Among the Educationaloids/Globaloney
Finn, Chester E. Jr. & Bauer, Gary
AMONG THE...
...But there is rarely any mention of human rights issues...
...It's time, as Honig says, to raise the ante...
...In 1983 the U.S...
...A well-run school system might abandon the whole futile effort to cram world history into a single year, substituting instead a sequence of courses that organizes the material into eras, civilizations, or continents and that give each its due...
...In this telling, the "right to a vacation" counts for as much as freedom of speech...
...A recurrent problem in these books is that where explanations may be controversial, causation is omitted...
...All orders from outside the United States must be prepaid in US...
...It's not just that events occur for no apparent reason, that people simply wind up in power, or that some minor episodes in our planet's past get greater—and perhaps fairer—attention than important ones...
...The economic development ambitions of the Third World routinely loom large, as do "changing cultural patterns...
...Rather, we believe that publishers produce whatever they find their customers wanting to buy...
...Herewith some examples: •What happened in Vietnam after the war...
...Events simply occur...
...Here is another book's entire paragraph on Caribbean adventurism: Castro has been accused of sending military aid to the guerrillas in El Salvador and aid to the Sandinista government in Nicaragua...
...One of us was struck by a recent bulletin of the National Council for the Social Studies that found equivalency among Western devotion to "civil and political rights," the Asian-African interest in "social and cultural rights," and Eastern Europe's alleged commitment to "economic rights...
...What is a ninth-grader to think...
...Consider these two hugely divergent descriptions of the current Libyan strongman—in each case the only appearance he makes in the book: [Idris] ruled until 1969 when he was over-thrown by military officers led by Muammar el-Quaddafi...
...The burden of such standard-setting, quality control, and selection properly falls on those—typically at the state level—who "approve' textbooks for purchase, and on those—usually local—who decide which of the approved books actually to buy...
...One of us has a child enrolled in a mandatory ninth grade global history course with a teacher who explained on parents' night that the course was an effort by the school to do something about the arms race...
...What is the U.N.'s track record...
...For ex-ample, Colonel Qaddafi, who became the leader of Libya in 1969, has strongly sup-ported the Arab nations in the Middle East that oppose Israel...
...The U.N...
...Most books discuss persecution of religion and the tribulations of dissidents...
...Our own interest was triggered by the maudlin one-worldism that has seized Chester E. Finn, Jr...
...But only one explained that these were refugees from a brutal, totalitarian regime...
...As for Israel, here is one book's en-tire account of its early history: "In 1948, the British-controlled territory of 26 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1986 Palestine became the new Jewish state of Israel...
...Paraphrasing Professor Hogue: in the form of writs, judicial decisions, treatises, royal ordinances, and parliamentary statutes, the common law, in large part the definition of established customs, emerged into explicit written form and formal procedure to order better such ordinary relationships among Englishmen as those between landlord and tenant, merchant and money lender, and buyer and seller...
...the prior knowledge (of geography as well as history) that students bring to the course with them is skimpier...
...Virtually all start with "early man," work their way through Sumer, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, dash across the Middle Ages, slow down for the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, include a chapter or two on con-temporary "revolutions," pay an ex-tended visit to the Third World, lament the Cold War, and wind up with a unit on "your changing world...
...In short, five out of six books give the impression that Moscow's move was essentially defensive or vaguely compassionate...
...Why did Russian troops move into Afghanistan in 1979...
...To order, or for a copy of our catalogue, write: LibertyPress/LibertyClassics 7440 North Shadeland, Dept...
...But they do vary greatly and it therefore matters which are used...
...We recently examined six of them, all new (written or revised since 1983), and all peddled to the secondary school market by major education publishers...
...By and large, they haven't been doing a very good job...
...But when we get to modern times,the books falter badly...
...Jews from all over the world, the new Israelis, poured into the new state, stirring up great hostility among the Arab Palestinians who had occupied the land for centuries...
...Every volume waxes eloquent about the founding of the United Nations and its intended role in world affairs...
...Only one, however, acknowledges that "some people" say that "many members use the U.N...
...the social studies establishment...
...Though "world history" has long been attempted in the schools, the effort has grown ever more awkward: there's more world history each hour...
...of the tension between democracy and totalitarianism...
...To be sure, this subject is inherently impossible to organize in satisfactory fashion, much less to master in a year of junior (or senior) high school...
...So we scrutinized these half dozen textbooks to see how they handle issues of contemporary geopolitical significance—to see just what it is that a fourteen year old who doesn't know much else is supposed to end up thinking about problems besetting the world...
...There is much talk of the nuclear threat and of global interdependence...
...The books have much in common...
...So far as our hypothetical teenager knows, the U.S...
...Several also indicate that it has not been hugely effective as a peacekeeper...
...That is why the textbooks aren't yet what they should be...
...More is at stake here than what is or isn't mentioned...
...All run 700 to 900 pages...
...But for now we must assume that these courses are going to continue to be taught and that many teachers will continue to be text-bound...
...still occupies Grenada, and Castro is merely accused, not convicted, of arming the Managua regime...
