Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #1   Report Post  
Posted to rec.audio.opinion
Bret L Bret L is offline
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,145
Default Have Critics Actually Looked At Current High School History Texts?

That Texas Schoolbook Massac Have Critics Actually Looked At
Current High School History Texts?

By Steve Sailer

"The Texas Board of Education has voted to include in state’s history textbooks facts more favorable to conservatives. Needless to say, this has provoked condemnations from the national Main Stream Media. That’s because any challenge to the Left’s post-1960s dominion over the past is going to arouse real passion.


OK, I know it’s not clear how many students actually read their
history textbooks. But the Texans are showing more enterprise than is
common among conservatives, or Americans generally. These have
fecklessly permitted their ideological enemies to define what gets
called history.

Theoretically, history is about learning how the world works and not
repeating old mistakes. What most people want to know, however: who
does society approve? Who is respectable and who is not? Who are the
good guys and who are the bad guys?

History is commonly said to be written by victors. But there is
surprisingly little evidence for that in America over the last 150
years. In that period, American history has tended to be controlled by
those who care the most about controlling history.

For example, the North won the Civil War, but subsequent generations
of Southerners invested more in historians. Hence, the South’s view of
the Civil War and Reconstruction tended to be intellectually dominant
up until the 1960s.

But since the Sixties, the Left has cared most. It never got its
revolution—in fact, it got Nixon and Reagan—but it did get academe.

For more than forty years, the teaching business has been completely
dominated by the prejudices of the Sixties People, whose Gramscian
"long march through the institutions" has left them in control of the
schools.

What is striking to somebody like me, who grew up during the 1960s and
1970s, is the subsequent lack of generational rebellion. Kids these
days tend toward intellectual conformism. They trust anyone over 30
who tells them what everybody else is telling them.

Why have the Sixties People proven so enduring in molding young
people’s minds? My theory: The Sixties mindset—aggrieved, resentful,
and unrealistic—is perfectly attuned to appeal permanently to the
worst instincts of adolescents.

And yet young people do have a finer side—their hunger for heroes—that
history books once tried to fulfill rather than exploit. For example,
I was galvanized in 1975 when I read Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison’s
tribute in his Oxford History of the American People to Orville and
Wilbur Wright:

"Few things in our history are more admirable than the skill, the
pluck, the quiet self-confidence, the alertness to reject fixed ideas
and to work out new ones, and the absence of pose and publicity, with
which these Wright brothers made the dream of ages—man’s conquest of
the air—come true."

But the Wright brothers aren’t the kind of heroes we like anymore. In
our Age of Oprah, rather than Heroes of Accomplishment, we are
addicted to Heroes of Suffering.

This tendency reverberates far beyond textbooks today. Compare the
very different war heroes nominated by the GOP in 1952 and 2008.
Dwight Eisenhower had distinguished himself by organizing D-Day. In
contrast, John McCain was celebrated for being tortured by the North
Vietnamese.

This Heroes of Suffering fetish is exacerbated in modern history
textbooks by the “diversity” imperative.

Take, for example, one US history textbook widely used in high school
Advanced Placement courses and in college courses: Nation of Nations:
A Narrative History of the American Republic (McGraw-Hill, Fourth
Edition).

It’s in many ways an impressive book. The amount of labor that went
into it is enormous. And, as you notice the political mandates under
which the five historian co-authors labored, you begin to feel sorry
for them.

You feel even sorrier for the students, however. The need to include a
huge amount of material celebrating each politically organized
diversity group has bloated the textbook to 1277 oversized pages. It
costs $108.78 on Amazon, and weighs in at a vertebrae-compressing 5.4
pounds.

That’s child abuse! If a kid is assigned five textbooks this massive,
that’s a backpack that weighs 27 pounds.

No wonder high school students seldom ride bicycles to school anymore.
They’re so top-heavy they’d topple over.

Celebrating diversity just take a lot of space. Even with a tome this
immense, diversity awareness means that there isn’t room in all 1277
pages to mention…the Wright brothers.

