RubinReports: Life in an American Fourth Grade: Some Good Things about America; Don't Say "Primitive"

Life in an American Fourth Grade: Some Good Things about America; Don't Say "Primitive"

By Barry Rubin

For the second time, positive things have been said about the United States in the fourth-grade class. The teacher, during a discussion of immigration which, along with racism and man-made global warming are the three topics that take up the whole class year, the teacher remarked that America is a great place to live and doesn’t classify people by class.

In music class during the singing of a Native American song (they did sing America the Beautiful once but to my best information have never learned the National Anthem, My Country ‘Tis of Thee, the Battle Hymn of the Republic, or any other patriotic song), the teacher asked the students to describe Native American music. One student used the word “primitive.” The teacher responded roughly along the following lines: “Don’t say that because that’s like saying we’re so great and they’re so primitive so let’s just say `simple.’”

RubinReports: Life in an American Fourth Grade: Some Good Things about America; Don't Say "Primitive"

RubinReports: Life in an American Fourth Grade: Teacher Explains, The Statue of Liberty Lies!

Life in an American Fourth Grade: Teacher Explains, The Statue of Liberty Lies!

By Barry Rubin

Today, the teacher read the fourth-grade class the magnificent Statue of Liberty poem by Emma Lazarus, written in the 1880s:

"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Inspiring, no? A tremendous opportunity to explain the greatness of America, including to those new immigrants in the class, right?
Well, no. Because then the teacher told the class that America hadn’t done what the poem promised, or at least not until quite recently. But since the date of the poem excludes the question of slavery, in fact the words were fulfilled, including for Asian and Latin American immigrants, quite brilliantly.

The irony is that the school is full of kids (including, it’s pretty likely, the principal) whose grandparents or great-grandparents arrived in America penniless and over time the families worked hard to enjoy living standards unequalled for non-aristocrats in world history.

(Personal note: The immigration record shows that my great-grandfather arrived in America exactly a century ago with $10 in his wallet. He died, 23 years later, a wealthy man because he and my grandmother worked around the clock, saved every penny they could, invested, and became entrepreneurs.)

Incidentally, please don’t think I am exaggerating about what goes on in this class, though of course different parts of the United States have quite different schools. But I am not leaving out material taught in the class because it doesn’t fit with the thesis that the kids are being indoctrinated into anti-Americanism. There simply is no such material.

RubinReports: Life in an American Fourth Grade: Teacher Explains, The Statue of Liberty Lies!

RubinReports: Life in an American Fourth Grade: The Months of the Year Are Politicized

Life in an American Fourth Grade: The Months of the Year Are Politicized

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By Barry Rubin

Having had Asian, African, African-American, and South American months, it's now Arab-American month. Not there's anything wrong with that.

The theme could be, should be, that America is a great country. Yes, there were periods of discrimination against various groups which were newly arrived--a problem that goes back to the coming of Irish Catholics and just about every immigrating group faced--and a very long one against those who arrived as slaves. But the democratic and open system overcame all of those shortcomings pretty quickly, though in the latter case it took a very long time. And once overcome, equal opportunity quickly became available and people were integrated into the society with amazing success. Isn't that a remarkable story?

Instead, though, the contents have been used not just to glorify the contribution of each such group and include the problems faced but to make the almost total theme criticizing the United States as innately bigoted and mean-spirited. Again, though, different places have different approaches. A colleague tells me that his fifth-grader in Pennsylvania was assigned to memorize the Gettysberg Address. In this fourth-grade classroom, however, the name Abraham Lincoln has barely, if at all, been uttered.


On Friday, the class was read a book whose title is Saladin: The Noble Prince of Islam. [You can read the first page by clicking on the link.] It describes his upbringing, education in Islam, and his life generally. My informant tells me that the book explains that Saladin taught the Muslims how to like the Christians until the Christians invaded in a "religious frenzy." I cannot verify it says that but this is what he heard.

Presumably, there will be no reading of Richard the Lion-Hearted: Noble King of Christian England [I made that title up] or any balancing material. The Crusaders did some bad things; the Muslims did some bad things. But these students will only hear about the former. They will not be told that it was pressure by Islamic states on Byzantium, their seizure of Jerusalem, and their cutting off of direct trade from Europe which were among the factors starting the wars.

There are three basic options to teaching about this to young people:

A: The Christians were right and the Muslims were wrong.
B. The Muslims were right and the Christians were wrong.
C. An accurate accont of what happened and in the course of events both sides did things right and wrong or--without putting a right or wrong on it--just say what they did.

In the West, Option A was often taught historically. Today, at least in this classroom, Option B is taught. If anything, Option C should be taught.

Of course, teaching fourth-graders this piece of history--when nothing about what Lincoln did ten miles away from the schoolroom--is no mere matter of chance. It is intended to have an effect on these children's view of today and recent history. It plays right into the evil imperialist West versus the good and innocent Muslims (and Third World peoples generally) narrative that is being presented more widely.

In the minds of ten-year-olds what else possibly is going to be formed by such indoctrination? The Crusaders become the Americans. Remember that the term "Crusader" is often applied to the United States by radical Islamists, notably Usama bin Ladin and his colleagues. Such analogies are justifications for anti-American--and anti-Western and anti-Israel--terrorism.

There is still another problem with the approach being taken: turning history into a morality play. What's perhaps even more important is that students should be taught to understand the clash of nations and peoples results from a search for their own security, conflicting claims, and ambitious visions. In itself these are not necessarily moral issues. The content of the society--and possibly more important the nature of the political systems--are what brings in moral questions.

People tend naturally to believe that their own side is right. This tendency must be curbed by teaching how to be more open-minded, inculcating an ability to stand back and be more objective. Yet if this becomes teaching people that their side is always wrong, that not only goes against what I might call the gravity of human nature but is also wrong in terms of honesty and intellectual values. It is very wrong when a basically good society is being subverted.

There is nothing at all liberal about this approach. The liberal approach is Option C above. Why is the situation today in intellectual life so bad? It isn't because just conservative values are being so often trashed. It's because both conservative and liberal values are being simultaneously trashed. It's because the values and methods that are the very basis of democracy--a passion for accuracy, an honest striving for objectivity, a courage in preserving open debate, an eagerness for fair balance, a willingness to teach people to ask questions rather than to ram down their throats prefabricated "correct" answers--are so often violated.

For reasons I won't discuss here, there isn't going to be a Christian month, or a Jewish month, or a Caucasian month, or a male month, or an America-is-great month,, or a democracy-is-good-and-dictatorship-is-bad month, or a free-enterprise-has-given-us-high-living-standards-and-a-lot-of-real-social-justice month, or a Western civilization month, or a Constitution month, or a federalism month, or a terrorism-is-bad month in public schools. All the more reason, then, that there must be a reasonable balance in what is taught about these things.

If a huge percentage of the curriculum focusing on "other" communities is implicitly portraying this above-mentioned list of groups and ideas as bad, there isn't going to be any redress elsewhere during the school year. Thus, if they learn that Japanese-Americans were interned during World War Two but not that the Japanese side in the war tortured and murdered Americans or if they learn that Christian Crusaders were aggressive but not that Muslim Saracens were, this is a one-sided story that is going to produce some terrible results.

Once again, one bad deed does not justify another, nor are all bad deeds necessarily equal. Japanese-Americans were not responsible for what the Japanese government and army did. But providing more than a one-sided view does teach us that all people are capable of good and bad, that none is innately superior. Isn't that what tolerance and anti-racism is all about?

But to teach systematically that non-Americans, non-Christians, non-whites are pretty much always good and that the other side is pretty much always bad is a form of--guess what!--racism, national chauvinism, and religious bigotry, isn't it?

There is nothing wrong with giving praise to various previously neglected groups. By the way, though, it should be remembered that children today are growing up in the twenty-first century and are not being socialized during the era of slavery or segregation or the British Empire and the concept of the white man's burden. There doesn't have to be some desperate attempt to persuade them that--to quote a neglected document--"all men [in the sense of all people] are created equal." They know that already.

A democratic society that teaches a large proportion of its students that its own society, values, and history are always good is making a mistake that will have some real costs. A democratic society that teaches a large proportion of its students that its own society, values, and history is evil is committing suicide.

RubinReports: Life in an American Fourth Grade: The Months of the Year Are Politicized

RubinReports: News Flash: Fourth Graders Sing Pro-American Song!

News Flash: Fourth Graders Sing Pro-American Song!

