The Tree' Propaganda That Floods the Schools
Medsger, Betty
The 'Free' Propaganda That Floods the Schools BETTY MEDSGER The "textbook controversies" which erupt from time to time usually originate with conservatives who claim the schools are inundated with...
...A Day in America, which has probably been shown to thousands of school children, was made in 1970, when the United States had hundreds of thousands of men and women on duty "around the world" in Indochina...
...These young people, who hate what they call the 'Establishment,' are basically anarchistic at heart, seeking to destroy rather than reform society...
...However, I found no suggestion that a father's choice of work should be discussed by the family...
...The FBI men, accompanied by local law enforcement officers, closed in around the house, and entered: "We are Federal officers____ Come out with your hands up____ " 'Machine-gun' Kelly was so frightened he could barely talk...
...it shows where the father goes and what he does...
...Not for the inclusion of sex education...
...A mother may work because she feels needed...
...catalogs provide is a wealth of "teaching aids" that propagate not only the cherished myths of militarism and "free enterprise," but also rampant sexism and racism...
...All blue-collar jobs were at the bottom of the list...
...A good and decent man in our public life is anyone who serves corporate privilege not because he is himself corrupt but because he is the slavish admirer of the enterpriser...
...He was wanted by the FBI for kidnapping...
...Eight-year-old children are taught a poem with the lines, A formal study of racial and sex role stereotyping in illustrations in school career materials was done by three researchers at the University of Maryland, Dr...
...It is clear that "young person" means "young man...
...we wouldn't be afraid to use something that showed them...
...A filmstrip called Your First Week on the Job has an accompanying tape with these classic lines: "Why does a man work...
...It is "narrated by Governor Ronald Regan with original score by Stan Kenton," and "tells the personal values of the fraternity experience of young men today...
...Your Future as a Home Economist...
...Furniture Industry...
...Well, we wouldn't use controversial things," he said, adding, "unless they were done in very good taste...
...And not for open classrooms...
...Iwhich] remains today, as it always has been, an obedient tool of the Soviet Union...
...Those are all important issues, but they may be less important than the standard content of the instruction and guidance materials made available to children...
...The reporter investigates pollution control, customer service, consumer information services, and other aspects of the gas industry...
...He notes that "one out of every six [bank] employes holds an official position...
...One statistician has figured that two out of every three men employes of banks must be prepared for officership...
...A national study of librarians revealed that 56 per cent of male students and 70 per cent of female students ask for printed occupational information...
...Black children are tokens...
...Some parents complain vociferously that the teaching of evolution may destroy their children's faith, or that sex education leads to promiscuity...
...After they were caught, Congress took under consideration a bill to strengthen grain inspection procedures...
...Years ago, for instance, the question of alcohol and tobacco was very controversial in schools...
...Communism": "Through meticulous investigation, the FBI has kept abreast of every move of the Communist Party, U.S.A...
...Mission in Action, made by the Army in 1970, "reviews the contributions of the men and women of the U.S...
...in other places that historic ritual, book burning, has been revived to cope with "biased" educational material...
...The obscenity of this man's stewardship was not only its excursions into the bigoted and scatalogical but its steadfast performance of a felt duty to be morally obtuse...
...When men were shown as teachers, they taught high school or technical courses...
...A proposed solution to the public policy influence of the military-industrial establishment" That item was a ripple of enlightenment in a vast sea of materials I recently evaluated...
...High school students are also offered an attractive twenty-one-page booklet, The Story of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a romantic story that conveys in deft dialogue the excitement of being an FBI agent...
...I did also find in Free and Inexpensive a publication available from Americans for Democratic Action, How to Control the Military, 99 pp...
...Blacks were shown in a variety of careers, but "they were shown in rather low-level jobs____One could summarize much of the position of black males by noting that they were frequently shown in the same roles as white women — the assistant, the service giver, all traditional female roles...
...Careers for Women in Uniform...
...Year by year, the Soviet Union has been overtaking us in the scientific arena____If the communist countries continue to outpace us, the results will be catastrophic for us...
...It contains many photographs of workers who use math in their work: 105 men, eighteen women...
...The same scholars did a follow-up study of new materials in 1975...
...It is not—as you might expect — about the progress of women in the armed services...
