1

Ironic that awareness of 1984 is questioned.  In Orwell's book it was believed that he that controls the past also controls the future.  Consequently great efforts were made by the ruling authorities to destroy the past by rewriting history to satisfy the dictates of Big Brother. 

Ron Brown

Pittsburgh, Pa.

2

GM claims there's some kind of "anti-Western" agenda in American public schools.

What's anti-Western about Bill Clinton, Maya Angelou and Phillis Wheatley?

It is a shocker, though, that you son's history textbook only included one page on World War II. What can you say about it in a single page?

In reality, all history textbooks are flawed and the amount of time available to the average high school student to learn history is woefully inadequate.

If I were teaching history in high school, I'd make clear that the most important thing to understand is that we are only scratching the surface in our textbooks and other materials. To know and understand history requires far more in depth study and focus than are practical for high school students.

Given GM's biases, I assume he would prefer high schools teach the "facts" that he believes support a right-wing worldview.

 

 

3 There has been a massive coverup but the 'I have a dream' speach was stolen, not written by MLK. I know i'm not supposed to say anything bad about a dead man, but then I see him as  the biggest con man to hit this country. that is until B Hussein Obama.

4

In Orwell's 1984, the government destroys written evidence of history it doesn't like.

 

On this blog, GM bowdlerizes excerpts to destroy evidence of history that contradicts his partisan claims.

 

The link cited in his post above isn't to the study itself, but rather to a USA Today report on the study. The report includes the following lines:

 

``51% knew that the controversy surrounding Sen. Joseph McCarthy focused on communism.''

 

``88% knew the bombing of Pearl Harbor led the USA into World War II''

 

Why did GM edit out those stats?

 

Moreover, the report says:

 

``The nation's current focus on improving basic reading and math skills in elementary school might only make matters worse, giving short shrift to the humanities — even if children can read and do math.''

 

   Could it be that the report actually contradicts GM's talking point about how liberals have taken over education? So his response was to cut out the parts he didn't like, just like the government did in 1984. Beautiful…

5

First of all, let me posit that my commenters McL... and Hal have a deficiency in reading comprehension.  They must have gone to the schools that they claim are terrific in terms of teaching humanities etc.  Had they better comprehension of what they read, or, better yet had they not their own biases to overcome, they would have noted that the article is authored by and the point of view is WOODY's. 

Woody and I don't see eye to eye on education in many respects.  I do however note that we also do agree in many respects. I also don't censor what the Woodster chooses to write about. 

I attended school from 1952 (first grade) through '64 (H.S.) and obtained my Bachelors degree in 69, masters in 73 and an additional 30 hours grad work between 78 and 94 just for the fun of attending school.  I also taught at the University level from 1987 through 2005 (till sidelined by cancer).  I can state, categorically that the college freshman of the last dozen years was less prepared than the average high school freshman or sophomore when I was in high school.  I have had some grad students who couldn't spell or put 4 interconnected sentences together to save their lives.  I've had college seniors who read at a 8th grade level, if that.  I have had grad students fail take home exams where all 100 questions were taken directly from the chapters indicated because they lacked the ability to discern what the question was asking. 

I won't go on and on about the the educational problems of today, some of it is directly due to the Teachers Unions protecting incompetent teachers, but most are dedicated, hard working and very competent.  I won't blame the parents, though it is difficult for me to imagine parents who cannot fathom the need to monitor the students work, take an interest in their education or meet with the teachers and acknowledge that their kid was a brat and not attack the teacher for "having it in for little Johnny."  My beloved daughter is a teacher, as was my sister and my mother and I've heard the horror stories from all three about the difficulties of getting students to study or the parents to get involved. 

Of course, without parent involvement, and a thorough review of texts, any publisher can add any detail to any text they wish, and most parents won't know, because they can't be bothered.

Hal, McLovin, you both have a D - on your reading skills and a flat F for your bias control abilities.

6

GM: Maybe you should consider removing the "I am GM Roper and I Approve This Message'' tagline. Whatever you might say about my reading comprehension, you might consider that your failure to understand, apparently, the meaning of those words raises questions about your own.