...or of the tiny fraction of the globe's citizens who live under regimes of their own choosing...
...One volume got it right: "The Soviets invaded Afghanistan to bring that country under their complete control...
...is assistant secretary for research and improvement in the Department of Education...
...Quaddafi sup-ported various terrorist activities in other countries and was in conflict with the foreign policy of the United States...
...It's also the tone of moral equivalency that keeps entering...
...How is life inside the Soviet empire...
...Hardcover $10.00 ISBN 0-86597-053-X Paperback $ 4.50 ISBN 0-86597-054-8 Prepayment is required on all orders not for resale...
...Wait till he looks at the "global history" texts...
...S101 Indianapolis, IN 46250 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1986 27...
...In virtually every in-stance, one finds adoring treatments of science and technology, oddly coupled with "limits-to-growth" warnings against pollution and resource exhaustion...
...In fairness, we should note that most of these books look reasonably accurate up through World War II, marred only by the inevitable trade-off betvVeen coverage and depth and the resulting odd amalgam of superficiality and selectivity...
...North African nations have close cultural ties with the Arab nations of the Middle East and often support Arab causes...
...and most teachers are confined, either by their own limited educations or by curricular red tape, to whatever the textbook contains...
...We pay book rate postage on prepaid orders...
...He also launched attacks against Egypt and Chad...
...The same book, it must be noted, devotes seven pages to the history of "early western African empires" including such consequential ones as Songhai and Kanem-Bornu...
...as a place to denounce the policies of the United States" and that "many U.N...
...all the publishers of the science textbooks that California rejected set about promptly to bring their products up to the new standards imposed by this major customer...
...Solzhenitsyn turns up in five volumes, Sakharov in three...
...None of the others casts even a shred of doubt on the innate virtue of the United'Nations...
...We do not share the wide-spread view that textbook publishersare engaged in some sort of conspiracy to "dumb down" the material that children read...
...AMONG THE EDUCATIONALOIDS...
...Soviet forces in Afghanistan were only 250 miles from the Persian Gulf...
...And there is more to come, insists schools chief Bill Honig, the sagest state education official in the land...
...In the other books, however, the Soviet goal was simply to shore up the government in Kabul, to "keep Muslim nationalist groups from regaining control," to fend off guerrilla attacks, or—remarkably—to quiet a fear "that an uprising among the Muslims of Afghanistan might spread to . . . the Soviet Union...
...of repression and savagery...
...We're raising the ante...
...This thoughtful, lucid account is a work of history, not a technical legal treatise, and should be of interest to the general reader and the specialist alike...
...In fact, reading has become a national pastime...
...Gary Bauer is undersecretary of education...
...Several texts described the atrocities visited upon neighboring Cambodia by Pol Pot, and all mentioned the "boat people...
...It's not just science books," he said...
...Between 1154 and 1307, from the reign of Henry II to that of Edward I, common law experienced a spectacular growth as a legal system enforced in the English Royal Courts...
...by Chester E. Finn, Jr...
...diverse interest groups insist on "equal time" for every obscure civilization and former colony, however modestly related to the American experience...
...of freedom and tyranny...
...Please allow 4 to 6 weeks for delivery...
...In one volume, for example, the account of Solzhenitsyn appears in a brief essay on modern poetry and novels, in a paragraph on the "literature of protest," in which he (and Pasternak) appear as counterparts to James Baldwin and Gunter Grass...
...Yet it is easy to derive the impression that ordinary Russians face no real difficulty so long as they don't do odd things like pray or speak out...
...It's history, literature...
...And one might add, to the growth of the concept of liberty as well...
...and the United States condemned the invasion...
...No doubt a crackerjack teacher can improve upon the textbook...
...LibertyPress ORIGINS OF THE COMMON LAW By Arthur R. Hogue First published in 1966 by Indiana University Press, Arthur R. Hogue's Origins of the Common Law looks at the deep medieval roots of our legal system during the early formative period of the common law...
...and Gary Bauer GLOBALONEY The California state board of education recently sent tremors through the education and publishing establishments by rejecting an array of school science textbooks on grounds that they lacked balance and rigor...
...a prudent one might simply call a halt around 1945...
...In his final chapter, "From Medieval Law to Modern Law," Hogue concludes, "The rule of law, the development of law by means of judicial precedents, the use of the jury to determine the material facts of a case, and the definition of numerous causes of action—these form the principal and valuable legacy of the medieval law to the modern law...
...dollars...
...invaded Grenada when it learned that Cuba and the USSR had provided weapons to the country...
...In some ways the most telling messages of all are contained in those final chapters on "challenges facing the modern world...
...Unevenness coupled with relativism, bad history joined to ideology, events without causes or consequences...
...All are . generously illustrated and mapped in many colors...
...countries openly violate the charter of the U.N...
...In several books, they just happened to set sail...
...No textbook that we've ever seen is perfect, nor is any without merit...
...One book lauds Soviet successes in bringing about "equality for women" and widespread literacy...
...What is more, they respond to market changes...
Vol. 19 • May 1986 • No. 5
