We write frequently about the efforts of academic ideologues to indoctrinate collegians but an even more pitched battle is being waged for the hearts and minds of high school students.
I learned firsthand how deceptive the Education Establishment can be at this level when I wrote an article about a textbook review of the civics program, We the People. Using direct quotes from both the reviewer and the textbook, I showed evidence of the narrative’s bias against the United States and in favor of the United Nations.
A writer named Nancy Salvato posted an article attacking me on a number of conservative web sites. In her piece, Miss Salvato implied that she was a back-to-basics conservative. There were a few problems with her piece and her efforts at self-description:
• She never answered any of my direct quotes with primary quotations of her own.
• She never mentioned that she works for the company that publishes the textbook.
• And, she attributes a quote to me at the end of her critique that I clearly track to a researcher from the Congressional Research Service, right down to the quotation marks.
Speaking of confused identities…
In an interview with the BBC, Arlene Inouye, press representative for the Coalition against Militarism, identified herself as a speech therapist working in the L. A. Unified School District. “A quick Google search, however, reveals that she is not only a teachers’ union official, but the author of an article (‘Kick the Military Out of Your School! We did in L. A. and So Can You!’) recently published in Dynamic Magazine, an organ of the Young Communist League [USA],” David Schaeffer, a political science professor at Holy Cross reports in the March issue of The American Enterprise magazine. “‘The militarization of our schools’ and ‘the impact of military recruitment on high school students’ are the major ‘threats’ against which the YCL is currently seeking to ‘mobilize’ public opinion.”
“The Coalition Against Militarism in Our Schools thus sounds suspiciously like what we used to call a communist front.” Fortunately, some of our best and brightest are catching on to the leftward drift of such as Miss Inouye.
“I am a student at a high school in Massachusetts, a notoriously liberal state,” a young lady identifying herself as “Dejected in MA” writes. “I am taking an AP History course, and as part of our curriculum, we are required to read Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States.”
“The opinion in the book is taught as fact and dissention is immediately disregarded and ignored.” By the way, we gave Dr. Zinn, in absentia, one of our “Little Churchill” awards last year for the (Ward) Churchillian accuracy he has demonstrated by, among other things, claiming that unemployment grew during the historic surge of job growth in the 1980s.
“During our IB Theory of Knowledge class today, we were discussing the Columbine shootings as part of a group’s presentation,” a high school student from Florida writes. “The film Bowling for Columbine was brought up by the presenters, and though they didn’t talk too much about it, our teacher is planning on showing it during class time in the near future.”
“He looked at me and a few of my Conservative friends, and said, ‘and you guys don’t have to be here that day.’ It was all in good fun, but it was still unnerving that he’s going to show such a biased documentary as a factual representation of the causes of the events at Columbine.”
“There are so many kids in my class, believe it or not, who knew next to nothing about politics and the issue. I guarantee you they will suck up everything Moore claims, and it just doesn’t seem fair.” No it doesn’t.
The “IB” designation this young lady refers to stands for International Baccalaureate, a relatively new program designed for U. S. public schools by the UN. Bowling for Columbine is filmmaker Michael Moore’s attempt to explain that the infamous high school shooting in which the assailants violated every federal and Colorado state gun control law on the books was somehow caused by the National Rifle Association.
One of Moore’s techniques in this opus was to take answers that NRA president Charlton Heston gave to interview queries and dub in different questions. Indeed, an entire cottage industry has sprung up in which documentary producers more meticulous than Moore have exposed his falsehoods. For example, Roger Aronoff, an analyst with Accuracy in Academia’s parent group, Accuracy in Media, makes short work of Moore’s take on the war on terror in AIM’s masterful documentary,
Confronting Iraq.
Given the lackluster proceeds from Moore’s various cinematic efforts, one has to wonder if the captive audiences that educators deliver are keeping the rotund producer in business. AIA’s former executive director, Dan Flynn, posited a similar theory about Dr. Zinn’s best seller. Flynn, as usual, may be onto something
Although the publisher brags about the millions of copies that Dr. Zinn’s major work has sold, this tome routinely gathers dust in book stores. But then, unlike public school students, readers who frequent such commercial establishments do not have to read Dr. Zinn’s People’s History.
Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.