I don't doubt, however, that the bottom end of the lowest common denominator for school kids is lower today than it was in the 1950s and 1960s.

A large part of that is simple demographics In those days, the poorest people were less likely to even send their kid to school, while the lower middle class was much less economically and socially precarious than it is today:

The key is that in the 1950s and 1960s, American manufacturing still had a magnificent edge in terms of cost and technical development over all global rivals. That meant that we could have a large number of low and medium-skill jobs that paid wages that were good enough and steady enough to allow a single wage earner to support the whole family.

The vast majority of today's families, especially poor families, can only get by if both parents work. This leaves a lot less time and energy for helping kids with homework and, just as important, means the kids fend for themselves after school--to often that means they play video games or hang out with older kids until the parents get home.

It's just silly to blame every little thing on liberals. I wonder why wingnuts never seem to get bored with that.

7

In looking at the fonts, was Hal E. Burton's comment on #4 written on a typewriter, and how did he do that?  It's like Dan Rather, having a document prepared by a computer that is almost passable for being typed.

Hal, the article only led me to write about a problem in education.  The ideas in the post were not limited to that one article.  If you want more evidence of the failures of public schools, it shouldn't take thirty seconds, but everyone I know is already aware of them.

It's been a while, but I remember when Stanford was under great pressure by the liberals to drop Western Civ and replace it with World History, as if Western Civ was a white man's culture that is no better than the rest.  Suddenly schools everywhere were copying them and changing studies to empahsize other cultures at the expense of dropping important issues in our own.

Further, the California Textbook Committee (very liberal) is the largest purchaser of textbooks in the nation and calls the shots on what publishers offer to the rest of the nation.  If something is not multi-cultural enough, then that publisher is going to be hurt, so left-wing it is.  This extends beyond history books and even goes into math books--yes, it's true, even though that took some creativity.

Thankfully, my sone had a teacher who he said was a lot like me and whose father was a CPA, so he covered U.S. history from handouts that he had prepared over the years, which were more scholarly and complete--even though Bill Clinton's full page picture was left out.

8 You know, I'm going to miss William F. Buckley. Whatever the political stripe, the guy had a brain.

9

I grew up in a conservative household. Dad hated Kennedy and his view on Nixon was "he didn't do anything everyone else isn't doing.''

School was conservative too and everything from the Pledge of Allegiance to the history of Vietnam as a noble cause bred the assumption that America was always the good guy, without question, beyond question.

When I got to college, I started reading beyond the textbook. At that time, I was rigorously apolitical and focused pretty tightly on sports, girls and parties. But just in the course of spending more time studying, I happened to start reading books about poverty in America and so on.

I was shocked, and really dismayed, to learn that, in fact, America was not blameless in all matters geopolitical. We lied. We cheated. We killed because we could and for reasons that were far less holy than I had always assumed.

I was still naive, of course, having just begun on my journey toward a real education (and away from the fake one obtained in high school).

As a result, I became something of a left wingnut. America was the god that failed. We weren't perfect and, in fact, much of the history taught in high school was actually fraudulent. The Communists didn't start the war in Vietnam. The Soviet Union wasn't behind every civil war in the world. Communists were not lurking in every newspaper, library and Hollywood movie set, waiting to take over the government.

So, in my naive way, I assumed that if the right wing pablum delivered in high school was wrong, all the counter information must be right.

By the time I exited the university system, I had begun to have a broader view and understanding of the flow of history. I was still mostly a left wingnut, but I had just begun to start to understand that objecting to demonization of, for example, Nicaragua's government, didn't have to be the same as supporting Nicaragua's government.

Most university students follow a similar path: they get angry that the history they were taught in high school is risibly lop-sided in favor of America, and react by focusing on their newly acquired evidence that the establishment line is bullshit. Then, eventually, they learn to take a more nuanced view and to appreciate the complexity and focus on dilineating shades of gray, rather than black and white.