...But in some areas of the country where there is a shortage of qualified men, women have been hired____" — Your Future in the Bakery Industry...
...At a career education center in Alameda County, California, I scanned hundreds of pamphlets, brochures, leaflets, filmstrips, and tapes on careers...
...John F. Kennedy...
...Women were shown again and again being nurses, teachers____If they are shown professionally, most likely the roles will be the traditional ones, working as a librarian, or with fabrics, flowers, or food, but in a low-status position...
...Perhaps for sewing her lips shut...
...of the twenty workers in the series, fifteen are men...
...Almost six out of every ten bank employes are women, and the majority of women employes leave to get married...
...For instance, there is the story of September 26, 1933, when "a small group of officers surrounded a house in Memphis, Tennessee...
...The Army provides an answer to that question in a movie it made and distributes free to schools...
...Besides, for the most part, the people who make the materials would be careful to avoid those issues...
...It offers people the supreme pleasure of clear, complete understanding, of creating order where there was confusion____A person who becomes a good scientist joins an international community of people who practice the brotherhood of men...
...At his local utility he is assisted by an attractive young employe who helps him get the material for his article...
...It is man's nature to work...
...Obscene The single virtue of the Presidential campaign was its demonstration that our sexual revolution is not without limits...
...By the time Kelly had been convicted and had received his sentence of life imprisonment, the new nickname, an abbreviation of 'Government Men,' had taken hold throughout the criminal underworld...
...Furthermore, he said, all colleges and universities which teach prospective teachers make them aware of Educators Progress Service...
...That would be too difficult...
...Mary Faith Tanney...
...Office of Education...
...Birk, the stereotypes in the new materials were just as strong as they had been in 1973...
...Popeye and Environmental Careers...
...In Boise, Idaho, local educators developed a "career awareness" curriculum that included a military unit in the second grade...
...There has been some improvement in the way blacks are represented in teaching materials, though in the books I have seen a black child is usually present alone among whites...
...Today they are not that much of an issue...
...Then there is You've Come a Long Way, Baby, an Army film listed for free showing in schools...
...How Automobiles Are Made...
...And if they are too bigoted we won't list it...
...Another role they seemed to fill was that of the assistant...
...Army Reserve who unselfishly supported and joined the active Army's struggle in the Republic of Vietnam...
...in a pamphlet for high school students prepared and distributed by the New York Life Insurance Company...
...f "All wear attractive uniforms...
...The Fight for Life, made by the Army, "shows that the war in Vietnam is fought in a hostile environment against an elusive enemy...
...Because the Defense Department and the corporations have the money, they can endow the schools with "free or inexpensive" materials that perpetuate militaristic values, racist attitudes, and sexual stereotypes...
...Career Opportunities...
...The film was one of 123 made by the Department of Defense and its various branches that are listed in a recent edition of Educators Guide to Free Guidance Materials...
...50 cents...
...Their sources also are more diverse...
...All the same, President Ford sent Butz forth with the certificate of a good and decent man...
...There is, I suppose, something to be said for a politics that, if it can provide us insufficient enlightenment elsewhere, at least affords the Supreme Court some assistance in its search for refinements in the doctrine of impermissible obscenity...
...For two months FBI agents had trailed the gangster...
...jobs that involve detailed work such as drawing, precise measuring, computations, and similar work to which women are well suited...
...Norman R. Moore, the editor of Free and Inexpensive Learning Materials, when asked if his staff considered racism as one of the criteria for eliminating materials, or at least warning potential users, said, "We could not do that because think of all the other groups that would want us to judge the materials according to their criteria...
...But for the young person bent on a banking career, the chances of reaching executive status are better than that...
...How should a child envision the meaning of a day in the life of his or her country...
...These materials apparently are important to students...
...In the midst of a sermon in which he urges boys — yes, boys — to become scientists, Teller says, "We have a desperate need for new scientists today in America...
...One of the contributing editors of this book, and the author of its introduction, is Kenneth B. Hoyt, assistant commissioner for career education in the U.S...
...Formerly based on college campuses, but now chiefly underground, some of its adherents have received instruction in sabotage, violence and the destruction of key facilities...
...1f "For the keen, diligent and interested young man____" — Your Future in Hotel Management...
...and we owe to the abnormal fraternity they demonstrate a social system that permitted eleven of our largest companies to make a collective billion dollars last year and pay no corporate income tax...