By Barry Rubin

Today, April 8, after seven months of school, the students sang, "America the Beautiful" in music class. This was the first positive thing said about the United States during this entire school year.
They also sang a song about how peace is the international language in English, French, and Spanish.

RubinReports: News Flash: Fourth Graders Sing Pro-American Song!

RubinReports: Some Truths About America’s Anti-Racist History: Portraying the Japanese in World War Two Films

Some Truths About America’s Anti-Racist History: Portraying the Japanese in World War Two Films

By Barry Rubin

This year, my son—who is attending the fourth grade at an American public school—has been subjected to an unending barrage of anti-Americanism, especially around the issue of racism. For some reason the main focus is alleged American racism toward the Japanese in World War Two. In addition, literally not a single positive word has been spoken about America during the entire school year.

At the same time, I have been watching a number of American films about the Pacific theatre during World War Two, not seeking them out but merely because they have been shown on television. The controversy over Tom Hanks’s statement and his new series on that war has added to the interest.

One thing very clear to me is that American films about the Pacific theatre are remarkably free of vicious or “racialist” incitement. On the contrary, it is remarkable how restrained they are. In many films that focus on combat—say, “Wake Island” or “They Were Expendable,” among them--there little talk about the Japanese at all, much less any demonizing of them. They are an enemy who is being fought and, if possible, killed, but there is no racialist message.

Another film, “Bataan,” (1943) showsout Americans and Filipinos fighting together in the early days of the war. The two allies are seen interacting on a basis of equality. Remember that Japanese are not a race and World War Two American stereotypes of other Asians—especially Filipinos and Chinese—are quite sympathetic. About the only characterization of the Japanese in this film is that while hated as foes the American soldiers describe them as very brave and skilled soldiers.

In “Thirty Seconds over Tokyo,” about the first American air raid on Japan, led by Colonel Jimmy Doolittle, there is one remarkable exchange in which a flier says that Americans should not be prejudiced against the Japanese people as a whole. He says that his family employed a Japanese gardener who was a pretty nice guy. While today this might be portrayed as patronizing, the context was that Japanese were human beings like everyone else.

Incidentally, when the plane crews crash land in China, their lives are saved by heroic Chinese, shown as defending themselves against Japanese aggression. They risk their own lives and give of their few possessions to help save Americans. Asians are thus portrayed very favorably.

If you want to see a film that expresses the American self-conception at the time, try "The Human Comedy" (1943), written by the Armenian-American Californian William Saroyan. Many now consider the film embarrassingly sentimental and corny. But it is actually quite noble. (I'd love to see this film being shown as representative of how Americans thought--or at least the standard they set for themselves--during those days.

Mickey Rooney plays a boy working at the telegraph office in a California town who watches his brother go off to war. But he has to deliver telegrams telling families that their sons are killed, wounded, or missing. There is a moving scene when he has to do so to a Mexican-American family (treated very sympathetically) and a truly remarkable one when his boss is driving through the park past all the different ethnic versions of July 4 celebrations, pointing them out as examples of American pluralism. I believe that in a scene of American soldiers heading east on a troop train, there are a couple of Asian-Americans in uniform, though no one remarks on the fact. This film should be mandatory viewing for public school students today to know that their ancestors weren’t neo-Nazi skinheads.

Especially interesting is the 1944 film, “Destination Tokyo.” It’s about an American submarine crew given a mission to sneak into Tokyo Bay with a Japanese-speaking American officer to gather intelligence for the raid mentioned above. So how did this wartime movie, chosen pretty much at random, deal with the Japanese? Is it an example of American racism and chauvinism, like schoolkids are taught nowadays?

There are two scenes in which the Japanese come up and they are both pretty remarkable. Remember the war was at its height when this film was made. In the first scene, the submarine is passing through the Aleutian islands when it is attacked by two Japanese planes. It shoots both of them down—perhaps an unreasonable amount of heroics but necessary to the plot since the mission would have to be cancelled if they are spotted.

One of the Japanese pilots parachutes and the captain orders him to be taken aboard for questioning. I think this is most unrealistic since they couldn’t go on a long mission with a Japanese officer on board. If it had happened in real life, they probably would have done nothing and he would have been dead of hypothermia in those icy waters within a few minutes.

But following orders, Mike, one of the most popular crew members, tries to pull him aboard. The pilot stabs him to death and is immediately machinegunned. This is not unrealistic since Japanese soldiers—especially officers—rarely surrendered and did use such tactics on many occasions.

At any rate, this could have been the basis for a real hate-Japanese diatribe. Instead, though, the speeches made by a crew member and by the captain (played by Cary Grant) to the crew are remarkable.

One crewman, who has earlier made clear his ethnic pride in being a Greek, to which he then proudly adds, "Greek American," (in the kind of American pluralist statement so common in wartime files), doesn’t attend the funeral. The other crew members are angry at him but he explains that he doesn’t think he’s earned the right to do so because he hasn’t made any contribution to avenging those already dead. Back in Greece, he recounts, his uncle, a professor, was killed by the Nazis:

“Because he had brains. Because everybody’s got to be their slave and those who won’t, like my uncle, they kill….So I don’t forget my uncle. I read where an American flier gets killed and I think of my uncle. I see pictures of little Chinese kids getting bombed and I think of my uncle. I hear about a Russian guerrilla getting hanged and I think about my uncle. And I see Mike lying in there dead from a Jap killer and I think of my uncle.”

Again, many would see this as contrived and mawkish but it is hardly a chauvinistic American rant. His inclusion of the Chinese, who like the Japanese are Asians, makes it pretty PC by any standards. It also points out once again the very strong pro-Chinese feeling in the United States at the time. Overall, it wasn't a bad way to explain the war in both terms of freedom and human connections.

A short time later, the captain says:

“Mike was with me on my first patrol. I was his friend. I know his family….I remember Mike’s pride when he bought his first roller skates for his little five-year-old boy….Well that Jap got a present, too, when he was five, a dagger….The Japs have a ceremony that goes with it….At thirteen he can put a machine-gun together blindfolded . So as I see it, that Jap was started on the road twenty years ago to putting a knife in Mike’s back. There are lots of Mikes dying now, and lots more will die. Until we put a stop to a system that puts knives in the hands of five-year-old children. You know, if Mike were here to put it into words right now that’s just about what he died for: more roller-skates in this world, including some for the next generation of Japanese kids because that’s the kind of a man Mike was.”

This isn’t a sophisticated lecture on the samurai class. The machine-gun part is silly, of course. But what does the speech say? That a terrible system in Japan has created people who inevitably act in a certain way and that this system must be democratized, not only for America’s sake but for that of the Japanese as well so that they can enjoy a better life.

This is a remarkable prophecy of the post-war American occupation policy and successful transformation of Japan. Such sentiments are the opposite of a racist interpretation, which sees such behavior as innate and certainly doesn’t care about the lives of the enemy. One can’t help thinking of parallels in a system which teaches children to become suicide bombers today, programming them to hate and to want to commit genocide.

Yet there is even more here. While racism--mainly against those of African descent--was long a terrible feature of American life, there are powerful counter-ideas also in American history. Americans believed that people were not merely the outcome of innate, genetic determinism. What better description of the American world view is there to say that a peasant, the descendant of generations of peasants, could get off the boat and become a prosperous and respected citizen? And there would be little or no prejudice against the children of those immigrants because of their background.

True, each new wave of immigrants was hazed, and those from Africa faced by far the longest and greatest mistreatment. Yet ultimately it was because racism was contrary to the American system and world view that it could not survive.

Returning to the film, in a later scene, the captain asks the intelligence officer about Japanese society. While the conversation may not be accurate, it is also explicitly anti-racialist. The officer explains that there was a democratic movement in Japan but the leaders were assassinated. The people have no power and are downtrodden, “No unions, no free press, nothing.” Most of them “believe what they’re told. They’ve been sold a swindle and they accept it.” it is explained that Japanese people live in appalling poverty in a way that stirs sympathy for them and that “females are useful there only to work and have children.”

Again, it is not that the Japanese are innately evil or inferior but merely that the people have been deprived of rights. They, too, are victims. There were heroic Japanese who wanted democracy but they were repressed. Note also that the oppression of women is an important issue, like today, in the mix which is said to make for an authoritarian society.

Of course, this is the Hollywood version of events, not what was going on in the field. But that’s precisely the point. This was the kind of thing Americans in their millions were being told: hate the Japanese as an enemy but not as a people or as a “race.” And, again, a very clear differentiation was being made among Asians based on nationality.