The point of all this is that lop-sided pro-American history lessons are the single biggest reason for left wingnuts. It sets up a straw man that a good number of people never let go of all their life. They stroll right into adulthood thinknig that because the U.S. is far less holy than advertised, it must be evil.

 

10 I'm impressed that as many kids know about McCarthyism as do. The Pearl  Harbor knowledge doesn't surprise me because of the Ben Afleck movie and many kids have relatives who were alive at that time.

I'm seriously disappointed that they did so poorly in identifying when the Civil War occurred.

I looked up the study report http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.27576,filter.all/pub_detail.asp 
there were some significant  differences between kids with college educated parents and those without which shows the importance of parents in education.

11 McLovin, I see flaws in what you were taught in your higher education, which is where the left-wing ideology started and worked its way down.  But, thanks for sharing why you went astray.

12

What ``flaws'' were those, Woody?

As I mentioned, my discovery that real American history wasn't as glorious and one-sided as presented in high school came from reading books on my own, not from any classes at all in university.

I do recall from college that my economics professor was more or less obsessed with proving that socialism was bad. When I transferred from junior college to university, I found the same thing: the economics professor made wild claims like: auto safety would improve if there were daggers mounted onto the steering wheel, so seat-belt laws are counterproductive, as they encourage risk taking.

But I freely chose to attend a private university that was openly committed to right-wing christian values. I had been an enthusiastic believer before enrolling there and much of what I saw--the hypocrisy and unexamined assumptions--turned me off of the religion completely.

I'd be interested to hear about your educational background, Woody, and how you ended up becoming a right-winger. Did you get it straight from your parents? Pick it up in college? Discover it in later life?

 

 

13

I should add:

At the right-wing university, I minored in political science and as part of that took a class on the history of socialism. The professor was a brilliant orator and made great sport of smacking down the many and vocal Reaganites in the class. He also told a good story.

He had traveled widely as a scholar, including to countries then known as the Eastern Bloc. He had become friends with a high-level government official/academic in Czechoslovakia and one day had been discussing with him the education of their children. The Czech said surely he would send his son to university in Paris, even though the expense would be great. The American professor was shocked. "Why would you send him to the Sorbonne, a citidel of capitalism, when you could send him for free to the University of Moscow, where he will study with the finest minds in all of the Soviet sphere.''

``I want to make sure he's a good communist,'' the Czech replied. ``If I send him to Moscow, he will surely rebel, like all students do, and come to despise the Soviets and communism. If he goes to Paris, he will just as surely rebel, but against capitalism and the Western bloc.''

 

 

 

14

McLovin: I minored in political science and as part of that took a class on the history of socialism. The professor was a brilliant orator and made great sport of smacking down the many and vocal Reaganites in the class.

Well, there's a big problem right there.  How can you respect a teacher and his views when he clearly used his position as a bully pulpit to humiliate students who were right but had not learned how the skill of debating and were afraid to go so far with him?

Mac, your views are far enough left to show that your education is either incomplete or that your experiences were abnormal.

It's okay to be proud of the U.S., which has maintainied freedom throughout the globe and is the most generous nation for countries in need.

To answer your other question, I have been realtively conservative my whole life.  My mom was active in the Republican party on the state level, when that wasn't popular, and I used to be one of the kids who would hang around the mall parking lot asking people if I could put Republican bumper stickers on their car.  One of my grandfathers hated Roosevelt and was active in negotiating coal mining cortract with John L. Lewis, who learned to hate Roosevelt himself.  I respected my grandfather and learned a lot from him.  My other grandparents died before I was born and my Dad was more concerned with making a living than elections, so they weren't much of an influence on me over political issues.  However, my dad was a WWII veteran, and I heard stories about the Japs and Germans and that Democrats always got us into wars and the Republicans would get us out.  I also never cared what people thought of me, so I said what I believed without worrying about being accepted in a group of liberals.  College had absolutely no effect on my politics.  I majored in accounting and that's what we studied--not how to hate America.  We in the School of Commerce used to laugh at the hippies.  So, you might say that I turned out almost perfect.

15

No one is prouder of America than I am, but I suspect I'm proud of exactly the same things you despise, Woody.