...Those who do not choose to have their children shaped into little soldiers should have a voice, too, in what the schools teach...
...Their 1973 report to the American Psychological Association noted: "Very few women, very few blacks, fewer Orientals, and no Mexican Americans or American Indians appear in any of the over 200 illustrations examined____The American world of work seems to be almost exclusively populated by white men____ One would hardly recognize the actual ethnic or sexual composition of the working world by viewing the career illustrations...
...Women should not be told that it is bad to be a nurse, a teacher, or a waitress, but they should also have the choice to consider being an oil rig roughneck, a welder, an editor, or a factory supervisor...
...All of this is an injustice against the children in our schools...
...Overwhelmingly, white men were shown doing exciting, challenging, autonomous tasks...
...The booklet opens with a dramatic red banner across a blank white page, and on the red banner in black letters are these words: "Your successes are unheralded — your failures are trumpeted...
...Then freedom will be lost here and everywhere...
...Why aren't they out there initiating the battles...
...to perfect weapons so overwhelming that no one will be able to resist them...
...Your Future as an Electronic Technician...
...Women were overwhelmingly classified in the clerical and sales occupations, most frequently as secretaries...
...The San Diego schools, for instance, prepared for student use a list of eighty-nine occupations ranked according to "prestige" value...
...Other parents should be concerned about whether the basic materials in the schools, especially the guidance and career education ma-materials, are designed to turn their girls and boys into sexist and racist right-wing ideologues...
...The game is called "Tell Me Why," and it begins with these suggested questions for the second graders: 1. Why does your mother wash clothes...
...It is "centered on five recent-Basic Combat Training graduates giving their candid opinions of Basic Combat Training____Many of the rumors concerning Basic Combat Training are dispelled...
...The films, books, pamphlets, and brochures showing there should be rated PG — parental guidance suggested...
...Janice M. Birk, Dr...
...Students are urged to develop debate about both negative and positive aspects of women working...
...Many military films used to recruit teenagers for the armed services have Vietnam as a backdrop...
...H...
...Houghton Mifflin published a textbook called Career Mathematics in 1974...
...The 'Free' Propaganda That Floods the Schools BETTY MEDSGER The "textbook controversies" which erupt from time to time usually originate with conservatives who claim the schools are inundated with "liberal propaganda...
...There is also a section called "Democracy vs...
...The other films in the catalog, and the pamphlets, brochures, and leaflets, were prepared and distributed by the large corporations, other Government agencies, and a few professional societies, as well as two religious groups, Know the Truth and Gospel Films, Inc...
...Science is fun...
...This means that the remaining men, although a minority, get most of the executive jobs...
...There is no mention of a mother's need or desire to work...
...Children's Press publishes the "Open Door Series" on minority workers...
...Such choices probably are not being advertised at your local school...
...The foreword to the Free and Inexpensive catalog describes its selection criteria, noting that "the material should be factual, free from exaggeration and propaganda____" So, I was surprised when I found this item, available for $1.95 from Interstate Printers and Publishers: Modern Private Enterprise: Is It Successful...
...Drafting is primarily a field of work for men...
...In New Left ranks are found a variety of beatniks, hippies, communists, anarchists, disenchanted intellectuals, and those who feel alienated from our society...
...Why, we'd never get one book out if we did all that...
...Many career materials — particularly those produced by state education departments or local school districts — perpetuate stereotypes of class as well as race...
...After making a serious study of the material that flows into American schools, I wonder why progressives are always on the defensive in these controversies...
...Yet no one finds this sort of thing disgusting unless someone indulges the freedom of Earl Butz in describing the portion of our anatomy that business has us by...
...According to Dr...
...Policewomen...
...she is portrayed as a person whose role the family, not she, must decide...
...The fact is that we must have them if we are to survive as a free, democratic nation...
...Face It, produced in 1972, "portrays gas industry people, places and issues in a contemporary setting...
...I asked Ray Suttles, the president of Educators Progress, what criteria his company used in selecting materials for its catalogs...
...For instance, there is Another Day of War, which "depicts a typical day in the life of the Air Force personnel serving in Southeast Asia...
...The glories of the Vietnam war, as perceived by the Pentagon, are still being presented in American schools in 1976...