I’m not saying that these films are great art necessarily or accurate about how the war was fought. But inasmuch as there is an ideological statement in them, it is something Americans today can be proud of and it is also evidence that the rewriting of American history into a series of hate crimes is a lie.

RubinReports: Some Truths About America’s Anti-Racist History: Portraying the Japanese in World War Two Films

RubinReports: Life in the Fourth Grade: The indoctrination never ends

Life in the Fourth Grade: The indoctrination never ends

Today: Discussion in class on why limits on immigration were historically racist. My son, who had been briefed, pointed out that the restrictions followed a huge wave of immigration which needed to be absorbed and that there was fear of massive unemployment. But the teacher said that it was racist because the figures for Africa and Asia were low. It's quite true that in the 1920s there was a racialist aspect to the restrictions but of course there had never been much immigration from Africa. As for Asia, there was a major issue with the fear of cheap labor. Trade unions were major supporters of immigration restriction.

At any rate, what's at issue here is not a historical argument but the message being given constantly to the kids that any restrictions on immigration today would be racist, the basic idea that countries have no right to restrict immigration or to preserve a national ethos.

That's not the main item, though. Each student was assigned to draw a picture. My son told me that his assignment was to draw something on the "mistreatment of the Chinese."

You should know that given the teacher's constant emphasis on the internment of Japanese by the US during World War Two, he had constantly pointed out that this was not racist since the US did not intern any other Asians and was very pro-Chinese and pro-Filipino. He then talked about how the Japanese government had been far more oppressive than the US, killing millions of Chinese civilians and looking on the Chinese as racially inferior.

I thought: OK he talked so much about it, he was assigned (I only later found out he pulled a slip from the pile) to draw a picture of Japanese soldiers killing Chinese civilians. And I was going to help him research things like the "rape of Nanking," one of the worst such atrocities.

So I said to him: "Ah, you are assigned to draw a picture of the Chinese being oppressed by the Japanese?"

"No," he answered, "of the Chinese being oppressed by the Americans."

When given this assignment, he told the teacher: "I don't believe in this."

She replied, "It isn't a matter of believing in it. These are straight historic facts."

Now of course it is true that, for example, Chinese workers on railroad construction in the late nineteenth century were paid less than American-born workers. There was also at one time a Chinese Exclusion Act. But there are also the stories of Chinese immigrants coming to America, being far better treated than they were at home (by their own ruling class, landlords, and governments not to mention their fellow-Asians from Japan), and doing very well. None of this, of course, will be mentioned.

The point is not to cover up the past problems of American society but to:

--Point out how they were corrected voluntarily.
--The scope a free system gave for organization and efforts by immigrant groups to improve their lot.
--The oppression in their home countries that made people want to immigrate in the first place.
--How others treated people far worse.
--How such immigrants and their children have become the greatest believers in the American dream and patriots precisely because they know what they have gained.

You can add to the list. But these kids will never hear about any of this.

RubinReports: Life in the Fourth Grade: The indoctrination never ends

RubinReports: Today in the Fourth Grade

Today in the Fourth Grade

Again, a discussion on how the Declaration of Independence's statement that "all men are created equal" was biased against women and was hypocritical since it didn't include all sorts of groups including people who didn't own property. No other position was presented including, of course, the point that in the English language--and especially so in the eighteenth century--the word "men" covered all humans. Or that precisely because this position was laid out already in principle the vote could be extended over time.

By the way, I'm quite conscious that this account covers one county in Maryland and in other places--notably Texas--there are quite different controversies and arguments (which I cannot judge since I don't have the textbooks to see what they say) that things have gone too far in the other direction. I'm just writing about what can be seen by me first-hand.

RubinReports: Today in the Fourth Grade

RubinReports: How Political Correctness Stifles Intellectual Correctness: An Ivy League Experiment

How Political Correctness Stifles Intellectual Correctness: An Ivy League Experiment

By Barry Rubin

A friend just told me about an experience he had teaching at an Ivy League university that sums up a lot of the problem with American education nowadays.

One day he went into his history class and began lecturing with a long and spirited defense of slavery. The students were amazed and appalled, asking “How can you say such things?”

Let me interrupt here to make two points. First, none of the students apparently seemed to think he might not mean what he was saying, which tells how much they have become used to hearing only what has already become pre-digested "truth." Second, the professor is an African-American. Of course, if he wasn’t his talk would probably have ended his academic career right there.

He explained to the students that it was not enough to oppose something—like slavery—by merely assuming it was wrong. You must make a good coherent case on the other side. And this requires taking very seriously arguments you may find repugnant but which in some cases—even if not this specific one—could even persuade you that you don’t already possess the full truth.

The professor added, “I won’t accept your merely saying that it is immoral. You have to give me social, economic, political, and other arguments against it.”

In other words, the test for any idea is not whether it meets some pre-existing political standard of what is socially acceptable nowadays (Political Correctness, multiculturalism, and non-hate speech) outside of which everythig is automatically an evil lie. The test is whether it corresponds to reality in some way (that is based on evidence), has consistent arguments (that is, based on logic), and all the other tools of rational thought (for example, handling exceptional cases, having some predictive capability, employing reliable sources, to strive for the closest possible approximation of objective truth even if they could never achieve that perfectly, etc).

I asked him what happened next. He said that about two students understood what was going on and did a good job of meeting his challenge. The rest had no idea of how to respond.

This reminds me of a story I heard from another professor who proposed that a broad reading list should be established for a course which gave a range of views. The professor teaching the course replied that such an idea was old-fashioned and boring. "What I do in my course is explain in the first class that the world's problems are caused by the United States and I spend the rest of the course proving it."

The point is that a short history of American education (and that in some other places in the West) over the last few decades might go like this:

Stage 1: What we are now told were the “bad old days” in which students were indoctrinated to be patriotic and think America was a good society with few if any faults; the cowboy were always the good guys, and the focus was on only some groupings.

Stage 2: The transition, during which students were given a balanced story, with both America’s virtues and its shortcomings presented. (At best, that included an explanation about how the system was free enough to allow for advocacy of change and good enough to make reforms without massive conflict or collapse.)
Of particular importance, during this period students were encouraged to think for themselves, be critical but rational, to question what they were being taught.

Stage 3: The current era. Things have come full circle and even more so. Students in many cases are indoctrinated to be anti-patriotic and think America was a bad society with few if any virtues. They are encourged not to question authority and might be ridiculed or punished for doing so.

But the shortcoming now isn’t just the indoctrinating content of many courses, in humanities and social science at least, it is the failure to teach good methodology. How bizarre that we’ve come full circle to an era where students are not encouraged to think for themselves, given one “correct” view point to the exclusion of others, and thus cannot develop coherent, logic-based arguments.

RubinReports: How Political Correctness Stifles Intellectual Correctness: An Ivy League Experiment

RubinReports: The Age of Indoctrination

The Age of Indoctrination

By Barry Rubin

A reader of my articles on the fourth grade sends me this article from Australia about the proposed new curriculum for that country's schools in the ninth grade. According to the government's spokesman on education, that is the Labour party not conservatives, the plan is a terrible one:

''While there are 118 references in the document to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people and culture, there is one reference to Parliament, none to 'Westminster' [the British parliament from which Australia takes the basis of its law and democracy] and none to the Magna Carta,'' he said.

''Grade nines will consider the personal stories of Aboriginal people and examine massacres and 'indigenous displacement' without any reference to the benefit to our country of our European heritage and the sacrifice of our forebears to build a nation."

As I've noted the way to manage perception that studies in the past were too slanted in one direction is not to make them totally slanted in the opposite direction but to have a reasonable balance.

RubinReports: The Age of Indoctrination

RubinReports: Life in an American Fourth Grade: America Consists of Illegal Settlements!

Life in an American Fourth Grade: America Consists of Illegal Settlements!

By Barry Rubin

Today the kids were writing a paragraph on the coming of the settlers to North America. One girl said: The Europeans were not nice. A second added: The Europeans just came to America and said it’s our land and started killing Indians. Of course, they are just repeating the relentless indoctrination they have received almost every day for the last six months.

Since they haven’t been taught about the early colonists’ desire for liberty, democracy, religious freedom, a chance to own their own land, and an opportunity to build a better society, among other things, why shouldn’t they think of those Pilgrim Puritans and Virginian pioneers as rapacious imperialist plunderers?

