Teaching Without Context

Pop Quiz:

What science fiction writer said: “A generation which ignores history has no past — and no future.”?

What political ethicist said: “A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.”?

What actor said: “My history is American history. It’s the one thing in this world I am interested in, beyond making money, having a good time and getting enough sleep,”?

What religious leader said: “We are not makers of history. We are made by history.”?

What author observed: “Human history in essence is the history of ideas.”?

Answers at the end of this post.

History used to be taught in our schools. Today American schools manipulate history to support the vision of those who are intent on creating a Utopian world. Thomas Moore wrote a book in 1516 about an imaginary and remote place…the title was Utopia. In Eric Blair’s classic novel, 1984, the protagonist, Winston Smith, works in the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth. His is job is to rewrite history such that it conforms to the current Utopian vision of the elites. This is what passes for teaching in American schools today.

The tools of these educational machinators are censorship, “content moderation” and erasing the past such that students have no context for that which goes on around them. This applies to the history of the United States and influences our political dialogue on a host of issues. One hopes that our recent election will mark a renaissance in education and that Linda McMahon can instill intellectual curiosity in Generation Trump…those born after January 20, 2017.

E.D Hirsch, in his bestseller Cultural Literacy, includes a list of words and phrases titled: “What Every Literate American Knows”. It is at once profound and depressing. From American history the list includes Appomattox Court House, the Boston Massacre, Brown v. Board of Education, Sherman’s March to the Sea, and Manifest Destiny, to name a few.

Generations Alpha and Z learn a different history that includes George Floyd, “From the river to the sea” (hoping you don’t ask “What river and what sea?”), Dylan Mulvaney, January 6, 2021 and St. Greta of Thunberg to name a few. A civil dialogue between these lost generations and those that went before them is an impossibility. To them the Viet Nam War is closer to Jurassic Park than their lives. In one fool on the street interview, a young illiterate opined that the French and Germans were involved in our Civil War.

There are several intellectual disciplines that are absent from school curricula today. An educator with over four decades of teaching experience sent me a picture of sign she keeps on her office wall. It says: It takes a student 20 minutes longer to say what he thinks than what he knows. This invites two possible explanations: students are succored on moral equivalence leading to a fear of embracing any firm position or, more likely, students have no ability to think critically which makes identifying a firm position nigh unto impossible. Students are trained to just regurgitate facts without regard to context or significance. That being the case, all future exams should take place in vomitoria.

One example of the impact of our educational failings is the treatment of Race in America. Let’s start with the definition of Racism: Racism is based on the belief that certain traits of personality, intellect, and other cultural and behavioral features are not equally distributed between the various races. Generally it means attributing a negative trait to one race in particular. Hitler described all Jewish people as avaricious. That is clearly racist. The term is now used to describe any criticism of, say, Barack Obama for some political action such as passing the legislative mandate known as Obamacare. The slur has become a Pavlovian pejorative intended to shut down discussion of or opposition to what ever Obama said or did..

Recently an overpaid and ill-educated left wing media figure suggested that the plight of Black Americans has “never been worse” than it is today. This is a statement of such stunning ignorance that one can’t even figure out where to begin dismantling the proposition. Is it even possible that a person can finish high school and get a college degree without knowing that slavery was practiced by Democrats for several hundred years in this country and that slavery is incontrovertibly worse than what American Blacks have to deal with today?

In affluent Loudoun County Virginia students were “forced” to touch cotton as part of a lesson about slavery. The head of the local NAACP office fell victim to the vapors because of the “humiliation” Black students suffered because of this outrage. The lesson was in the context of the historical position that King Cotton was the economic engine of the Confederacy and yet it triggered a hysterical reaction by the NAACP. One expected to hear that this modest show and tell was followed by a debate about repealing the 13th Amendment. Yet one can assume that the NAACP official religiously votes for any candidate with a D after their name on the ballot despite the sordid history of Democrat mistreatment of American Blacks. Imagine the outrage if the teacher had passed around a voter registration card for the Democrat Party.

Here are some historical facts these students are NOT being taught.

From 1501 to 1866 a total of 12,521,337 “enslaved persons” were transported to the Western Hemisphere. Of that total only 305,326 (about 2% of the total) were brought to the American colonies/nation. These data are from slavevoyages.org/assessment/estimates. America was not the only place where slavery was practiced.

The authors of our Constitution included a provision that was a passive death sentence to the peculiar institution in America. Article I, Section 9, provides that the importation of slaves shall not be barred prior to 1808. The Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves of 1807 (enacted March 2, 1807) prohibited further importation of slaves into the United States. It took effect on January 1, 1808, the earliest date permitted by the Constitution. That law ensured, ultimately, the end of slavery in the United States.

