Contributors

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Operation: Brainwash (Part One)

I've tried to remain calm over the last few days since the Texas School Board decided to make up their own version of history last Friday but I just can't. Not only have they decided to fictionalize reality in an unbelievably insane way, but they have also re-written the role of religion in the state to be...well...just like Al Qaeda.

I have much to say about this decision but I wanted to begin with two things. First, why do I care since I am in Minnesota? And second, aren't they just "making things even" since liberals have "taken over education?"

I care because I'm an educator and it makes me fucking nauseated beyond belief that Joe McCarthy is now going to be seen in a more positive light by over 4 million students. Of course, I have no say in Texas curriculum...only Minnesota curriculum, right? Well, textbooks in Texas are used nationwide and it is considered a main source for social studies curriculum. So this is a national problem.

I say problem because this is the Cult in action once again. They start off by operating under the insanely false assumption that liberals have taken over the schools and are indoctrinating our children. In addition to being FUCKING WRONG, it is a paranoid delusion. The people that support this measure are not well in the head. They have decided that "things I don't like" (e.g US coup in Iran) are now "liberal." They don't like Ted Kennedy so he is now unimportant. They do like Phyllis Schlafly so she is now in the curriculum. It all comes down to their emotions not facts or logic.

The irony about all of this is that instructors around the nation are beholden to teach critical thinking. The stories you hear on Fox News about some teacher somewhere telling children that Cuba is a great country are fucking lies. Most teachers are asking question like...

Do you agree with the fundamental aspects of Social Security? Why or why not? Support your ideas with evidence.

Can you assess the value or importance of religion in the minds of the Founding Fathers? Based on which of their writings and why?

What judgment would you make about Joe McCarthy? Why?

These are questions that I have asked in the past and have gotten a myriad of responses. The truly sad fact is that this decision in Texas will only provide students with one answer: the RIGHT one in the eyes of the Cult.

I'll be spending the next few days on this but I wanted to start off straight away with dispelling the usual crap that comes up with this topic. Tomorrow, we will take a look (sadly, once again) at the similarity between the people that made this decision and the ones that flew airplanes into buildings on September 11, 2001.

23 comments:

rld said...

So tomorrow you will compare the cult to Al Queda. and how is that different from every other entry of yours?

johnny b. goode said...

Fun blog! I wouldn't get to upset about this decision, Markadelphia. I am a history teacher in Texas and will teach the way I always have. Don McLeroy isn't going to be beating down my classroom door anytime soon. Do you mind if I used one or two of your questions listed here? They are pretty good! Also, I don't understand why you are named after Philadelphia and live in Minnesota. Were you born there?

Anonymous said...

And I'm sure that after you asked those third-graders, they said "Huh?", and you told them your version of the truth. After which, they said "Huh?"

Spend your days dissecting this. I hope you say something so rediculous that I'm forced to comment.

dw

juris imprudent said...

It all comes down to their emotions not facts or logic.

Once again, M assumes that everyone in the world is just like him.

The pathetic state of primary education textbooks is old news. Richard Feynman provided one of the most brutal critiques on the subject a few years before he died.

Anonymous said...

Wow, this is so four topics ago, but Mark....

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/7769126/US-money-supply-plunges-at-1930s-pace-as-Obama-eyes-fresh-stimulus.html

snip
Mr Congdon said the dominant voices in US policy-making - Nobel laureates Paul Krugman and Joe Stiglitz, as well as Mr Summers and Fed chair Ben Bernanke - are all Keynesians of different stripes who "despise traditional monetary theory and have a religious aversion to any mention of the quantity of money".
snip

Did you get that memo?
Maybe, just maybe, your economic outlook is.... flawed.

dw

Anonymous said...

http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/109636/more-workers-start-to-quit?mod=career-worklife_balance

Or maybe my philosophy is taking hold amongst everyone I can proselytise to... Shrug.

dw

Anonymous said...

http://www.myfoxny.com/dpp/news/ny-assembly-looks-at-millionaires-tax-20100526

If I lived in NY (as one of the 1% that pays 36% of the taxes), I would Shrug.

dw

Anonymous said...