I want to emphasize that we are not talking about a balanced approach, presenting the good with the bad, but an all-bad approach.

The irony is that both girls are from South America and are descended from European settlers who treated the Native Americans there far worse than was done in North America.

Since I have to spend a lot of time dealing with those in the West who deny that Israel has a right to exist, it is startling to realize that these people’s children are being taught that their own nations are equally illegitimate!

RubinReports: Life in an American Fourth Grade: America Consists of Illegal Settlements!

RubinReports: Life in an American Fourth Grade: It Gets Worse and Worse

Life in an American Fourth Grade: It Gets Worse and Worse

By Barry Rubin

Yesterday during the opening "warm-up" period, the students read one page on George Washington's childhood. Today there was a brief discussion of the text. This is apparently the total official county program to deal with the founder of the United States. It seems as if nothing will be done to commemorate Abraham Lincoln's birthday at all.

After the brief discussion on Washington there was a very long discussion about the same topic as has been the overwhelming one for the whole year: How the white Americans, in this case the early settlers, mistreated every other racial group. No discussion of the courage of the settlers, their development of democracy, the advantages of the new society over the one they had left behind in Europe, the growth of religious freedom, or anything else but just racial exploitation and racism. America=racism about sums up the almost six months of instruction the children have received.

RubinReports: Life in an American Fourth Grade: It Gets Worse and Worse

RubinReports: Life in an American Fourth Grade: George Washington Sighting!

Life in an American Fourth Grade: George Washington Sighting!

By Barry Rubin

For those following my blogging on a fourth-grade class, this morning during the opening "warm-up" period, the students read one page on George Washington's childhood. No discussion. This is apparently the total official county program to deal with the founder of the United States. One day after Abraham Lincoln's birthday, however, he still hasn't been mentioned at all. For an earlier "accidental" brief mention of Washington, see here.

RubinReports: Life in an American Fourth Grade: George Washington Sighting!

RubinReports: Life in an American Fourth Grade: George Washington’s and Abe Lincoln’s Twelve Minutes of Fame

Life in an American Fourth Grade: George Washington’s and Abe Lincoln’s Twelve Minutes of Fame

By Barry Rubin

I’ve been waiting to see how the class dealt with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln on the occasion of their birthdays. inally, the topic came up today.

My son says that he and a foreign student (not an immigrant) were looking at a book containing short biographies of every U.S. president. Seeing them the teacher said something about not letting this occasion go by without saying something about these two presidents. (Does this mean that if they hadn't been reading the book nothing at all would have been done in class? Quite possibly.)

The teacher then took the small book and read from these two entries, which took only about ten minutes. This was followed by a very brief discussion. My son estimates the discussion took two minutes. That’s it for George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

Interesting question: Does the county curriculum tell teachers to do something about Washington and Lincoln or not?

Then the class returned to one of the two favorite interlinked topics that have taken up more than 90 percent of the social studies' time. The two topics are: American racism, that is, mistreatment of other racial groupings, and immigrants (recent ones, not historical immigration). The only other topic discussed at any length has been global warming.

Please understand that this is NOT an exaggeration. I have been asking about what happened every day after school and except for a homework handout involving learning the names of the thirteen original colonies and a couple of dates this has been the sum total of social studies during five months of class.

Next, a short film was shown about four immigrants, coming from El Salvador, Togo, Taiwan, Russia (thus covering Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Europe equally). My son asked about illegal immigration. This set off the class which began talking about various anecdotes or things they had seen. The teacher told them to stop it and added that this wasn’t the subject of discussion at the moment.

Teaching kids that they should not be racist and that (legal) immigration is a good thing is quite reasonable. Teaching them almost nothing else about the American system or history (except that it is characterized by slavery and racism) isn’t. Once again I ask: Aren't any other parents simply asking their kids what happens in class every day and being shocked by the answers?

RubinReports: Life in an American Fourth Grade: George Washington’s and Abe Lincoln’s Twelve Minutes of Fame

RubinReports: Life in an American Fourth Grade: All the Scientists Agree? And What's Most Important About American History

Life in an American Fourth Grade: All the Scientists Agree? And What's Most Important About American History

For unique and continuous looks into American public school classrooms, please subscribe

By Barry Rubin

The teacher told the fourth grade class in the midst of the greatest snow storm in Washington DC history: "Just because it's snowing doesn't mean that there isn't global warming. All scientists agree that there's global warming."

My son raised his hand and said: "That's impossible. Not all scientists agree."

"Ok," said the teacher, "I meant to say that the majority of scientists agree."

Is there man-made global warming? I have no idea whatsoever, lacking the expertise to make such a judgment. But I do know this isn't the way to teach kids about the scientific method. Rather, it is the way to train them always to yield to peer pressure, that dreaded syndrome supposed to lead young people to drugs, alcohol, and smoking. Or, as summed up comically by the character Yossarian in Catch-22, "Just because everyone thinks that way how could I think anything different?"

Indeed, the teacher didn't have to say anything at all, since no child had claimed the heavy snowfall was proof that there was no global warming. They had already spent around three full sessions pounding home the idea that there wasn't any question that global warming is a huge problem on which trillions of dollars must be spent. Presumably, the class was convinced already.

Rather, the attitude evined is that they must be made to believe in this and even the possibility of any doubt existing had to be squelched. And to ensure this the teacher told a lie, which was only retracted because there was one student there who had the knowledge and courage to question it.

This kind of "everyone agrees" argument is the stuff of indoctrination, not learning. The teacher could have spoken about how data is collected, experiments are made, hypotheses are questioned, and out of that debate--if it goes on long enough and all the facts line up--comes a consensus truth which is itself subject to further testing and constant examination.

But that isn't how most schools teach today. Rather they say--in an approach sounding like the worst "progressive" stereotype of a traditional "America is always right" old school system--This is the truth. Everyone says so. Shut up and believe it.

Whatever happened to that liberal slogan, Question Authority? Whatever happened to that liberal slogan about the free marketplace of ideas?

The same 100 percent overkill has been used to persuade students that the most important thing to know about the United States is that it has mistreated minorities and immigrants. For five months there's been pretty much nothing else taught.

No, there's still not any sign that the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln will be dealt with at all. So far only one president has been mentioned and praised in class. Can you guess which one? Write me if you figure out the answer.



But at least, finally, there is the very first mention of something else about American history. Homework for this new unit consists of three things to memorize: names and locations of the thirteen original colonies; dates and locations of Jamestown, Plymouth, and the first settlement in Maryland; and two dates about U.S. history. What are these two most important of all events once early America began? Here's what the homework assignment says:

"1619 date of the earliest recorded enslaved people (slaves) brought to the colonies. 1776 date of the Declaration of Independence when the colonies became separated from England."

I don't know whether it would be unfair to make anything of the phrase "became separated" rather than staged a revolution, but we can still see that pretty much the most important thing about America--other than the fact that it killed and dispossessed Native Americans--that students are taught is that it had slaves, not that it was established to pursue liberty, democracy, and a society in which the citizens were not slaves of the government.

In response to my request for readers to share their experiences, one recalls how his grandchild’s class held a Columbus Day trial for Christopher Columbus on charges of invading Native American territory. Another mentions how on a tour of the Constitution Center in Philadelphia the guide lectured on Thomas Jefferson being a slaveowner; Andrew Jackson, a racist oppressor of Native Americans; Franklin Roosevelt as incarcerator of Japanese during World War Two; and Ronald Reagain was a manipulative former actor.

Of course, Jefferson did a few other things worth mentioning, aside from the fact that he opposed the slave trade and tried to abolish slavery. While Jackson was incredibly brutal toward the Native Americans, though this grew out of bloody warfare on both sides and he was a great populist who further widened democracy and stood up for the rights and respect do the common people (a most radical idea at the time). I would also argue that Roosevelt had lots of other things to his credit and that the internment was justified given what was known at the time. The remarks about Reagan were pure partisan politics and, again, left out his other achievements.

The point is not that these people shouldn’t be criticized but that only criticism was presented without highlighting their greatness or even putting their aforementioned shortcomings into historical context. Indeed, Jefferson and Jackson have been historically viewed as the founding fathers of the Democratic Party.

The reader's account continues: “The only leader whom the docent mentioned but did not report to have clay feet was Martin Luther King. When I asked her about what I thought was an unusual way of depicting America's heroes, the docent said that the policy of the museum was to show that these men were `human.’”