American universities are the envy of the world, drawing some of the very best students from every corner of the earth. That is largely because of our tradition of academic freedom and that same tradition leads to professors being willing to criticize the U.S. government and present history as they see it, not as the government would like to have it seen.

I'm proud of the fact that America has a long history of military restraint. Episodes like Iraq are actually an aberration, as was the Vietnam war, and a temporary lapse in judgment that doesn't reflect longstanding American ideals or values. There were always be people who like war and demand more of it, but, fortunately, in America they have historically lost out politically.

I'm proud of the fact that most Americans embrace multiculturalism, meaning they are willing to work to understand other cultures on their own terms, without letting value judgments impede their understanding. They can do this because they are confident enough in their own value system not to be threatened by an open-minded approach to learning new things and incorporating good ideas, while rejecting bad ones.

I'm proud of the abolitionists and the civil rights crusaders who ultimately defeated the conservatives (like William F. Buckley) who opposed equal rights for Afro-Americans and other non-caucasions. I'm proud of the Americans who were big-minded enough to see past the racist rhetoric of the Strom Thurmonds and George Wallaces of the day.

I'm proud that most Americans oppose torture and understand why it is inimical to a free society and why the state should never have such awful power over any individual in any circumstance. I'm proud that Americans oppose the kind of prison without trial the Bush administration is now carrying out in Guantanamo. These Americans, a majority, understand that jurisprudence isn't a "nicety'' granted to those priviledged with American citizenship, but a human right "endowed by the creator.''

And as for the professor "bullying" the students. No professor should be under any pressure whatsoever not to challenge students as rigorously as possible. And this he did. The truth is these students were utterly ill prepared to discuss the issues they were bringing up. They accepted the mainstream media's praise of Reagan at face value and, therefore, were totally taken by surprise when presented with counter facts. It was quite funny to observe this in action.

 

16

McLovin, your last sentence speaks volumes.  Liberals do enjoy hurting people who disagree with them.  The viciousness of the last eight years is an example.   

Also, don't assume that what you learned was all correct.   A lot of people believed The NY Times, but now only 24% of Americans have a favorable view of paper according to a recent poll.  Maybe your sources were biased and you didn't have a solid enough foundation to see it, and now you're trapped in that mindset.

17

Woody; where are you getting that people in the class I attended were "hurt."

There were being helped in one or both of two ways: One, they were enlightened to the fact that they weren't very well informed about the basis of their own political views. Two, they can't expect every professor to agree with their political biases.

As for the New York Times, if Americans view it so unfavorably, why in the world is the wingnutosphere so obsessed with it?

If Americans don't care what the liberal media says and don't trust it, why do conservatives keep blaming the liberal media for leading people astray?

18

No one likes to be humiliated in front of their peers, such as by the professors, and the political views of the students, especially if they were consistent with Reagan, may not have been wrong.  I've seen and heard about bullying by professors.  My own kids would listen and regurgitate what the professor wanted to hear rather than get into a fight with him that they couldn't win and that would hurt their grade.  (Yes, professors can be vindictive.)  If you can't see that, they you have no sensitivity or you're vindictive yourself.  Any don't be so sure that your professor was so brilliant.  You know the saying, "Those who can, do.  Those who can't, teach."

The NY Times poll is a snapshot in time.  It's ratings can go up and down.  We're concerned about it and other left-wing media because a lot of people still read and put faith in the paper.  Why are you obsessed with FOX?

On  my assignment above on "why I'm a conservative," I left off that I grew up under very corrupt and incompetent Democatic elected officials, particularly on the city and state levels.  Democrats are populists, and they will take any position that gets them elected without any convictions.  Finally, the people caught on and threw the Democrats out, and the Republicans brought prosperity and respectability back to the area.

19

You sound confused Woody.

You say the NY Times is unpopular and outside the mainstream, yet ``a lot of people still read and put faith in the paper.''

Can't really have it both ways, can you?

If the NY Times is out of touch, it can't have a significant effect on the mainstream of America. If it has no significant effect on the mainstream, why all the concern?

