Educators hope to encourage self-loathing

A teacher writes into the NCSS (National Council for the Social Studies) listserv and asks, "for some type of article or handout that describes the help or aid that the Native Americans gave to the early settlers in the colonies." A fine question.

So far the replies have suggested Rethinking Columbus by Bill Bigelow and Bob Peterson and Native Roots: how the Indians enriched America by Jack Weatherford. Rethinking Columbus is the book that proposed and explains how teachers can put Columbus on trial, "and celebrates over 500 years of the courageous struggles and lasting wisdom of native peoples." This book does not propose to teach children about the encounter of two peoples, especially in the context of similar encounters at other times and other places. It celebrates one people and denigrates another. In the reality in which I dwell, this is racism. Bigelow and Peterson probabaly live in a happy reality where this is multiculturalism and celebratory. Weatherford is an anthropologistm, and not a teacher of children, and has a much more balanced book. Its true that he sometimes overstates the contributions of native peoples, but he seeks not to exhault one people and condemn another.

School starts around the corner and the Left establishment within the education establishment is hard at work. The Left runs most of the professional organizations in education. In my own experience, a good many teachers are apolitical or very moderate. A sizable group is liberal, a small minority Leftists. Conservatives of one stripe or another number about half that of all those left of center, but is also possible that a fair numer of the moderates or apolitical folk are either more conservative than they appear or would drift right outside the influence of their profession. More simply put, teachers more or less look like America (in general terms and with the expectation that there are closet conservatives). But the professional organizations are profoundly to the Left.

The books, websites, teaching aids, lesson plans, conferences, and speakers of the teaching establishment seems to come from the deepest, most radical Left. Teaching children to regard people who built the society they live in, look like their leaders, and often look like themselves as bad people worthy of condemnation is to create in them a loathing of themselves. Why not just direct teachers to berate the students directly? For those students who identify with the native Americans, its not helpful to play this game either. See two posts ago a link to John McWhorter's article on this kind of thing in another context. Best for all concerned that students learn 1) that man is capable of doing great harm to one another, and that this is more common than its opposite. This is normal, though unpleasant. Evidence for it in history is overwhelming. 2) All people do wrong, they lie cheat, and sometimes steal. Its the frail human condition. This is normal, although unpleasant, and we should make efforts to improve ourselves. 3) It is in the liberal societies (those who embraced free markets and free societies) not the traditional or totalitarian that social improvement and a respect for conquered people, minorities, foriegn peoples, and difference has fundamentally changed the way liberal societies interact. Our society, our leaders, and our history is the history of human progress, not human oppression. We are flawed, imperfect beings, and to forget that and attempt to create a utopia has been the source of the worst and most terrible oppression and tyranny. See the world as it is, not as you wish it was. With the knowledge of how the world is, perhaps we can make efforts to change it into, by degrees, the world we wish it was. Pretending that it already creates the pathology in which we regard evidence of our error as evil and seek to put it on trial.