What’s really going on here, of course, is the presentation of past leaders and their policies as inhuman. This isn't the teaching of American history but the trashing of America, its history, the basic decency of most of its people and leaders, the genuine efforts of earlier generations to do the right thing, and the system's remarkable ability to deliver freedom, prosperity and development.

There's also a parallel between the climate issue and the history issue. In the "bad old days" of the past, people were told what to think. Then we entered a new era of freedom--of which liberalism was a great champion--when different sides were presented in a reasonably balanced manner. Now we seem to be back in the age of everyone agrees--or else--and there's no room for any different perspective.

RubinReports: Life in an American Fourth Grade: All the Scientists Agree? And What's Most Important About American History

RubinReports: Political Secrets of the Middle East: Intimidation Works (If You Really Mean It)

Political Secrets of the Middle East: Intimidation Works (If You Really Mean It)

By Barry Rubin

Intimidation works. That might seem obvious, and it certainly seems to be understood by some people regarding domestic American politics, but it is very much neglected when thinking about foreign policy.

Here’s an obscure little story that caught my attention. There’s a Muslim imam in the town of Paris, near Drancy, named Hassan Chalghoumi. He was leading a service with around 300 people in the mosque when about one-third of them interrupted him, screamed he was an infidel traitor, and threatened to kill him. He thought he would not escape alive.

What was Chalghoumi’s sin? He has spoken against Islamic extremism, the very ideology the demonstrators espouse, and condemned antisemitism. After he requested Muslims to respect the memory of Jews killed in the Holocaust, his home was vandalized.

Will Chalghoumi give in and shut up? I don’t know. But the point is that dozens of others will never get started in the first place. There are always a few people who will not be intimidated even by death threats. Yet they will be few.

Perhaps if huge numbers of French citizens took to the streets in huge marches to extol Chalghoumi--who after all is precisely the moderate, tolerant Muslim they profess to applaud—this would not only encourage him but also inspire others to step forward.

If huge numbers of Muslims in France and around the world took to the streets in huge marches to extol Chalghoumi, thus showing they are the moderates they claim to be, then that, too, would inspire others to step forward.

Instead, Fouad Alaoui, president of the Union des Organisations Islamiques de France (UOIF), said, "We've warned him several times to moderate his words because he risks to attract these sort of reactions." In other words, we won't support you, you're making people angry, so shut up. What makes this especially significant is that the UOIF is an organization created and funded by the French government in an attempt to moderate Islam and isolate extremists. Apparently, its response to extremists is to appease them.

Meanwhile, though for decades, Western intellectuals, artists, journalists have boasted of their courage in defending the right to free speech, how quickly, faced with a real, albeit extraordinarily minimal and remote, threat did they crumble.

But it gets even better (or actually, worse). They can now boast of their enlightened tolerance for being cowardly and put those who disagree with them, who are willing to risk intimidation, on trial. And of course if you want a job in publishing, journalism, academia, Hollywood, or various strongholds of the current dominant ideology, toe the line or forget about a job.

Let’s list the three main categories of intimidation.

First and most obviously there is the physical: the threat or act of violence. While thousands of Westerners have been killed by random Islamist terrorism, probably no more than a half-dozen individuals have been murdered in attacks from the same sources targeting them because of their use of free speech. Yet this has been sufficient to silence the main institutions of Western society that are supposed to function as truth-tellers, fearless critics of everything. .

Probably even more people have been intimidated by verbal intimidation, which alone has several varieties.

Second, there is ridicule. One of the most effective weapons in intimidating people in Western elite society is to make fun of them and the most successful tool of all—the Weapon of Mass Destruction in this context—is to portray them as unfashionable. Rather than being part of the elite, they are among the uneducated, uncultured hicks, those bigoted people clinging to guns and religion. So if you want to be part of the elite, holding the “right” views is like a membership card.

A great gimmick here is to take some proposition that is easily demonstrable to be wrong and make it sound extremely silly. For example, regarding the Middle East:

“Wow, these people really believe that a nuclear Iran would be a threat; that we are not on the verge of Israel-Palestinian peace; that Israel is a great country; that Islamism is a form of totalitarian ideology; that Syria is wedded to its alliance with Iran; that Islamist terrorists actually have some connection to Islam; that the United States has played—despite errors—a noble role in the world. Have you ever heard of anything so ridiculous? Hahaha! What a bunch of uneducated, uncultured hicks.”

Labeling: Beyond the unfashionable, the “wrong” views have to be presented as fitting into categories which most observers—not only the dedicated supporters of the dominant view but also independent, undecided bystanders—will consider to be wrong and even evil.

We now have a multiplicity of such labels: racist, imperialist, reactionary, conservative, Republican, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, and so on. Indeed, contemporary political debate often seems like a parade of insults. But if you can label an idea as falling into a forbidden category you can scare off lots of people from accepting or even considering it. Those intimidated fall into two categories: those who believe that the idea is evil and those who may be sympathetic but fear being tarred with a sin in their brain.

Misrepresenting: The systematic misquoting and distortion of ideas or actions to make them seem evil. To pick one example, Israel was attacked by thousands of rockets from a terrorist group which openly called for genocide against its people. After the other side—let’s call it Hamas—tore up a ceasefire and attacked, Israel defended itself while using serious efforts to limit civilian casualties, though Hamas used civilians as human shields.

The mission: To make Israel look like an aggressive war criminal by distorting what happened. Mission accomplished. And that’s only one of dozens of such missions achieved on a wide variety of issues during the last decade or so.

Remember when we used to say, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me?” During the era of Political Correctness, that kind of sticks and stones rule the West culturally and intellectually.

Third and last there are legal methods, suing those who say something you don’t want or trying them as purveyors of hate speech. These are few in number but panic vast institutions, especially in publishing.

In the Middle East, the traditional instruments of intimidation as part of statecraft are very much alive. In the West, however, the goal of foreign policy nowadays seems to try to prove that you have no intention of intimidating anyone. Intimidation seems reserved largely for internal social and political matters. When it comes to foreign policy, such methods are relics of the bad old days for which apologies are now given.

A society cannot win at home if its free institutions succumb to intimidation. A country cannot win abroad if it isn't willing to use intimidation against the enemies of freedom.

Forget Che! Where are the Hassan Chalghoumi tee-shirts?

RubinReports: Political Secrets of the Middle East: Intimidation Works (If You Really Mean It)

RubinReports: Free Speech is a Right, Not a Privilege Granted by the State

Free Speech is a Right, Not a Privilege Granted by the State

By Barry Rubin

“Free speech is not an automatic right. It is not a cover to allow hate speech and outright abuse,” writes a pro-Israel activist in a letter to a newspaper about the viciously nasty, even antisemitic “talk-backs” on its site.

That kind of talk makes me shiver no matter who says it. In my opinion free speech is an absolute right, excepting only—as the U.S. Supreme Court wisely ruled—when it is incitement to a real and imminent crime. For the record, offending someone is not a crime nor is criticizing any group, whether fairly or otherwise. Attacks on an individual are covered under clearly defined laws of libel and slander which require proof of far more than criticism alone or saying something the targeted person didn't like.

How ironic that the thin edge of the wedge in subverting the freedom of speech in various countries was to make Holocaust denial a crime. This should never have happened. The result is a panoply of new laws, new “hate crimes,” and even courts to try people for nonsensical charges regarding writings, statements, or even jokes and cartoons.

There is a difference, of course, between free speech and editing or, to use the Internet term for the latter, “moderating.” Editing is a selection made by an individual assigned for that purpose to choose what is best and most interesting for a given publication, as well as improving the quality of writing and reducing of excessive verbiage. If a publication is edited then everyone knows that fact and can choose another publication to read or submit materials. Or even to start one’s own and to compete for viewers or readers. That last point is covered under freedom of the press.

Personally, I don’t find talk-backs to be so useful, don’t read them, and don’t have them on my blog. On the other hand, I cherish the letters I receive from readers which often contain interesting ideas, useful corrections, and even the basis for articles. Given the inevitable result of being clogged with silly-speech (of which only a portion could be labeled “hate-speech” by anyone), I don’t see the point of having such things. But I’m certainly not advocating banning them by law or throwing into prison someone who writes one that offends me.

And there’s a good reason for not doing things like that to everything one doesn’t like. Once there is someone empowered to limit free speech as such, any democratic society is in trouble. The temptations of partisanship or personal (or group) interest are going to be too strong to resist. And everyone has a different idea of what is acceptable or not.