George Washington was a slave owner but upon his death all of his slaves were manumitted.

In 1860 Abraham Lincoln was elected President and it began the death rattle of slavery. The Southern states were aware of the Lincoln-Douglas debates and Lincoln’s speech at Cooper Union. He made it clear that America could not survive half slave and half free. So alarmed were the Southern states that seven seceded from the Union before Lincoln even took the oath of office. He prosecuted the Civil War at a heavy personal cost and he expended the last of his political capital ensuring that the 13th Amendment was passed by the US Congress. The movie Lincoln should be watched by every elementary school student in America.

The road has not been smooth and our national moral compass has been sorely tested, but we have persevered. For every step forward on civil rights taken by Lincoln, Grant and Eisenhower there were retreats made by Hayes, Wilson, FDR and LBJ.

In the 1890s Wilmington, North Carolina was among the most progressive cities in the South on the issue of race. It had a population of about 20,000 and about 11,000 were Black. In the election of 1894 a “Fusion” interracial coalition of leaders took control of the government of the city. It should have been a transitional moment. However, the Democrat Party of North Carolina could not tolerate this outbreak of racial harmony and took matters into their white supremacist hands. A mob of white troglodytes instigated the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 and their version of order was restored. The national Democrat Party studiously ignored what they described as a local issue.

Five decades would pass before the issue was seriously addressed again.

In 1947 there was an event that brought the race issue into the lives of most Americans. Jackie Robinson was the first Black player to appear in the Major Leagues. Sports fans learned that Robinson, Joe Black, Willie Mays, Monte Irvin, Ernie Banks and countless other great ballplayers were more than just Black ballplayers, they were our baseball heroes. In the Big Apple there were endless debates about who was the best center fielder in New York City…Duke Snider, Willie Mays or Mickey Mantle. We never punctuated our nose to nose arguments with the mention of race. The movie 42 should be watched by every elementary school student in America.

In 1953 the National Negro Council awarded Eisenhower the Civil Rights Medal of Honor. It was a portent of things to come.

In 1954 the Supreme Court handed down a unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education ordering the desegregation of our public schools. Baby Boomers witnessed the tectonic impact of that decision through their Weekly Readers and discussions in their classrooms. They witnessed the enforcement of that decision when Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne to Little Rock, Arkansas, to ensure that Black students were allowed to enter Central High School. Recommended reading: A Matter of Justice, Eisenhower and the Beginning of the Civil Rights Revolution, by David Nichols.

In 1955 Rosa Parks, stand-in for Claudette Colvin, became a heroine when she stuck her thumb in the eye of segregated transportation in Montgomery, Alabama.

Martin Luther King’s I Have A Dream speech in 1963, The Civil Rights Act of 1964, Thurgood Marshall, a man of incredible personal courage, being confirmed as the first Black Justice on the Supreme Court, the election of Barack Obama…these events confirm a steady progress toward racial harmony.

Yet very few people under 30 have a full understanding of these facts and this must be corrected.

Despite the progress the Left continues to sow division between the races even as they throw the term racist at anyone with whom they disagree. LBJ’s “Great” Society did unspeakable damage to the Black family structure. Our schools fail to provide a basic education to many inner city students of color. This handicaps the ability of Black students to assimilate into our complex society. To describe a Black as articulate is seen as an insult. Black students who apply themselves in school are accused of “acting white”. The National Museum of African American History and Culture, part of the Smithsonian, published a document entitled Aspects and Assumptions of White Culture in the United States. This document discourages certain “white” behavior such as “Hard work is the key to success”, “delayed gratification” and “Be polite”. As the document was recently removed from the Smithsonian website a copy is attached to this post. But has the damage already been done? Terms like “systemic racism” and “white supremacy” are thrown about with reckless abandon…to what end? And what do those terms actually mean?

The left seems to be encouraging a bifurcated society…separate Black graduation ceremonies, dormitories and fraternities and sororities. A retreat from Brown v. Board of Education. For what purpose?

Wouldn’t it be the pinnacle of irony if President Trump were to unite the country? Joyless Reid would lose her raison d’etre.

Answers to the pop quiz:

What science fiction writer said: “A generation which ignores history has no past — and no future.”? Robert Heinlein

What political ethicist said: “A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.”? Gandhi

What actor said: “My history is American history. It’s the one thing in this world I am interested in, beyond making money, having a good time and getting enough sleep,”? Morgan Freeman

What religious leader said: “We are not makers of history. We are made by history.”? Martin Luther King

What author observed: “Human history in essence is the history of ideas.”? HG Wells