Educational McCarthyism

At Bethesda Chevy Chase High School in Montgomery County, MD a new kind of “McCarthyism” has sprouted and this time it’s the liberals that are behind it.

Colman McCarthy, a former Washington Post reporter and founder and president of the Center for Teaching Peace has taught a course in Peace Studies since 1988, but now some students have raised questions about McCarthy and his ideas.

The students, Andrew Saraf and Avishek Panth both 17 investigated McCarthy’s background and determined that that the course should be altered to present a more balanced viewpoint. The students told The Washington Post that this is not an ideological debate, but it bothers them that the students receive only one perspective.

McCarthy who is opposed to war, violence and animal testing is an unpaid lecturer at the school and does not use a lesson plan when he teaches. The school system approved textbook for the course which is taught at seven other county high schools is a collection of essays that McCarthy edited.

What a great system! Start a course taught by a left wing activist, using a textbook that he edited and let him teach whatever he wants. McCarthy himself told the Post that “Unless we teach them peace, someone else will teach them violence.” Maybe he is referring to gangsta rap music, but at the age of 67 he probably doesn’t even know what that is so I am not sure what he means by this statement.

Most of the people I know would look at this course and see it as another attempt by the liberals running our education system to indoctrinate young minds. But that’s not the way the principal Sean Bulson sees it. He told the Post that “Peace Studies is one of the things that makes B-CC unique” and that “It’s been an institution here, and kids from all across the spectrum have taken it. It’s not about indoctrination. It’s about debate and dialog.”

The principal must be in a fog if he thinks that having a left wing peace activist who brings in speakers against the death penalty, the Iraq War and even a live turkey to demonstrate the evils of animal testing and thinks that this actually fosters debate.

I’ll be sending McCarthy a complimentary copy of the AIM documentary “Confronting Iraq” and challenging him to show it to his class. But I won’t hold my breath waiting for a positive reply.

Don Irvine is the chairman of Accuracy in Media.