Of course that is what's happening with some targets of alleged hate (which is almost always mere criticism) getting legal protection and others not.


Liberals have traditionally been the strongest of all in opposing censorship and defending the right of free speech against restrictions. In contrast, extreme leftists and rightists are eager to shut up others right to speak. The clever manipulation of categories like race, gender, and religion, has now opened the door for attacking liberty. Unfortunately, people who call themselves "liberals" are now in the forefront of the censorship drive. Just because you find a good excuse for censorship (the old ones regarding religion, decency, and family were also pretty good causes).

Should one be terrified of bigots? Again, in an edited media, such expressions—at least by their quantity—should not be allowed to crowd out everything else. Because such statements are nonsensical, boring, and repetitive, they are of less interest and reduce the space or time for useful dialogue. A good editor or publisher should want to dispense with such things for solid, logical reasons.

Again, though, as the founders of the American republic and of other democratic nations understood, the power to limit free speech is not an authority that should be placed into the hands of anyone, no matter how well-meaning they claim to be and how allegedly noble and undeniably righteous is their real or supposed cause.

A state that puts people on trial for things they’ve said, written, or drawn—as have the Netherlands and Canada to name but two—is no longer a truly democratic country. Or how about the United Kingdom where, for example, a blogger who accurately depicted an Anglican cleric as a Holocaust denier and an associate of Islamist terrorists received a threatening visit by police? In the same country, the police tried to prosecute a television network for showing videos of sermons taken inside mosques, though a court finally ruled that the police (that is, the taxpayers) had to pay damaged to the television network.

That power to curb free speech will be inevitably abused to the detriment of society. The only difference between such a system and the Stalinist USSR is one of intensity, not type.

There is also another reason for not limiting free speech. It is better to know what is being said and thought rather than driving it underground. The number, identity, and arguments made by those who express views of various types should be known and understood by those who seek to counter them.

People who believe in democracy should feel that the only ones who will lose by freedom of speech are those whose arguments can be refuted by truth and logic. Come to think of it, that’s precisely what most of those in authority insisting on limiting free speech fear. Shutting up one’s enemies is too attractive a temptation to yield to for any reasons whatsoever.

RubinReports: Free Speech is a Right, Not a Privilege Granted by the State

RubinReports: How Textbooks Your Children are Using Distort the World

How Textbooks Your Children are Using Distort the World

Please subscribe. If you haven't already.

By Barry Rubin

My son brought me a book from his class’s library, The Usborne Illustrated Atlas of World History, published originally in 1995 by Scholastic books. This was the 2000 edition, in other words the publisher had five years to fix the errors I enumerate below. While showing less purposeful bias than other texts I've analyzed, the combination of factual errors and acceptance of mainstream contemporary (bad) thinking makes for more miseducation.

Page 74: The Iron Curtain. The book is careful not to say much critical about Communism in the USSR and Eastern Europe. We are told (and this is rather amazing), “After [World War Two] communist [lower class “c”!] parties came to power in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and other Eastern European countries.” Came to power! You mean through violence and repression?

On page 78 we are told about the rise of Solidarity in Poland but again nothing about the internal repression or failure of Communism. In fact, the issue is reduced to being merely one of nationalism:

“The rise against communism began in Poland. The Polish people were not happy that the Soviet Union dominated their government.” In response to Solidarity, we are told that the government introduced martial law but that in 1980 “the Polish people were granted free elections.” Under “The Iron Curtain Dissolves” we are told that other countries then “changed” and that “the Communists allowed new political parties” It sounds like an act of generosity.

Nothing about torture, shootings, deportations, the wrecking of the economy, the war on religion, or all the other features of Communist life.

So what does the book say about the Soviet Union under Stalin? On page 68:

“The Bolsheviks…set up a communist government which was based on providing equality and state control of people’s everyday lives….[Stalin] took much land away from the peasants and many people died of starvation or were sent to harsh work camps.”

This is a rather positive reading of the Bolsheviks intentions--isn't "equality" a good thing, the little reader might think--though it does mention the regime's totalistic control and even the famine induced by collectivization.

Even worse, it reduces the Gulag to merely be a series of “harsh work camps.” Nothing about the murder of millions of people by shooting them in the back of their head or death through overwork, freezing, and starvation.

In comparison, the book does talk a little bit about repression in Communist China but only during the brief Cultural Revolution and not before, as if this was a problem during a relatively small part of the regime's history.

Evenhandedness on the Cold War is very carefully maintained, not implying in any way that the U.S.-led side must have been better. For example:

“In the 1970s and 80s, the superpowers continued to back groups close to their own ideas. The USA supported revolutions in Chile and Nicaragua, while the Soviets occupied Afghanistan.” The book doesn't attack U.S. policies, which is why I say it is not as bad as many more radical texts. Yet it is just badly thought out. It would have made far mor sense to include the attempted invasion of Cuba, in the first category, along with Soviet support for terrorist groups in Europe and the Middle East.

My view is that the greatest bias in general in teaching is the understating of the crimes of Communism.

Regarding Israel, the book tries for fairness but is riddled with errors, including one gigantic mistake that is objectively quite malacious. On page 72, it shows Israel’s flag and describes it as “the first new nation created after World War Two,” which is nice but will come as a shock to Syrians (1946) and Indians and Pakistanis! (1947). Often the carelessness on facts which with these texts are compiled rivals any political bias.)

Another silly error is a map it also shows the West Bank, Sinai, Gaza Strip, and Golan Heights as “Israeli territory” which is just not accurate since of these areas only the Golan Heights was annexed. That isn’t any political bias but just sloppiness.

The book's main paragraph on the issue states:

“During the 20th century, great numbers of Jews had arrived in Palestine which they saw as their traditional homeland. However the Arab Palestinians resisted the arrival of Jews in the area that was their homeland too. In 1948 the United Nations came up with a solution—the creation of a new Jewish state of Israel in Palestine. The Palestinians soon became a nation without a home and years of violence between Jews and Arabs followed.”

Here is where the gigantic misstatement of fact comes in. The UN’s proposal—which the UN “came up” with in 1947, not 1948—was to create two states, one for the Palestinian Arabs. Thus, a fair solution is turned into what seems to be an unfair one. And of course once one admits that the intention was to create two states, the book would have to say that the Arabs turned down getting their own state. Thus, if they are “without a home” it is by their own doing and they thus become responsible for the subsequent conflict.

Here’s what the book says about Islam:

“In the early 1980s, an old force began to gain power—Islam. The dispute between the Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East was seen as a religious struggle. Enthusiasm for Islam in Arab countries grew.

“The focus of this was Iran, where a revolution had taken place in 1979. The new leaders were religious officials called ayatollahs, who insisted on Islamic law....”

It then refers briefly to the Iran-Iraq war and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

This is an example of how a book can think it is observing PC, unintentionally violate it, and be inaccurate all at the same time. The book doesn’t mention Islamism (or Islamic fundamentalism) as a political movement. It only mentions the Arab-Israeli conflict rather than the attempt of Islamist movements to seize state power. Thus, the student would be confused and have no real understanding of the actual contemporary struggle.

I realize that these issues must be simplified for grade school students and expressed in very few words. Yet I often marvel, even given these constraints, what a poor job they do. It is also important to point out that where they fail in terms of substance the problems are always the same: too soft on Communism; too critical (or at least mindlessly evenhanded and mirror-imaging) of the United States; too unfair to Israel; and too fearful of dealing with the Islamist issue.

While this book presents a somewhat mixed picture—better than others I’ve seen—it repeats this pattern. In fact, it is more shocking since the errors don't seem to be deliberate based on a strong political bias but just a combination of sloppiness and accepting what others who may be biased have written.

I’m proud of my son for catching some of these points and calling it to my attention. I feel bad knowing that virtually no other students would either see what’s wrong here or discuss it with their parents.

RubinReports: How Textbooks Your Children are Using Distort the World

RubinReports: Life in an American Fourth Grade: Why One-Sided Indoctrination?

Life in an American Fourth Grade: Why One-Sided Indoctrination?

By Barry Rubin

As a liberal I am deeply conerned at the illiberal teachings of American public schools today, but what American children are being taught should not be a partisan issue. The liberal view of America was as both a melting pot and a pluralist society. People should not be judged by their skin color but by their skills, beliefs, and achievements. The United States was a great country which had succeeded in large part due to its emphasis on individual liberty.