Nor is there room for the following architects of the 21st Century:
the inventors of the transistor (John Bardeen, the only two-time
winner of the Physics Nobel Prize, Walter Brattain, and William
Shockley); the inventors of the semiconductor chip (Robert Noyce and
Jack Kilby); the inventor of information theory (Claude Shannon); or
the discoverers of the structure of DNA (James Watson and Francis
Crick).

Nation of Nations resembles an unfunny parody of Dave Barry’s 1997
parody of history textbooks, Dave Barry Slept He

"Educational Advisory Alert: A review committee consisting of
education professionals with doctorate degrees and initials after
their names has determined that, so far, this history book is not
making enough of an effort to include the contributions of women and
minority groups. "

Thereafter, Barry interjects every 10 or 15 pages: "Also around this
time women and minority groups were making contributions."

Unlike Barry’s book, McGraw-Hill’s textbook checks off all the
identity politics boxes so assiduously that after awhile you start to
wonder who are the poor losers who didn’t make the cut, like … well,
there must be somebody who doesn’t swing enough weight … uh … the
Sikhs! Yeah, why does Nation of Nations discriminate against the
crucial contributions of Sikh-Americans?

And, in fact, Sikh activists, such as Prof. Onkar S. Bindra, are
indeed sore about the lack of Sikh Awareness in textbooks:

"California Sikhs have been unhappy over the fact that the K-8
textbooks for History-Social Science in current use have nothing about
Sikh identity, culture, or history of their immigration. They consider
this to be the leading reason for ignorance of the masses about the
Sikhs."

You can’t make this stuff up.

Multiculturalism furnishes enjoyable sinecures for educationalists.
But I can’t imagine very many students read much of Nation of Nations.
This kind of feminized, multiculturalized social history is boring to
young people—especially to boys.

There is no historical subject more gripping to teenage boys than
battle. Military historian John Keegan notes in The Face of Battle
that when the central question "What is it like to be in a battle?" is
"raised in a roomful of cadets—and probably at any gathering of young
men anywhere— … there is a marked rise in the emotional temperature,
in the pitch of voices…"

But war heroes are, of course, in short supply in this textbook.
American history’s greatest fighting admiral, Raymond Spruance, victor
at the tremendously dramatic 1942 Battle of Midway, goes unmentioned.
Nor do we hear about Clarence Wade McClusky and Max Leslie, the dive
bomber commanders who decided not to turn back from their search for
the Japanese fleet despite being so low on fuel that half their planes
would have to ditch in the Pacific. By pressing onward, they suddenly
were rewarded with the most glittering panorama any American warriors
have beheld: the heart of the Japanese navy three miles below them.

As Admiral Morison wrote of the Japanese fleet on the morning of June
4, 1942 after the heroic but fruitless sorties by the slow, low-flying
American torpedo bombers had been shot to pieces by the Japanese
fighters:

"The third torpedo attack was over by 1024, and for about one hundred
seconds the Japanese were certain they had won the Battle of Midway,
and the war. This was their high tide of victory. Then, a few seconds
before 1026, with dramatic suddenness, there came a complete reversal
of fortune… At 14,000 feet the American dive-bombers tipped over and
swooped screaming down for the kill."

Five minutes later, three Japanese aircraft carriers were sinking. The
ultimate defeat of Japan was now inevitable.

How hard did the textbook authors have to work to make Midway dull?

Answer: Nation of Nations’ section entitled "The Naval War in the
Pacific," which covers the turning point years of 1942 and 1943, gets
all of two pro forma paragraphs.

In contrast, eight paragraphs are devoted to the internment of
Japanese, seven to women and the war, and five to "Minorities on the
Job."

Hilariously, the naval war gets the same amount of text as the 1943
Zoot Suit riot in East LA!

Another example: October 1944’s Battle of Leyte Gulf, perhaps the
largest naval encounter of all time? The complicated Japanese battle
plan succeeded in luring Admiral Bull Halsey out of position, opening
the door for a Japanese task force centered around the Yamato, the
largest battleship in history, to blast Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s
landing force off the Philippine beach to which he had famously
returned five days before.

