWS viewers. Still in high school, we're supposed to be teaching them about the strengths of having civil liberties and rights and instead they believe we should chuck them in favor of fascism... which I am not sure they learned about considering their responses.
Then there's this wonderful gem that only furthers my theory that they are pressing to take this war to the classroom:
They're almost all there, although they're missing a couple... Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity spring to mind although in fairness maybe they couldn't fit them in.
Anyway that's a pretty large group of Right Wing Sycophants trying to get your classrooms and schools to include them in their curriculum and hang their poster on their walls.
To some degree I agree with them! No I don't want them writing our textbooks or rewriting our history but I agree they should be included!
After all what would history teach without the horrors of Hitler, Stalin or Pol Pot?
Clearly history is about learning about the past. REAL history is about gaining a broad perspective of the time period, the characters involved in shaping it and taking from it lessons for the future.
As Teddy Roosevelt (a Republican no less) said, "Those who do not learn the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them."
We need to know of the atrocities hoisted upon mankind to prevent ourselves from doing it again. Whether its a holocaust, slavery or even just derogatory attitudes from the time period it is a worthwhile message to learn the lesson and prevent ourselves from following the same foolhardy path.
Now I am not likening those Right Wing pundits above to Hitler (rather they seem to be closer to Joe McCarthy), but I do think they represent much of the morally and criminally corrupt enterprise that have pushed their agenda onto America, unfortunately for us, successfully over the past 14 years or so. Even those who are detrimental to society in every possible form should be included in the history of a time period.
These people are scourge no doubt. They label and demean citizens and politicians that disagree with their talking points or tactics as traitors or cowards or worse. They use dangerous hate speech calling for violence against people of other races, religions or sexuality. Still, they deserve inclusion in our texts.
What they must do (and unfortunately our current history textbooks that seem to do this presently for any American they include) is not perform any acts of idolatry on them.
Those with murderous intentions should be exposed for such. Those who speak of treasonous actions to be performed onto political opponents should be called to the carpet for such offenses.
In doing so we serve two purposes.
Firstly, we expose an incredibly dangerous and war mongering ideology. It teaches our children of the frailty of the American dream and ideal if we choose not to defend it against those who would dispose of it in the name of absolute power.
Secondly, it gives us a narrative in which to avoid mistakes of the recent past.
Clearly Joe McCarthy was considered misguided at best, evil at worst and just as our opinions shifted towards him over time, through the lens of reflection we will see the evils of intolerance once more and these pundits will be cast in a similar unflattering historical view.
Ann Coulter pictured at her favorite politician's grave site:
One of the ways to bring America to be the progressive nation it claims to be and advance deeper into the 21st century as a respected voice and leader in the international community is to open the minds of our children so that they can handle the complexity of life that comes from complicated decision making questions.
Our textbooks don't need to be blatantly slanted to our point of view the way theirs would need to be to be successful in shaping liberal, progressive minds. All they have to do is tell the truth, present broader context of historical periods, empathize with both sides. If they do that people will learn to accept the complexity in situations and approach their own life decisions with an open mind in anticipation of the shades of grey that life provides.
Maybe George W. Bush said it best (yes I just said that) when he said, "Is Our Children Learning?".
Grammatically incorrect as that might be, it presents a good question about our education system and the citizens that it produces.
Americans have been taught one view of our country. It is the very same thinking that presents the Black and White, Right or Wrong simplicity in our decision making process these days.
Absolution is easy. Once can come to their conclusions without much struggle or deliberation. On the other hand an open mind is scary.
If you think with rational clarity and have been taught to accept both sides of the story you have to conclude that the false reality of the "Good Guy Interventionist America" image that our textbooks create has failed us and that actual foreign policy based on this assertion has created justifiable enemies.
We might have to look to ourselves and take some personal responsibility for global warming as well. We might have to examine our lack of civil liberties and freedoms and determine that many European countries have done democracy better than us.
Opening our eyes to the shades of grey would cast doubts upon our purity as a nation.
As our children attend class everyday, one of the greatest affronts to our country is their education. For far too long our students have been taught distorted and many times false information under the guise that our textbooks should be teaching blind patriotism over truth.
It's time to re-write history with a new narrative. A narrative of open discussion of our sin as well as our success and treating people different from ourselves as respected equals rather than "savages", "barbarians" or worse might open a line of thinking where we put ourselves in the shoes of the people in other countries when making future decisions. We might just stop ourselves from getting into future wars and creating generational regional hatred towards us.
This is one of the places we need to take back. Now if only we had a Democratic money man who could take this cause on.
-Rp
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