h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've got a Guide Entry coming up one of these days (A87772792), about Confederate textbooks. These were textbooks printed in the Confederate States of America during the 4-5 years (depending on how you count) that the 'country' allegedly existed. (The Southern states said it did, the rest of the US said it didn't, that was what the war was about, more or less.) Confederate textbooks were written to make sure that little Confederate children learned that their parents were right and the Yankees were wrong.

In my guide entry, I drew attention to the relevance of this topic for today's educational debates in the US - in particular, certain provisions of the platform statement of the Republican Party of Texas for 2012. (http://www.tfn.org/site/DocServer/2012-Platform-Final.pdf?docID=3201) For this, I got a certain amount of what we Southerners call 'guff' in Peer Review.

I know why. Y'all think we're making this up.

Now, thank the Lord, somebody has come along and made a documentary film about the Texas School Board. The film is called 'The Revisionaries'. Here's a trailer:

http://vimeo.com/40407457

Unfortunately, we can't see this film yet, but after being shown this spring at the Tribeca Film Festival, it's being released in a limited way. It's not exactly a blockbuster, though I timidly venture to suggest it might be nearly as important as a James Bond epic. *duck*

One of the main characters in the documentary is a Mr McLeroy, whom the documentary people obviously like. McLeroy is a dentist and a genuinely nice man. According to one commentator, 'he makes Ned Flanders look like Mick Jagger'. He also teaches children that there were dinosaurs on Noah's Ark.

Here he is, being interviewed by that hard-hitting 'journalist', Stephen Colbert. Colbert's usual method is to pretend to be even more righteously right-wing than his interlocutor. Watch this in action, as he accuses Mr McLeroy of insufficient rigour in supporting Biblical inerrancy:

http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/2012/04/colbert-talks-evolution-dinosa.html/

Now, we like these people. When we run into them across the back fence, or in the supermarket, or at a pot-luck supper, we nod pleasantly and agree with everything they say (the earth is only 6000 years old, whatever), while privately warning our kids 'not to listen to nice Mr So-and-So, bless his heart'.

This is fine, as long as they don't get on the school board. But when they start rampaging through the standards and curricula, and removing the word 'Enlightenment', and forbidding the mention of slavery in US history, and trying to tell the biology prof he can't discuss natural selection, then teachers and educational writers start tearing their hair out. These folks simply don't understand that we can't rewrite the schoolbooks to match the fanciful theory of the week. It gives us a headache trying to figure out what upsets them.

For example, a decade or so ago, somebody in Tennessee objected to folklore in the library. It was 'godless supernaturalism'.

We can't make this up.

So, look out for that fil-um, will you, and don't accuse me of malicious gossip when I worry about the school chillun.

And let's give a h2g2 medal to Yankee James Loewen, author of 'Lies My Teacher Told Me'. Now, that's a teacher frood who knows where his towel is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UL1Q7ZgGQdM

Every word of what Loewen has just said is true and verifiable. It's also not what most kids learn in school.

Fight on, history teachers!

... bless his heart.

Elektra just went . And I can't get her to stop laughing...

"I have always been a fan of reality by majority vote"
Bwahahaahahaaa

Been there, been educated like that. In a US Baptist private school. They actively denied US slavery, and the only black person in the history book, Nelson Mandela, was a baddie...

There is that phrase 'history is written by the victors' but it is so scary to see it in action. In this case the victors are the ones who get to write the school texts.

There is another phrase: "History is written by those with the publishing rights"

It shouldn’t surprise any of you that this is exactly how we white folks were ‘educated’ during Apartheid. We were taught that we were God’s chosen people. History was about how we had struggled against the native peoples of this country, and God granted us the victory, thereby proving that He was on our side. Then we had the struggle against the British, with the horrible Boer wars, and this time we lost, but funny to say that somehow this didn’t by the above logic mean that God was on the side of the British against us! No, it was just God testing us again and we did eventually prevail, we gained independence and became a Republic and the Afrikaner nationalists won and started again to make this country great for *us*.

But at any rate, so we were taught, and what we did was justified by such arguments, and of course Apartheid was not just for lifting up our people, it was also presented to us as being in the best interests of the other peoples here as well! We all know how that turned out …

But of course now the Struggle has been won by our erstwhile 'enemies', and they are the victors this time so again history has to be rewritten! This time of course the white people are presented as being the ultimate Evil and literally did everything that was wrong and bad just for the sake of oppressing the non-white people. We were bad enough … do we really have to be painted even worse than we were? Truly, children who are taught today and actually pay attention to what the teachers try to tell them must believe that white people were monsters … incomprehensibly evil … so much so as to defy understanding. Children who actually believe some of the things they are taught today might even become traumatized and filled with fear … the horrible thing being that these awful white people are still around, in this country … why doesn’t anybody do something about that, it is a threat, a horrible threat to everything that is precious!

I wonder how much attention children actually pay to this sort of propaganda … the hope in me says that at least many of them can look at the world with their own eyes and see that things are not quite that way. But of course this leaves them with mistrust of their teachers … and we actually NEED effective education!

It always seems to work like this! The politicians, no matter what side they come from, cannot restrain themselves from interfering with educational goals and educational content. Why??? I think it is because all of them actually have guilty minds. The architects of Apartheid knew they weren’t pure and blameless and thus had an exaggerated need to justify themselves and their purposes, and what better way than in what they taught to fresh, innocent young minds? And similarly, the post-Apartheid government knows … or at least ought to know … that many awful things were done by their own side as well during the Struggle, and therefore it all has to be justified by insisting on how evil the other side was. The Cause was righteous, and so whatever was done for the Cause was justified.

But what makes it even better is this: currently we are experiencing grotesque corruption in the government, and a variety of social problems. By emphasizing the evils of Apartheid the real problems of the present can be disguised. It was so much worse in the past! Things are so much better now! Everyone should be grateful! Don’t you dare think of criticizing us!

Notice how cleverly present-day politicians will align themselves with recognized heroes of the past. They will deliberately try to over-glorify these heroes so as to catch some ‘shine’ off them as we say over here; and if the heroes are beyond criticism, then so are they.

It is a wonder, and gives me much hope, that with this stuff going on in just about every country, that there are sane people around at all.

Interesting article on the BBC today: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20027320

Thanks for the comments, Willem, and the link, Mala.

I like the writer's conclusion: that history should be remembered, 'warts and all'. That's what I take Loewen's thesis to be, as well.

Nobody's always right. Nobody's always wrong. That kind of thinking is really sloppy. But nothing should be swept under the rug - rather, it should be learned from, say I.

That history should be *remembered* "warts and all", I wouldn't disagree. The misfortune is that it's often *celebrated* more than accurately remembered; and that the warts are remembered only in cases where it's comfortable or convenient to remember them. I'm not talking about Cromwell alone, by any means. I think it's true of every example mentioned in this thread.

There's another example I'm researching at the minute, where the story 'everyone knows' seems to be built on very little hard evidence. That's a journal of its own, I fear. I'm up to my neck in sources going back 400 years, and for now all I can tell is that all the bits of the jigsaw don't fit together.

KB, good point. People get their history all muddled up. I think one problem is that the future always relates to the past in terms of its own concerns - not what were hot-button issues at the time.

Elektra pointed out to me that North Koreans have all read 'Gone with the Wind'. Now, that will throw you for a loop, until you realise that they probably identify with being victims of war and famine:

http://www.oregonlive.com/books/index.ssf/2012/10/gone_with_the_wind_captivates.html

Nonetheless, those of us who find that book and its film excruciating kind of wish somebody would write something else they could identify with.