Comments Elsewhere

Ed,

If learning the right lessons about history and political participation is so important, doesn’t that make it more important, not less, to keep the government out of it, given that the results of bad instruction are not just stupid, but in fact dangerous?

The worst that happens with government-taught chemistry classes is that students will learn something false from an incompetant teacher and will be disabused of the notion if they ever do the extra coursework required to do anything serious in the field of chemistry. But a government-taught civics class is an invitation for an admittedly duplicitous and power-hungry State to directly propagandize a captive audience. Not all teachers will allow it to be like that, but given the direct power that governments have over educational curricula and approved materials (I’ve read some currently popular civics textbooks, and it’s not pretty), and given the incentive that most teachers have to go along with the approved curriculum most of the time, I can’t say this sounds like a promising set-up.

As for the test, the non-meaningless questions include some where the expected answers are philosophically indefensible (cf. “Where does freedom of speech come from?” Expected answer: “The Bill of Rights;” apparently all naturalized citizens are now expected to be legal positivists) or historically false (“Which President freed the slaves?” Expected answer: “Abraham Lincoln”). These sorts of myths and platitudes don’t make me think that attempts to reform the test and similar exercises, by the government that crafted this rubbish in the first place, are going to turn out as anything other than mindless propaganda.