No Child Left Unbrainwashed
jose soplar
By Edgar B. Anderson
FrontPageMagazine.com | July 1, 2004
As countless waves of immigrants continue to pour into the United
States, the Left has tried to derail any patriotic thoughts these new
Americans harbor toward their adopted country. One can see this by
perusing the textbooks used to teach these immigrants about America in
the nation's English-as-a-Second Language (ESL) programs. High Point,
Success in Language-Literature-Content, Level B, is an ESL literature
anthology textbook published by textbook giant Hampton-Brown and
intended for middle and high school students, although its English
vocabulary and reading content is set at the sixth grade level. The
book is purchased with taxpayer funds and used in school districts
across the country.
High Point opens with a chapter entitled, "Messages That Matter."
Inside that chapter is a subsection called "Talking Walls" that
excerpts a book of the same name. The editors introduce newly arrived
children, many from the Third World, to a great historical figure. No,
it is not an American hero like Patrick Henry, Nathan Hale, George
Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison or Abraham Lincoln. High
Point instead salutes Mexican muralist and dedicated Communist Diego
Rivera. The lesson includes the indispensable reference to "the
glorious and painful history of (Mexico)" and the assurance that
Rivera's wall paintings reflected his belief "that working people
represented the real Mexico."
Next up is a visit to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in
Washington...but only to portray the imperialism of the Great Satan.
After a brief description of the black granite monument, High Point
offers its rendition of history: "In 1954, Vietnam gained
independence from France. Two separate governments formed and fought a
civil war that kept the country divided. In the late 1950s the United
States began supporting South Vietnam in its fight against North
Vietnam. In 1975, North Vietnam won the war." A review of casualties
follows. The textbook editors tell the teacher to stress, "The war in
Vietnam began as a civil war between two parts of the same country –
North Vietnam and South Vietnam." Notice the absence of any
explanation why the United States participated in the Vietnam
conflict. The fact that the North tried to take over the South is not
mentioned. The word "Communist" is nowhere to be found. The children
learn only that America involved itself in a war that resulted in
great suffering. The millions of deaths that ensued after the North
was victorious are overlooked. And the new immigrants will never learn
about the last generation of migrants: the Boat People.
High Point editors go for the gold as they draw from a sequel –
entitled Talking Walls, The Stories Continue – which presents a
glowing profile of a second historical figure. Here this honor belongs
to "one of the greatest poets in the world" and a spokesman for "human
rights," Pablo Neruda, who was the 1970 Communist Party candidate for
President of Chile and winner of the Lenin Peace Prize.
Study materials accompanying the "Messages That Matter" chapter
include a lesson about the graffiti-covered barracks at the U.S.
facility at Angel Island in San Francisco Bay where from 1910 to 1940
"thousands of Chinese immigrants were held against their will…Many
were lonely because they missed their families in China. They were
angry because they were being treated unfairly." Welcome to the
national gulag!
As an aside, it should be noted that the most famous wall of our era,
the Berlin Wall, covered in the source book Talking Walls, is not
featured in High Point. But this oversight is arguably a blessing
since the Talking Walls author served up the following to her
unknowing young readers:
The Berlin Wall, constructed in 1961 [By whom? We do not learn.],
became a physical part of an invisible barrier that had divided
Eastern and Western Europe since 1945. [Were the hundreds of miles of
barbed wire fences, minefields, watchtowers, armed guards, and attack
dogs invisible?] At that time Winston Churchill, the leader of Great
Britain, called this invisible barrier the ‘Iron Curtain' because he
believed the Soviet Union wanted to divide countries and take them
over. [Thank goodness it was only his opinion.] Joseph Stalin, the
leader of the Soviet Union at that time, thought this invisible wall
would protect his country from further invasion." [And not to trap
fleeing East Germans inside a Communist Hell. Insert laugh track
here.]
A second noteworthy chapter in High Point is entitled "An Enduring
Legacy," based on the idea that certain historical events continue
years later to impact our lives. This section deals with World War II
and focuses on the Holocaust and specifically the story of Anne Frank,
which is presented in the form of a biographical narrative along with
an excerpt from her diary.
High Point editors immediately recommend to immigrant children three
books as supplementary reading. The first book concerns a group of
prisoners who use spoons to make a menorah. The second book is about a
young girl who saves the life of her friend hunted by invading
soldiers. The last book recounts the tragedy of a grandfather's death
in an internment camp.
The first two books are about the Nazis and their victims – European
Jews. And presented in the same light as the Nazi barbarians are –
WWII-era Americans! That's right, the third book is about
Japanese-Americans incarcerated in America during World War II.
To drive the message of moral equivalence home, half-way through the
detailed presentation on Anne Frank, the Holocaust, Hitler, and
Nazism, High Point editors suggest the children write a report on the
atomic bomb and answer several questions: "When was the first atomic
bomb developed? Who invented it? Where was the atomic bomb dropped
during the war? What were its effects?" The teacher is asked to
encourage advanced students "to add a human dimension to the report.
Tell them that many of the scientists who worked on nuclear weapons
had strong personal feelings about whether the work they were doing
was the right thing to do." There is no assignment to study how many
lives would have been lost if America had not dropped the bomb, nor
any investigation into, say, the Bataan Death March or the treatment
of captured U.S. prisoners at Leyte Gulf.
As the unit concludes, students are directed to research the
"important legacies" of "key figures from World War II" – Churchill,
Franklin Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Einstein, Hirohito,
labor leader A. Philip Randolph, and French resistance member
Josephine Baker. This is laudable. However, Josef Stalin is oddly
absent from this list, as he is from the entire chapter. Perhaps the
editors discouraged an inquiry into the legacy of Uncle Joe, arguably
the most important world leader of the mid-20th century, because they
do not want to risk students learning of the tens of millions who
perished in the Gulag in the name of Communism – an ideology this
textbook otherwise presents as praiseworthy.
How repellant that those children whose parents brought them here in
search of the American Dream are welcomed to the Land of Opportunity
with a pro-Communist denunciation of everything this nation stands
for. How craven of the Left to target children from other lands who
know nothing about the history and values of the United States for
indoctrination. However, High Point is only one of many similar
volumes that are inflicted on foreign and native-born students alike
in our public schools. Such textbooks are the leftists' and
multiculturalists' desperate effort to foist their political agenda on
your children – using your money. And now they have begun alienating
those who came to this nation seeking asylum from legitimate abusers.
And they wonder why some people question their patriotism.