Yet, the Japanese leviathans were driven off by the furious attack of
Clifton Sprague’s small American ships in what Admiral Morison calls
"the most gallant naval action in our history, and the most bloody."

Leyte Gulf gets one (drama-free) sentence.

When I was growing up in Los Angeles, where so many veterans of the
Pacific settled, the struggle with Japan loomed as a national epic.
Since then, it’s largely disappeared from consciousness—especially
compared to the war with the Nazis, which presents the more
comfortable scenario of white Americans defeating white Europeans.

Poor Tom Hanks has been reduced to promoting his current HBO
miniseries The Pacific, successor to his 2001 European theatre of
operations miniseries Band of Brothers, as being about "a war of
racism." (I seem to recall it had something to do with Pearl Harbor,
but what do I know?)

Of course, leaving out so many annoying white male Heroes of
Accomplishment from the textbook doesn’t mean that the historians have
managed to dig up comparable diverse Heroes of Accomplishment.

Instead, the space mostly gets filled with Heroes of Suffering.

And who made them suffer?

You get one guess.

At one point, I went looking in this textbook’s index for the Civil
War hero, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, colonel of the XXth Maine
Volunteers. By repelling repeated assaults on crucial Little Round Top
hill on the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg, Chamberlain more
or less saved the Union. (He’s played by Jeff Daniels in Ron Maxwell’s
movies Gettysburg and Gods and Generals.)

I suspect teenage boys might find him, you know, interesting. Maybe?

Well, needless to say, Joshua Chamberlain isn’t in the Nation of
Nations’ index. I did find, however:

Chanax, Juan, 1096—1098, 1103, 1124, 1125

Who, exactly, is Chanax and why does he appear on six pages when
Chamberlain can’t be squeezed in anywhere?

It turns out Chanax is an illegal immigrant from Guatemala who works
in a supermarket in Houston. This hero’s accomplishment is that he
brought in 1,000 other illegal aliens from his home village.

The thinking, apparently: featuring an illegal alien so
disproportionately will boost the self-esteem of the illegal alien
students reading the book—which will then raise their test scores!

But how many are going to read all the way to p. 1096? And how many
won’t find it patronizing and depressing that the biggest hero these
industrious historians could dig up for their edification and
emulation was Chanax?

But the truth is that the Left pays no real attention to illegal
immigrants. Their value is primarily in their colossal numbers—e.g.,
the 1000 neighbors recruited by Chanax—making them the notional
Reserve Army of the Left, justifying whatever changes in America life
more elite members of the Left want.

Want an easy sinecure as a diversity consultant for a textbook
company? Nominate yourself as the ethnic representative of Juan Chanax
and friends.

They won’t notice.

Maybe you just don’t much like American history: all those Wrights and
Chamberlains accomplishing great things get on your nerves. Then
rewrite it, in the name of Juan Chanax and company!

It’s not like Juan and his pals down at the supermarket are paying
close attention or have a strong, informed opinion on what should go
into American history textbooks. You can get away with anything by
claiming to be on their side, the side of goodness and the future—the
winning side.

Today’s history textbook writers do have a problem: politically
favored groups’ general lack of accomplishment. For instance, Nation
of Nations gives much room to Mexican-Americans down through the ages,
in accordance with their vast current numbers. But the authors
struggle to make them seem all that interesting or important.

Consider that there are almost as many people of Mexican descent in
the U.S. as there are blacks. Everybody can name famous blacks. But
how many famous Mexicans can you remember?

Let’s see how many I can now recall after reading the book. There’s
Cesar Chavez, and then there’s Sammy Sosa, who is cited on p. 1123
(interestingly enough, that is the same page on which Lawrence Auster
appears as a bogeyman for writing The Path to National Suicide). But,
he’s not Mexican, he’s Dominican. (Sammy, I mean, not Larry.)

Since nobody is allowed to even consider the basic cause for the
pervasive lack of high accomplishment by Mexican-Americans—the
listlessness of Mexican culture—then, logically, only one reason is
possible: white racism!