...The next page shows a large globe, and above it the words, "And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free...
...It is the story of a reporter assigned to write a probing account of the industry...
...These freedoms are protected by the men and women of the armed services on duty around the world...
...Don't shoot, G-Men, don't shoot!' " "This was the beginning of a new name for FBI agents," says the high school booklet...
...176 pp...
...Looking Forward to a Career: Government...
...In recent years entire communities, such as Kanawha County, West Virginia, have been caught up in turmoil and violence...
...other minorities are still largely absent...
...You can't get education credentials today," said Suttles, "without being exposed to our materials...
...The sociology of Earl Butz is too obscene for general circulation...
...Not for the teaching of evolution as well as the Genesis theory of creation...
...For senior high and above...
...Not for community control of the schools...
...Perhaps the point is easily made with a simple game used in the second grade of a school that received Federal funds to develop an "innovative" career awareness program...
...One is the George Peabody College for Teachers in Nashville, Tennessee, whose catalog, a small single volume called Free and Inexpensive Learning Materials, seems to be more methodically and independently put together...
...So much for encouragement...
...John 8:32...
...The materials listed, according to Ray Suttles, president of the company, penetrate 75 per cent of all elementary and secondary schools in the country...
...If the material is very pro-union it could be considered very controversial...
...I asked what issues he considered too controversial today...
...What should be assured is a choice...
...The thousands of films and other materials described in Educators Progress catalogs are all free...
...And some of the Iron Curtain countries offer materials that are just plain intolerant...
...The women and the aged would be concerned...
...But the stereotypes of women and men have hardly been touched...
...Ford only engaged in the recreations of consenting adults...
...The Career Education Resource Guide, published by the General Learning Corporation, has a chapter and suggested class discussion on the subject, "A Woman's Place Is...
...The concoction finally delivered was the enfeebled and adulterated brew we have learned to expect from that particular distillery...
...The CIA, it says, is "where the action is...
...Last year the grandest companies in the grain trade were caught short-weighting and debasing their product for export...
...Though Educators Progress is the largest publisher of indexes of free materials, several others issue catalogs of "free and inexpensive" teaching aids...
...Women are the waitresses, while men are the chefs...
...And yet even that shadow of reform was strenuously opposed by Earl Butz...
...and have interesting jobs with lots of men around...
...and women much of the serving...
...f "As a general rule women are not hired as driver salesmen because of the physical labor connected with the job...
...And, of course, the unmarried woman is virtually never discussed in curriculum materials...
...Edward Teller answers the question, "Should You Be a Scientist...
...A needle, thread, and button...
...They will be the ones to control weather first...
...I'm not sure what rumors are dispelled, but I doubt that the film deals with the training deaths and injuries that have recently been reported...
...The president of the largest company that publishes catalogs of free materials for schools says his directories are purchased by 75 per cent of all American schools for children in kindergarten through grade 12...
...We are very careful to say that they are pro-Communist...
...These illustrations seen by students and counselors daily in the average American school had other interesting characteristics: "In the illustrations portraying the professional, managerial, and technical occupations, 71 per cent of the career representatives were men...
...The film is called A Day in America, and the blurb describing it in a catalog of free materials says: "This film, in full color, presents the story of one day in America from dawn to dusk, the story of people going about their daily business, keeping America on the move under one, free democratic system...
...Teller, who is usually identified as "the father of the H-bomb," tells his young audience, "A scientific career is more than a duty, though...
...f "Although there is more of a trend for women to have careers in the business and professional world, a woman's natural instincts are for a home and family...
...Educators Guide to Free Guidance Materials, the source of much of this information, is one of ten volumes, each the size of a city telephone directory, issued annually by Educators Progress Service, Inc., of Randolph, Wisconsin...
...We AII Work sounds like a nice idea, but it, too, has sex role fences: "Children tell what their fathers do to support the family and what their mothers do to maintain the home...
...Indeed, some of the materials may themselves be in violation of the law...
...Militaristic indoctrination appears even in grade school materials...
...A film listed in Educators Guide and produced by the American Gas Association seems to deceive students about the workings of both journalism and the gas industry in thirty minutes of living color...
...These quotations from commonly available career materials give some idea of the messages students are getting: If "They'll hire girls, too, and handicapped people will find jobs if they qualify...
