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Michelle Malkin: Hollywood and Howard Zinn’s Education Project
The two most important questions for society, according to Greek philosopher Plato, are these: What will we teach our children? And who will teach them?
Left-wing celebrities have teamed up with one of America’s most radical historians to take control of the classroom in the name of “social justice.” Parents, beware: This Hollywood-backed Marxist education project may be coming to a school near you.
On Sunday, the History Channel aired The People Speak — a documentary based on Marxist academic Howard Zinn’s capitalism-bashing, America-dissing, grievance-mongering history textbook, A People’s History of the United States.
The film was co-produced and bankrolled by Zinn’s Boston neighbor and mentee, Matt Damon. An all-star cast of Bush-bashing liberals, including Danny Glover, Josh Brolin, Bruce Springsteen, Marisa Tomei and Eddie Vedder, will appear. Zinn’s work is a self-proclaimed “biased account” of U.S. history that rails against white oppressors, the free market and the military.
Zinn’s objective is not to impart knowledge, but to instigate “change” and nurture a political “counterforce” (an echo of fellow radical academic and Hugo Chavez admirer Bill Ayers’ proclamation of education as the “motor-force of revolution”).
Teachers are not supposed to teach facts in the school of Zinn. “There is no such thing as pure fact,” Zinn asserts. Educators are not supposed to emphasize individual academic achievement. They are supposed to “empower” student collectivism by emphasizing “the role of working people, women, people of color and organized social movements.” School officials are not facilitators of intellectual inquiry, but leaders of “social struggle.”
Zinn & Co. have launched a nationwide education project in conjunction with the documentary. “A people’s history requires a people’s pedagogy to match,” Zinn preaches. The project is a collaboration between two “social justice” activist groups, Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change.
Rethinking Schools recently boasted of killing a social studies textbook series in the Milwaukee school system because it “failed to teach social responsibility.” A Rethinking Schools guide on the Sept. 11 jihadi attacks instructs teachers to “nurture student empathy” for our enemies and dissuade students from identifying as Americans. “It’s our job to reach beyond this chauvinism.” And a Rethinking Schools guide to early childhood education written by Ann Pelo disparages “a too-heavy focus on academic skills” in favor of “social justice and ecological teaching” for preschoolers.
Teaching for Change’s objective, in Obama-esque fashion, is to train students not to achieve actual proficiency in core academic subjects, but to inspire them to “become active global citizens.” Today’s nonachieving aspirants are tomorrow’s Nobel Peace Prize winners, after all.
No part of the school curriculum is immune from the social justice makeover crew. Zinn’s partners at Rethinking Schools have even issued teaching guides to “Rethinking Mathematics: Teaching Social Justice by the Numbers” — which rejects the traditional white male patriarchal methods of teaching computation and statistics in favor of p.c.-ified number-crunching:
“‘Rethinking Mathematics’ is divided into four parts. The first part is devoted to a broad view of mathematics that includes historical and cultural implications. Part two includes nine classroom narratives in which teachers describe lessons they have used that infuse social justice issues into their mathematics curriculum. Included here ... an AP calculus lesson on income distribution. The third part contains three detailed classroom experiences/lessons. These include a physical depiction of the inequitable distribution of the world’s wealth, the results of a student investigation into how many U.S. presidents owned slaves, and a wonderful classroom game called ‘Transnational Capital Auction’ in which students take on the role of leaders of Third World countries bidding competitively for new factories from a multinational corporation. ...
“Short lessons, provocative cartoons and snippets of statistics are scattered throughout ‘Rethinking Mathematics.’ A partial list of topics includes racial profiling, unemployment rate calculation, the war in Iraq, environmental racism, globalization, wealth distribution and poverty, wheelchair ramps, urban density, HIV/AIDS, deconstructing Barbie, junk food advertising to children and lotteries” (from a review by James Rauff of Millikin University).
Our students will continue to come in dead last in international testing. But no worries. With Zinn and Hollywood leftists in charge, empty-headed young global citizens will have heavier guilt, wider social consciences and more hatred for America than any other students in the world.
— Michelle Malkin is author of Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild. Click here for more information. She can be contacted at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
» wrote on 12.14.09 @ 06:46 AM
They just feel guilty about how much money the have, and want us to think they one of us. I will bet before they became rich they wanted low taxes and small government like you and I.
» wrote on 12.14.09 @ 07:03 AM
Don’t believe a word this woman says—lies and distortions as usual.
» wrote on 12.14.09 @ 07:04 AM
...what can anyone say. Where have we gone.
» wrote on 12.14.09 @ 08:08 AM
You piqued my curiosity so I watched the documentary. I couldn’t disagree with you more. I found the piece to be thought provoking as to what it means to be an American. Sounds like someone needs a nap because she’s still grouchy McCain didn’t win the election. Just put in your binky next time you’re feeling sad.
» wrote on 12.14.09 @ 08:25 AM
Thought provoking? Are you being facetious? Good grief I figured someone from the “I hate Michele Malkin” club would respond with the usual “don’t believe a word this woman says” crap but to actually listen to the documentary and think it was though provoking (in a manner that says “I agree with it”) is over the top. I guess when your favorite religion, global warming, gets nicked by lies and deceit it only follows that you would want your education system to be more propaganda like and less about the truth. Teach kids BS all day long and they are less likely to pursue the truth about anything you want them to believe. Yep, liberalism is definitely a mental disorder, but I never figured it for a suicidal disorder until this year.
» wrote on 12.14.09 @ 12:22 PM
I read Zinn’s book years ago. I liked it because it gave a negative idea of American history when what we usually get is so sugar coated. But if this was the only history you got it would not be a fair representation.
» wrote on 12.14.09 @ 12:24 PM
Years ago, my history studies probably would have led me to agree with Malkin on
the question of angry Howard Zinn.
But it was very humbling to realize - upon more detailed research - that many (but not all) of Zinn’s complaints about conventional “U.S. History” classes and textbooks were ... often correct.
History is written by the “winners” - at least in the shorter term.
Thus, many Credos we were once taught as God’s Gospel “truth” have been shown to be retroactive white-washing of some pretty embarrassing actions.
That doesn’t mean that America is either “bad” or “good”.
Just that we’ve all done both, in large numbers, since Europeans first arrived here, and met the folks who’d arrived (from Asia) thousands of years earlier.
Malkin would be on stronger grounds simply by asking readers to remember how
big the “good” is about our nation, and praise that, while never forgetting that it’s
not 100% of our story by any means.
Meanwhile, with our schools in such pathetic shape, any documentary series that
helps illuminate our history as factually and objectively as possible should be welcome. Even when big entertainers are helping to make it happen.
» wrote on 12.14.09 @ 02:51 PM
Sixteen hour working days, children chained to machines in New England mills, women with no vote and effectively indentured servants, Negro slavery, drafts that allow a cash buyout or more recently allow the well connected to go to the top of the list in the air national guard.
To dwell on all this is depressing if not “definitely a mental disorder”. This history should come with a warning label: TRUTH SUCKS
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