(Nation of Nations does make a few allusions to the impact of mass
illegal immigration on the black working class, such as black janitors
in Los Angeles losing their $12 per hour jobs to $5 per hour illegal
aliens. But, it makes clear, anybody who speaks up for restricting
immigration is one of the Bad Guys. They’re on the side of the past,
which in a contemporary American history book is the Wrong Side.)

I can’t really see how this kind of taxpayer-supported textbook is
making my life better, or America’s. Can you?

The Texas School Board’s conservatives can’t do any worse."


http://www.vdare.com/sailer/100425_s...k_massacre.htm
  #2   Report Post  
Posted to rec.audio.opinion
Trevor Wilson[_3_] Trevor Wilson[_3_] is offline
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 139
Default Have Critics Actually Looked At Current High School History Texts?


Earlier this week, Brett made the following claims:

"The total output of man is dwarfed by natural actions like gas
seepage and volcanic eruptions. It's certain that Krakatoa equalled
all the emissions of the twentieth century and then some."

To which, I asked:

The total output of man is dwarfed by natural actions like gas
seepage and volcanic eruptions.


**Really? Prove it. (This'll be fun) You really are a moron.

It's certain that Krakatoa equalled
all the emissions of the twentieth century and then some.


**Really? Prove it.


Thus far, we have been presented with deafening silence. One can only assume
that Brett is a gutless coward, or an idiot. He has either realised that his
statements are bogus, or he has been unable to verify the accuracy of his
statements.

Which is it, Brett? Are you an idiot, or a gutless coward?

I'm betting both.


--
Trevor Wilson
www.rageaudio.com.au


  #3   Report Post  
Posted to rec.audio.opinion
Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason! Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason! is offline
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 278
Default Have Critics Actually Looked At Current High School HistoryTexts?

On Apr 26, 5:19*pm, "Trevor Wilson" wrote:

Thus far, we have been presented with deafening silence. One can only assume
that Brett is a gutless coward, or an idiot. He has either realised that his
statements are bogus, or he has been unable to verify the accuracy of his
statements.

Which is it, Brett? Are you an idiot, or a gutless coward?


Current speculation has him with a severe case of autism.

I'm betting both.


It could be the trifecta.
  #4   Report Post  
Posted to rec.audio.opinion
Boon[_2_] Boon[_2_] is offline
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,425
Default Have Critics Actually Looked At Current High School HistoryTexts?

On Apr 26, 6:26*pm, "Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!"
wrote:
On Apr 26, 5:19*pm, "Trevor Wilson" wrote:

Thus far, we have been presented with deafening silence. One can only assume
that Brett is a gutless coward, or an idiot. He has either realised that his
statements are bogus, or he has been unable to verify the accuracy of his
statements.


Which is it, Brett? Are you an idiot, or a gutless coward?


Current speculation has him with a severe case of autism.

I'm betting both.


It could be the trifecta.


((You're so goddamned stupid. If I'm autistic, I'm not an idiot. I'm
an idiot savant. I can shoot feral cats through the eye with a
peashooter at a distance of a thousand yards. That's my special skill.
Boon.))
Reply
Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules

Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off


Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
FS: Acoustics Texts eric Pro Audio 3 November 3rd 06 04:24 AM
Recording High School Concert Band more_cowbell Pro Audio 1 January 31st 05 08:10 PM
High Voltage Vs High Current Receivers theOutdoorMonkey Marketplace 5 June 4th 04 08:08 AM
Recording High School Band - horns question Michael W. Ellis Pro Audio 5 October 21st 03 01:37 PM
MT. DIABLO HIGH SCHOOL CONCORD, CA PHOTOS MT. DIABLO HIGH SCHOOL PHOTOS Car Audio 2 October 9th 03 03:31 PM


All times are GMT +1. The time now is 09:57 AM.

Powered by: vBulletin
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright ©2004-2024 AudioBanter.com.
The comments are property of their posters.
 

About Us

"It's about Audio and hi-fi"