...When curriculum materials do discuss the possibility that a woman might work outside the home, they often make it seem unusual — or at least not the ideal situation for a wife or mother...
...The FBI has continued its penetration of subversive organizations including pro-Chinese Communist groups, such as the Revolutionary Union, the Trotskyist groups, such as' the Socialist Workers Party____The New Left also represents a major security problem...
...Students exposed to such materials, boys and girls, are given no understanding that work is not determined by sex, or even that it is against the law to prohibit anyone from doing a particular job because of his or her sex...
...Once he had brought up the subject of bigotry, I asked him if his selection criteria involved analyzing whether the material was sexist or racist...
...Instead, perhaps Basic Combat Training, as depicted on the classroom screen, has something in common with Fraternity for Life, a film made by Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity and also available free to your local school...
...The mother who wants to work is a "special problem...
...They accomplished those frauds with the benign tolerance of Earl Butz's Department of Agriculture...
...Teller is described as "one of America's leading scientists" and as "a leading exponent of the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes...
...f "Men do most of the preparing [food...
...Instead of accepting the descriptions of the sponsors, the Free and Inexpensive editors review each item several times and write their own descriptive blurbs...
...f "Our industry, like many others, is directed, managed, planned, and operated by men making products for women...
...And we might as well be content with that peripheral standard of decorum...
...She wrote the documentary photographic book, "Women at Work...
...2. Why does your father work...
...No, no," he said...
...Sometimes they were shown in the traditional female role — caretaker of children...
...They will lead the world in everything, including science and its peaceful applications...
...It is written by the late Fred F. Florence, who was chairman of the executive committee and chief executive officer of the Republic National Bank of Dallas, Texas...
...One double-page spread in this booklet, designed to encourage young women to come to work for the CIA (Career in Action, the cover cutely misnames the agency), is decorated with the tools of the prospective employe's trade — a telephone, a ruler, a dictionary, a needle, a spool of thread, a button, scissors, a stenographer's pad, and a pencil...
...That's why they are important, particularly at a time when school budgets are tightening...
...Your Future in Hotel Management...
...Except for a Japanese movie, the only artistic indulgence lately judged to be without redeeming social importance has been the conversation of the forcibly retired Secretary of Agriculture of the United States...
...It would be difficult for women to do their shopping or men to get to work [without cars...
...Advice to the young person contemplating banking as a career is offered in another pamphlet distributed to schools by New York Life Insurance Co...
...It is an opportunity...
...The guide states that "mother knows she cannot work unless the family is supportive," and asks the class to discuss the "benefits and problems" to the family of a working mother...
...t "She is frequently concerned with the assistance or protection of women and children, where her feminine attributes of warmth and understanding are important...
...The CIA has a 1975 booklet designed to attract "secretaries, stenographers, typists...
...MURRAY KEMPTON (Murray Kempton is a regular commentator on the CBS Radio "Spectrum" Series...
...Labor unions can be very controversial...
...In the house was George 'Machine-gun' Kelly, late of Leavenworth Penitentiary...
...Health Technicians...
...Our schools are cluttered with militaristic indoctrination created by the Pentagon and with conservative propaganda produced by giant corporations — all made available free, or at nominal cost, and all masquerading as pedagogically proper teaching material...
...It...
...It exists in many classrooms, but finds its widest acceptance in the schools' career education and guidance offices...
...Jacqueline Cooper, and Dr...
...Sometimes efforts to get away from minority stereotypes result in the perpetuation of female stereotypes...
...Educators Progress won't even list a publication, said Suttles, unless the source can promise immediate distribution of at least 5,000 copies...
...What these Betty Medsger, formerly a reporter for The Washington Post, is a free-lance writer...
...f "Careers in prosthetics and orthotics are primarily for men...
...Thus, Ford can tell us that to the best of his recollection only five major corporations have ever paid for his vacations, and his press secretary is satisfied to explain that everyone knows that the President likes his golf...
...Why Fathers Work, published in 1969, illustrates "the economic functions of the family as a community...
...Examines the issues in private enterprise and concludes that the U.S.A.'s economic system is not only the best in the world, but may be the road to lasting world peace...
...Labor unions and international politics," he said...
Vol. 40 • December 1976 • No. 12