Your theory just doesn't stack up. Either the NY Times is more popular, more mainstream and more influential than you can admit, or it matters a lot less than you'll admit.

20

My view is that the New York Times is the "paper of record" because that's exactly what its readers demand. If it didn't serve the readers' demand for fast, accurate, comprehensive news, it wouldn't survive as the leading U.S. newspaper.

The U.S. newspaper market is among the most free and competitive in the world. The American people are among the most free thinking, best educated in the world. Given those two facts, no newspaper could survive if it didn't represent the basic thinking of its readers and, indeed, advertisers.

What about New York's conservative newspapers? What about the New York Post?

Why aren't the Woodys of the world happy to read and support and refer to the Post?

The answer is simple: The Post doesn't compete with the New York Times for real news. It focuses on scandal and sensation and local oddities. It isn't a paper of record because it just doesn't invest time and money to cover stories that aren't sensational enough to grab readers. Yet it has a huge readership and after many years of subsidy by conservative billionaire Rupert Murdoch, it appears to be profitable. The bottom line is that conservative readers don't really want news. They want entertainment and commentary that reaffirms their ideology.

Note that every successful conservative media enterprise is focused on commentary, not straight news. Fox News Channel beats CNN, but not in news coverage. It's talking heads like Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity that bring in the conservative audience and the ratings.

Why do conservatives prefer commentary to news?

This, more than anything, explains why conservatives feel the media is so biased, whereas liberals don't see that at all.

The news itself--the facts showing things going so badly in Iraq, manmade climate change, a looming recession, evolution, the decline of American prestige globally and so on, all point away from conservative ideology.

So a conservative reader or viewer of straight news is somewhat justified in feeling under seige. Their views are under constant attack by the facts on the ground.

My aunt is a lifelong conservative and Republican. She told me: I listen to both sides. I listen to NPR and Rush Limbaugh. So in her mind, Limbaugh is somehow a counterpart to NPR. But of course the two are completely different. Limbaugh reports no news whatsoever. His program is exclusively unopposed commentary on news that's been reported already on NPR, the New York Times, etc.

NPR is 90 percent straight news. To be sure, all news, including NPR, includes bias. But there is a wide difference between biased straight news and commentary. 

     Of course NPR comes off as more liberal than Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity or Bill O'Reilly. How could it be otherwise? Does anyone think straight news should fall into line with the nakedly partisan views of ideologues like Limbaugh or Hannity?

   That doesn't make NPR liberal, it makes NPR centrist.

    The Wall Street Journal offers another illustrative example. It's arguably the most influential newspaper in America and, indeed, the world. It's nationwide readership is over 1 million, roughly in the same category as the New York Times, but with far more influence because its readers are virtually by definition far above average financially.

    The WSJ editorial page is stridently conservative and unspairing in its criticism of liberals and Democrats. The new owner, Rupert Murdoch, has a long track record of steering his newspaper's coverage to favor conservatives. And there's nothing, per se, wrong with that. The WSJ editorial page caters to its readership. American conservatives have every right and reason to have a newspaper that represents their views and the WSJ is clearly that newspaper.

    Trouble is, the WSJ's straight news coverage is indistinguishable from that of the NY Times, Washington Post, or liberal media, as described by conservatives. How does that happen? Is there a conspiracy with the WSJ to keep conservatives out of the news section and in the commentary? Of course not, the simple fact is that news can't credibly be reported from the narrow ideological perspective offered by rightwing columnists and commentators. Readers wouldn't buy it and, the record shows, readers reject it when it's offered to them.

   So around and around it goes. Conservatives dominate newspaper and television commentary, thereby setting a narrow ideological frame for news, which then looks liberal, by comparison.

 

 

 

 

 

21

McLovin, there's no contradictions.  People may be upset with Microsoft but that doesn't stop them from using it.  The NY Times is the major paper of one of the world's major cities.  That alone gives it readership.  However, that doesn't mean that the people agree with the editorial decisions of the paper. 

But I really have to laugh when you write: <i>"Conservatives dominate newspaper and television commentary...."</i>

22

You still seem confused Woody.