The job of government was like a referee in a sporting event, to keep things open and reasonably fair by calling penalties, not calling the plays. A government that imposed its will on society would be like the old non-democratic regimes in Europe which the United States had rebelled against and immigrants had left behind..

As for public institutions, like the schools, they should be careful to avoid any indoctrination, either political or religious. Contemporary issues were dealt with cautiously in order to avoid any partisanship. While these ideals weren't always met, they were attempted with a reasonable degree of success.

Today's public schools seem quite different and at least in the one my son is attending are following a clear left-wing agenda. If conservatives are outraged by the content of what's going on, real liberals should be upset by the violation of their basic principles. Yet I find that parents in the public school my son is attending this year usually have no idea of what's going on or at least no comprehension of its implications.

In many cases, the problem is not so much the individual items but the coherent and deliberate ideological direction of instruction or at least the lack of balance. For example, it’s great that fourth-grade students in Montgomery County, Maryland, are taught the civil rights’ movement song, “We shall overcome” in music class but they haven’t been also taught, say, “America the Beautiful ” or “My Country Tis of Thee.” Something unobjectionable in a broader context--it's good to learn about the civil rights' movement--becomes part of a specific design in which other things are omitted completely.

After about four months in this school year these fourth graders have not been taught anything about America except that it has oppressed those from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Native Americans in a variety of ways. They have read three books on the internment of Japanese during World War Two (and any attempt by students to give reasons why it was done or even talk about Japanese atrocities was dismissed by the teacher), as well as books on slavery and African-Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics and Asian-Americans. Is this bad? Not as part of the curriculum but as the entire curriculum?

The ideological context here is that there are two classes of people in America: guilty whites and their non-white victims who are owed a vast debt. The emphasis is not on the success of a system which could make so many changes over time and absorb so many different groups which now constitute a single people. On the contrary, U.S. history is presented as a story of oppression. Note that this is not a conspiracy theory--it is the carefully formulated official curriculum for all schools in the county.

Now the teacher has told them that the election of Barack Obama as president is a great thing because it shows America isn’t racist. But the kids aren’t taught that the American ideal is to believe people should be dealt with as individuals solely based on their behavior and achievement. In other words, a candidate shouldn’t be supported or opposed based on their skin color (or other such factors) but because of character, experience, and stand on issues.

It is unimagineable that a 10-year-old student would dare stand up and give reasons why another candidate should have won. What does this say about the concept of freedom of speech? In fact, the kids were encouraged to parrot the line being given them.

Why should there be advocacy of a specific politician? I think that this is probably the first time in Amerian history that public schoolchildren were taught to support the election of a particular candidate. And it isn't just respect for the incumbent president. If John McCain had won would the students be taught that it was wonderful for a veteran who had braved torture in a prisoner camp was president? I doubt it.

The absurdity of this way of celebrating Obama's victory in this way, a year after it happened, is revealed by pointing out it is equally logical to say that if one voted for Hillary Clinton against Obama that makes one a racist but if one voted for Obama against Clinton that make one sexist. Talk about a no-win situation.

Moreover once you tell children that it is a good thing that Obama was elected, that conveys the idea that he must also be elected for a second term. And what if someone criticizes him or opposes his policies, doesn't the same point apply?

Should this kind of partisan instruction be given fourth graders in a public school when there are lots of other things they can be talking about? Why should teachers be indoctrinating students to support Obama’s election? Is race really the only social studies topic of any importance whatsoever, the only issue in American history?

On another matter, one can see the merit in teaching fourth-grade students that if they are nice they will be popular (though around them they see that this isn’t true); that it is good to give away things; or that one should not show that one is well-off financially because those who can’t afford things will feel bad. But they should also be taught to have a healthy and moral self-interest, that hard study, work, and innovation also gets people more possessions?

The attempt to shape character seems to be replacing academic instruction as the priority in American schools, which led one writer to joke that Americans in the future would be stupid but enjoy high self-esteem.

Then there's the basic problem with imbalance generally on political issues and concepts. Can one object to students being given three days on climate change and more on environmentalism without being also taught that there are trade-offs involved, that if they want to enjoy high living standards a certain amount of tree-chopping, oil-drilling, and river-damming is necessary?

To give equal time to the made-up and non-existent festival of Kwanzu with Hanukah and Christmas, as this school did, is ridiulous. The apparent purpose of this exercise is to racialize even this matter of holidays. In my opinion, it would be better not to deal with such religious matters at all--which should be left to family and place of worship. But as one of my readers remarked, promoting racial separatism--i.e., Kwanzu--is the whole purpose of the exercise in the first place.

In short, schools should teach a balanced curriculum or stay out of certain areas rather than attempt to indoctrinate students.

RubinReports: Life in an American Fourth Grade: Why One-Sided Indoctrination?

RubinReports: First they came for the O'Reilly's: The Danger of Politicized Detective Shows

First they came for the O'Reilly's: The Danger of Politicized Detective Shows

By Barry Rubin

The politicization of fictional entertainment shows is another example of the incredibly dangerous polarization of America today.

Consider this story. Fox News' Bill O'Reilly is angry over how he is characterized on a TV show called "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit." After reading what happened I don't blame him. People across the political spectrum should be equally angry. This is not a liberal-conservative issue but one of fundamental importance to everyone.

According to an article, the show is about a crazed anti-immigration activist who murders the children of illegal immigrants. In one scene, a character, defending the murderer says, "Limbaugh, Beck, O'Reilly, all of 'em, they are like a cancer spreading ignorance and hate...They've convinced folks that immigrants are the problem, not corporations that fail to pay a living wage or a broken health care system...."

It seems the character is saying that the murderer is just a dupe pushed over the edge by this evil trio. Since they have never advocated murdering immigrants or their children I assume this dialogue was maliciously written to defame them, damage them professionally, reduce their income, and could potentially bring violence against them. In short, they have been slandered (that's a moral, not a legal opinion).
Second, this show's plot is a Politically Correct lie, not anything based on fact. There have been no crazed anti-immigration activist murdering children of illegal immigrants, but illegal immigrants have committed a lot of crimes. Will a TV entertainment show have that as a plot? I assume no (perhaps I'm wrong) because the producers and writers of television shows believe--more likely inaccurately--that this would make people hate and perhaps even attack illegal immigrants.

In other words, the creators of the show aren't against creating ignorance and hate, they just claim the right to determine who the victims are going to be. Moreover, they can say that this is only a character speaking, not necessarily the opinions of, etc., etc. But does anyone doubt that character is just a ventriloquist's dummy?

Does this mean it isn't legitimate to discuss whether illegal immigration is a problem, just as we can't talk about the Islamist motivations of Khalid Hasan, the Fort Hood murderer, because presumably this will set off an anti-Muslim pogrom? Is it incitement to murder to point out that large numbers of illegal immigrants take jobs away and lower wages for U.S. citizens, and that they could overwhelm the healthcare system in certain states? Isn't that precisely why there are laws to control immigration, which is what makes these immigrants illegal? Or is that, too, incitement to murder?

The permissible bounds of debate on a very large number of issues are being narrowed in myriad ways.

This situation reminds me of the British television drama a few months back which showed crazed Christian fundamentalists decapitating Muslims. This never happened but the opposite has. If you want to shut up about certain things do so, but don't make up total lies in the exact opposite direction, pretending that TV commentators are inciting to murder and pious Christians are cutting people's heads off.

How would people of other views feel if entertainment shows used their names and falsely attributed to them responsibility for brutal crimes that never happened based on things they never said? How about a crazed environmenal activist murdering people and the crime being attributed to Al Gore who would be accused of spreading hatred toward companies that run power plants?

Finally, what gives with the speech's anti-capitalism message. Living out in Hollywood, guess such people have never heard about the minimum wage law while sitting around the swimming pool. As for the editorial presumably intended to endorse the Obama Administration's health bill, are detective shows now lobbying for legislation?

Of course, if two opinions were provided, one on each side, at least the program-makers could claim they did it for dramatic purposes. But this is pure propaganda.

Why is this of any importance? Because as I've just pointed out (see here) people are already being told that there is only one right way to think and that the alternative view is disgusting, immoral, and even criminal. To add such explicit messages into TV drama shows adds another institution to this closing down of freedom to debate and dissent.

There is another problem here, too, the growing tendency--on both sides--not to answer people with reasoned arguments or facts any more but just to denounce them along the lines of, to paraphrase an old Southern saying, they are too mean to live.