I care because I'm an educator and it makes me fucking nauseated beyond belief that Joe McCarthy is now going to be seen in a more positive light by over 4 million students.

That's a very revealing statement. You don't know exactly what they are going to change, in what way they are going to change it, or whether or not their changes will be factually based. Apparently none of that's important. All it takes is the mere thought of "Joe McCarthy is now going to be seen in a more positive light" to make you "fucking nauseated".

Does current curriculum concerning Joe McCarthy reveal to what extent the Venona intelligence vindicated his accusations? Does current curriculum even acknowledge that many of those he accused were known, open communist party members, and that his bitch was often not that they were communist per se, but that they were working in classified areas of government despite having been known communists for years?

Please understand, I don't regard McCarthy as a nice guy, nor do I agree with his methods. My concern is that you seem to regard it as entirely unimportant whether or not the changes stay within the bounds of reality or objectivity, the important thing is that the historical perspective of McCarthy must be negative.

In short, you are acting as if the sky is falling because something you can use as a tool to foment hatred is being taken away. As if it's only the hatred that's important, not the presence or absence of factual basis for it.

Ed "What the" Heckman said...

Are you afraid that students will notice that Senator McCarthy could not possibly have been in charge of the House Committee on Un-American Activities?

Joseph said...

How dare you bring up Venona. To the gulag, all of you.

Anonymous said...

Please watch Glenn Beck this afternoon (5-28-10), as he will go into detail about the importance of our black founding fathers.

johnny b goode said...

I don't think Markadelphia wants McCarthy to be looked upon as exclusively negative. It's the idea that he was a hero only, which is what they are purporting down here, is more than likely his problem with it. True? His question listed in this post regarding Joe McCarthy is crafted to elicit critical thought. In other words, it's not up to the text or the curriculum to portray McCarthy in a more positive light. It's up to the student to decide for themselves. It's a very biased ideology that is being forced into the curriculum down here that would indeed regard McCarthy's methods as being just fine in the name of national security. It is the goal of the board's decision to paint McCarthy as a hero and hero only.

Anonymous said...

And it's your contention that school textbooks in the last several decades have not portrayed McCarthy in a negative light?

johnny b goode said...

Honestly, it depends on the text you use. Some portray him in overly simplistic terms as a witch hunter who went too far. Some frame his story with the anti communist fervor in the 1950s. Still others look at it in terms of the Cold War. The important thing is to present the students with the course his life took and why and then turn it back to them. The question Markadelphia asks in this post is a good one regarding Senator McCarthy. The focus should always be on the learner's views, not the text's or the instructor's. Our school board wants him viewed as a hero crusader who took on the dirty commies and then was vilified by a wide range of forces working against him. That's not what happened and unfortunately that is consistent the overall mindset of the conservative view of the world.

Ed "What the" Heckman said...

"The focus should always be on the learner's views, not the text's or the instructor's."

Don't you think the focus should be on what actually happened?

"and then was vilified by a wide range of forces working against him."

You know, I don't actually recall reading any books (except one) or seeing any movies or TV shows that didn't vilify McCarthy.

Anonymous said...

Our school board wants him viewed as a hero crusader...

And you know this how, exactly? Got any evidence to back this up?

Mark Ward said...

I can't say for certain but it sounds like johnny knows this because he is a teacher in Texas.

Ed, what did actually happen? If I ask you, you would probably say that McCarthy was a hero and vilified by the evil liberals of the time who were naive about the threat of Communism. Or were commies themselves. If I ask someone else, they will say he was little different than Cotton Mather. And some would say that Cotton Mather was actually a good guy and not like McCarthy at all!