You acknowledge that the NY Times is the major paper in the biggest city, but you don't acknowledge WHY it's the major paper.

Why isn't Murdoch's Post the major paper, or the New York Daily News?

The Microsoft comparison doesn't wash. If you want to use the vast majority of consumer application software, you have to use Microsoft. There's no choice.

If you want to read a paper other than the NY Times, there are several choices without effort or additional expense.

I do think I overstated that conservatives "dominate" newspaper and TV commentary. You'd need to add talkradio to get to "dominate." But it is safe to say that there are significantly more conservative commentators on TV and in newspapers and magazines than there are liberals.

A quick way to see this is to go to townhall.com and check their list of conservative pundits. Most of them have newspaper or magazine syndication deals and many of them either have spots or are regularly featured on TV chat shows.

If I were a conservative, I'd be asking why there's no successful conservative newspaper, instead of whining all the time that the most successful papers are liberal.

23 McLovin, you're impossible.  The media has been historically liberal with no other choices by conservatives.  Now that conservatives are getting choices, The NY Times and papers like it are suffering.  The Times has watched circulation plummet and has had to keep firing staff to stay going.  It's a trend that won't be reversed if they persist on their left-wing politics.  I don't even like their sports pages.

24

Also,

Two thirds of Americans - 67% - believe traditional journalism is out of touch with what Americans want from their news, a new We Media/Zogby Interactive poll shows.

The survey also found that while most Americans (70%) think journalism is important to the quality of life in their communities, two thirds (64%) are dissatisfied with the quality of journalism in their communities.

BTW, the original topic was "Education."

 

 

25

Woody, you're in denial about the New York Post and the New York Daily News and the Washington Times.

Those are all clearly right-of-center newspapers owned and operated by committed conservatives.

Why don't they have the national readership and prestige that the New York Times and Washington Post do?

Of course,  the New York Times has much greater respect and influence than the New York Post, but that's respect and influence it has won in a free market of ideas. Same goes for the Washington Post over the Washington Times.

Basically, Woody. You're a sore loser in the free market of ideas.

No one's stopping conservatives from making their own media. Indeed, the conservatives have their own media. Trouble is, it's second-rate and you know it.

So instead of whining about how liberal the media is, you should be asking yourself why conservative rivals are all second rate.

My view is that bias, be it conservative or liberal, is unimportant relative to accuracy and transparency. If the media are factually accurate and don't rely on anonymous sourcing, intelligent readers can see right through any biases, so the particular tilt of a piece of writing is inconsequential.

Moreover, it's virtually impossible to set objective standards for what is "biased" anyway. You say NY Times is left-wing, but that begs the question of to the left of what? The average American? But where is it written that a newspaper should craft its political views to match the theoretical "average" American.

I get a sense that Woody believes that because the NY Times is to his left, it is, therefore, left-wing.

Of course we know the NY Times supported the invasion of Iraq and published outrageously biased reports falsely reporting that Iraq had WMD. These were anonymous reports virtually dictated by Dick Cheney's office to Judith Miller, who wrote them in the usual way, as part a quid pro quo to maintain the access to Cheney that her position in the world of journalism required.

It's a free country. If conservatives fail in the news media, they have only themselves to blame.

26

Fine, Mac.  I'm not going to change your mind.  The NY Times is not liberal and the recent article on McCain was not a hatchet job.

27

My point, Woody, is that even if we could agree that the NY Times were liberal, that wouldn't give conservatives any right to complain.

And for the record, the McCain article was a hatchet job, just as were the many pre-war WMD articles. I've yet to see any liberal commentary that doesn't express disappointment with the NY Times as regards that McCain article. It's been widely condemned as a hatchet job in liberal circles.

I've yet to see any conservative commentator, not a single one, complain about Judith Miller's WMD propaganda spoon-fed straight from Dick Cheney's office into the NY Times. Not one complaint and that piece of propaganda led us straight into a disastrous war...

28

Mac:  "even if we could agree that the NY Times were liberal"

Then, it's not likely that we could agree on anything.