Aside from being just plain wrong from the standpoint of a free society, there is always the danger that this kind of thing could be turned against other people in future. Even during the McCarthy era I don't think Sergeant Joe Friday in "Dragnet" would have named specific people, calling them Commies who are inciting crimes.

RubinReports: First they came for the O'Reilly's: The Danger of Politicized Detective Shows

RubinReports: Short-Circuiting History: How Rational Learning from Experience is Being Sabotaged Today

Short-Circuiting History: How Rational Learning from Experience is Being Sabotaged Today

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By Barry Rubin

One of the main and most important distinctions between humans and animals is that the former are capable of evaluating experience as a group and passing on new lessons to each other and future generations. In human history, the ability to learn and draw proper conclusions becomes a matter of survival.

But what if that ability is blocked? What if there is a clear pattern of experience which points in a certain direction yet people are unable to reach the necessary conclusions?

How could this happen, I hear you ask. Let’s look at a two-track process for how the senses—including that most important of them, common sense—can be disrupted and amputated.

The first track relates to the transmission belts, the means by which experience is communicated. Modern democratic societies have developed a number of these but two vital institutions are the media and educational system. These, respectively, report developments and experiences to a wider audience, and train young people to comprehend them.

But what if the educational system and mass media are being used not only to teach wrong ideas and false experience but, equally bad, to teach people to disregard the promptings of reality and substitute an irrational system of thought?

Another important transmission belt is public discussion. People converse about everything; in public affairs they compete to be leaders and to persuade others to accept their ideas. It has been discovered—one of those lessons referred to above—that a free exchange of ideas and arguments is most likely to result, at least eventually, in the closest possible approximation of truth.

The second track includes the factors that guide how people think and reach conclusions. It encompasses such techniques as asking: what ideas have or haven’t worked before; which fit the available evidence; are they logical; do they contradict other principles one holds; do they protect or subvert our conception of democracy, liberty, and morality; are they able to predict future developments with a reasonable degree of accuracy?

What could short circuit this very good system for correcting mistakes, making life better, and even surviving?

Answer: Transmission belts can stop working properly well; debate can be censored; we can be taught non-logical ways to think so that the most accurate answers are weeded out.

Here are some ways people can be taught to reject possibly true ideas without subjecting them to real examination:

--They are defined as offensive to specific groups.

--They blame other countries or a group of individuals or set of ideas that just happen to belong to a different race, religion, nationality, gender , or cultural tradition. We are only allowed to blame ourselves.

--They are unfashionable, old-fashioned, held by people who live in small towns and cling to their guns and their own religion.

--They are patriotic, or based on a belief that one’s own culture and way of life is superior.

--They don’t take into account every real or alleged sin of one’s own country, culture, history, religion, gender, economic system, or way of life which supposedly disqualify them as positive models.

--Most effective of all, they are on the prohibited list.

--Most devastating of all, they are labelled in negative ways. Those who hold them are ridiculed. Not because their ideas are found wanting based on rational examination but merely because they are on the list of things to be laughed, sneered, or horrified at.

--If they are true they may lead to the election of people you (that is if you are members of the "new class" of journalists, professors, etc.) don’t want to win and policies you don’t want to see. This bias is supposed to be weeded out by professional ethics--you tell the truth as best you can without censoring yourself based on who it will help--but this is at present a very weak reed. It is itself on the censored list because the idea that anyone can or will make a serious attempt to be fair-minded and balanced is ridiculed as impossible.

Political Correctness is the doorway to factual incorrectness.

For me, these reflections were inspired today by one of many examples of this phenomenon I encounter. (It doesn’t matter if your examples are from a completely different part of life.) I was editing a bit of boiler-plate history, noting how Israel withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula, southern Lebanon, all the Gaza Strip, and part of the West Bank in the belief that these concessions would make the world realize that it really wanted peace and encourage the other side to make a real peace.

Nothing of the sort happened. Instead, these withdrawals (note: yes, peace with Egypt is very important and the withdrawal from the Sinai was worth doing) generally gave a perception of weakness to the Arab world and Islamists (promoting even more attacks) but were meant with indifference in the West (no credit is given).

Suddenly it struck me though that if one points out this simple set of experiences with the logical conclusion, the response is likely to be condemnation, disbelief, or at best the listener has never heard or seen this point before in the mass media.

Or if, as I’ve suggested in some recent articles, ttthe record shows the Palestinians—for reasons I have explained with evidence and in great detail—don’t want a stable two-state peace with Israel and that’s why there isn’t a comprehensive resolution of the conflict and a Palestinian state.

It is simply not permissible to say certain things in many places. And it is so impermissible that your points are not examined logically but rather just insulted and cast into outer darkness.

Let me give you a test to show how this all works. Here is the question: Why is the United States wealthier and enjoying higher living standards than most other countries in the world?

Consider the following choices (but don't look yet if you want to come up with your own answers).

A. This is a biased, indeed a racist and reactionary question because it leaves out all the poor and suffering people in America who don't enjoy these living standards [grade: A]

B. Because it stole raw materials and its wealth from other countries [grade: A]

C. A combination of A and B, and don't forget to throw in the Native Americans, slavery, and the War with Mexico [Grade: A+]

D. The United States was blessed with natural resources and both the founding generations and the pioneers worked and fought to make it both a large and a great nation. The key, however, is that the United States developed a democratic and free enterprise system, with a reasonable degree of regulation, which unleashed the potential of millions of people. They were allowed and encouraged to flourish. Innovation and hard work were rewarded. Competition served the consumer. Government controls were limited enough so as not to strangle small and big business alike. Other countries because of their systems or ideologies did not do so well. Communism failed miserably, for example. [Resulting grade: Uh-oh!]

You see, it's a trap. You cannot give the most accurate answer because on your way there you'll hit mines which will blow up in your face: How was America created (stolen land, based on slavery), was it democratic (how about class oppression, women not having the vote, reactionary laws) or free enterprise (you mean rapacious greedy corporations), what about imperialist plundering of the Third World? Are you saying that Americans are superior to others? Isn't that racist and Islamophobic. Can't we imagine another, better system? Isn't at best this system outdated? Doesn't government protect our rights and can run things best?

The person trained in this system won't likely ever get to answer C because that has already been censored out of the options' list. And even if that's what they think will they shut up to get a good grade, a good job, or a good fashionableness rating? A colleague tells me that lots of younger professors tell him in a whisper: We have to write this stuff in order to get tenure but then we can say what we really believe. By that time, he replies, I hope you remember what you really believe.

The guidelines of Political Correctness and multi-culturalism guide you to the "proper" answer. But if Americans or people in other countries don't understand what the real situation has been, how can they hope to duplicate its degree of success? Won't they go down a road that leads, at worst, off a cliff, and perhaps at best into a swamp?

I have no idea whether man-made climate change based on carbon dioxide emissions is true or not. But I do know one thing: When people say the debate is over and scientists are intimidated into shutting up, that is not the Enlightenment that I bought into.

Of course, those specific examples are just a starting point. Can dictators be appeased? Does massive unproductive spending end an economic depression? If you give mortgages to people who can’t afford to pay them will it lead to some problems? If you teach children to be ashamed of their free and democratic country will that have a good result? If an Islamist terrorist murdered American soldiers at Fort Hood should one insist that his own explicit statements about his ideology be buried and censor the story accordingly? Is Western civilization a bad thing? Should free speech limited only by the imminent danger of yelling fire in a crowded theatre a good thing? Doesn’t history show that America is one of the very greatest countries in world history? If you betray your friends and reward your enemies could this possibly make the former desert you and the latter hold you in contempt?

Nah!

But remember the authors of the Declaration of Independence. They believed that some truths were “”self-evident,” that people could not forever be prevented from seeing them. We have seen in our lifetimes dictatorships using the most sophisticated ideology and technology to fool people and where is Communism today? In Iran, even the invoking of the divine has not managed to quiet inner voices of rationality and that thirst for liberty.

So perhaps that is the answer: seeing the ridiculousness of the lies is the best way to discover something more akin to the truth.

Some great mind today must come up with a modern updating appropriate for the age of “progressive” ideology and Political Correctness of Heinrich Heine’s great poem that denounced the censorship of his work in his native German-speaking land. Here is the poem in its entirety as Heine wrote it in 1827:

The German Censors —— —— —— ——
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—— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— ——
—— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— ——
—— —— —— —— —— Idiots —— ——
—— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— ——
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—— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— —— ——
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RubinReports: Short-Circuiting History: How Rational Learning from Experience is Being Sabotaged Today