Students need to hear as many different perceptions as possible and then decide for themselves hence my question from this post. It was framed in such a way to improve thinking skills on the higher end of Bloom's Taxonomy. That's where the real learning begins and, of course, the critical thought.

Mark Ward said...

"Does current curriculum concerning Joe McCarthy reveal to what extent the Venona intelligence vindicated his accusations?"

I would agree with the following assessment of Verona and McCarthy:

"McCarthy in my view threatened that anti-Communist consensus. He attempted to make anticommunism a partisan weapon. Senator Joseph McCarthy painted the New Deal as part of a disguised Communist plot and depicted Truman administration leaders Dean Acheson and George Marshall as participants in a Communist conspiracy. There is no basis in Venona or in the Soviet archives for implicating Acheson or Marshall as participants in a Communist conspiracy or for describing either the Roosevelt or the Truman administrations as the instrument of a Soviet conspiracy. To be sure, some officials, including some very high ones, in those administrations displayed naivete toward Soviet espionage, and internal-security policies until the late 1940s were notably weak but there is no evidence that would justify McCarthy’s charge of administration complicity. There were, indeed, some government officials, including a few senior ones, who betrayed the United States by assisting Soviet intelligence, but these persons were betraying Roosevelt and Truman and their administration colleagues as well as betraying the nation as a whole."

http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/page58.html

McCarthy went after the Army and the Eisenhower administration as well in 1953. He was also drunk much of the time he delivered many of his speeches. So, when I say that I am nauseated that he will be portrayed in a more positive light, it is because I'm certain that these facts will be left out as Ann Coulter's version of McCarthy will now be taught.

Ann Coulter. Really? Well, Glenn Beck is now a historian too so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

Anonymous said...

And there you have it.

...it is because I'm certain that these facts will be left out...

Translation:
I don't require evidence, my fears are true because I say so.

You were saying something about people "having their paranoia on"?

Ed "What the" Heckman said...

"Ed, what did actually happen?"

For one thing, the Venona intercepts proved that every single person on Joe McCarthy's list of suspected Soviet spies actually was a Soviet spy, and there where a whole lot more that he missed.

Do you admit that?

Mark Ward said...

No. Because it isn't true.

To begin with, McCarthy's numbers changed all the time. Was it 205 or 57? Later it changed to 108 and McCarthy began to stonewall on his sources which would have solidified his charges. His list grew to include people in the army and accused both Truman and Eisenhower of treason. Add in to all of this that McCarthy was an alcoholic. I know he said pretty things that you made you all sparkly, Ed, but they were unreliable for a number of reasons.

And then there is Verona, also known as yet another in a series of revisionist history shit cakes that make their way into Cult gospel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venona_project#Critical_views

I don't doubt that some of the material was accurate but to say that it is complete vindication of McCarthy or that he wasn't hard enough was laughable. What's ironic here, Ed, is someone like yourself despising state power as much as you do and yet being a total geek for a fascist state when it comes to national security. Unless, of course, it's the state investigating any right wing hate groups. Then it's fascism, right?

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."--Benjamin Franklin.

juris imprudent said...

complete vindication of McCarthy

I wasn't aware that anyone claimed that, at least not in this thread. Perhaps one of those voices in your head is at it again.

Ed "What the" Heckman said...

"to say that it is complete vindication of McCarthy or that he wasn't hard enough was laughable."

Is it still paranoia when they really are out to get you[r country]?

"yet being a total geek for a fascist state when it comes to national security."

Define "national security".

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

That's odd… I didn't think that preventing a government from intercepting the communications of a hostile foreign power was an "essential liberty." In fact, this seems to legitimately fall under the one active "General Welfare" clause in the Constitution. You know… the one you leftists love to apply to anything and everything your little hearts want the government to do.

Oh, and BTW, you really should read the links you post before you try to use them to back up your claims. It's really funny to read the skeptics' claims and then see them completely destroyed in the next sentence.