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The Forum > Article Comments > Textploitation - political correctness for students > Comments

Textploitation - political correctness for students : Comments

By Ben-Peter Terpstra, published 5/10/2007

History wars: our students are encouraged to marinate in the West’s sin.

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Ah the History Wars, black armband vs white armband.

Bleh.

To both sides I say stop trying to impose your propaganda and instead teach the kids how to critically examine history and current events. The far left needs to recognise that not everything the west has done has been evil, and the far right needs to pull its head out and recognise that yes, the west has done some despicable things.

Black and white only exists in people's minds, the reality is so much more grey.
Posted by James Purser, Friday, 5 October 2007 11:51:14 AM
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Paul

No matter how wantonly you interpret what I said, I don't endorse propaganda or counter-propaganda (what's the difference?) in education. Nor am I happy to accept uncritically a superficial judgment about the quality of books used in schools from either left or right wing perspectives.

You say: 'Whatever the merits of the Aust Gov’t primer, it is a document from a political party.' Wrong! It's a Government document not a political party document - although a reading of it would give you the impression that the Government doesn't understand the distinction.

When you state: 'The amount of column space set aside for an individual or topic is almost always in direct relation to the importance the authors place on that person or topic', you betray an ignorance of historical research and reporting, not mention book production. (Although I do remember a bookseller who sold books by weighing them on a set of scales.)

You say: '...some of the quotes would not bear ANY kind of scrutiny'. So you'd have no objection if I quote you as writing: 'There is...doubt that the left has captured the teaching and study of the...sciences. I certainly can attest to that fact, having studied...Sciences at two universities where...thought was orthodox.'

I've managed to completely distort your ideas by simply omitting three words in your text but quoting the rest of what you wrote. Mr Terpstra may well have done the same. He simply doesn't tell us how he chose the books and the quotes he selected from them.

Understanding context is crucial - as is the bias that people bring with them to reading. For example, you have managed to distort what I said into claiming that I made the 'obscene' argument that 'left wing bias' is needed 'to counter gov’t propaganda'. I said nothing of the sort.

At least we agree on one thing, Paul: 'Children need to be made aware that there are many points of view in history and that they each have different motivations.'
Posted by FrankGol, Friday, 5 October 2007 11:59:44 AM
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I took one of my children out of a social science course in high school and enrolled them in a maths course instead. My reasons were similar to what this author suggests, left wing bias throughout the course.

Stalin killed more Russians than Hitler.

In the last century more people died under Marxist regimes than died during WW1 and WW2 combined.

Queen Elizabeth I invested heavily in the slave trade to earn money to fight wars with Spain and France.

Germain Greer has described the male gender as being “surplus to requirements”

And so on, but none of it was being mentioned in any of the text my child brought home from school.
Posted by HRS, Friday, 5 October 2007 12:35:16 PM
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Terpstra's count of Native American numbers and his implication that the casualties of European conquest of the Americas cannot have numbered in the millions is misleading. The population before European contact does not limit the number of victims of genocide: native Americans are still being born today, and the most recent explicitly genocidal massacres I know of (never mind the casualties from centuries of disposession-related poverty) were in the 1980s in Guatemala.

The Smithsonian's handbook studies the natives of what is now territorially the USA and Canada; the population estimates are for the time of the foundation of Virginia and the New England colonies in the 17th century and make no mention of the casualties of war and plague in what is now Latin America, nor even in North America before that time.

The densest populations of indigenous Americans prior to European conquest were in urbane Peru, Mexico and the Mississippi Valley. While Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors did not attack the Mississippians, Old World diseases reached them before any of them had the honour of seeing a European in person. Civilisation in the Mississippi collapsed from depopulation without a gunshot, a century before the first British colonies were founded to the east. No literate witnesses recorded this civilisation before its collapse. We know next to nothing about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippian_culture

The introduction of disease by 16th-century European adventurers was neither deliberate nor avoidable, and therefore was not in itself an act of genocide, but it did not merely decimate the Native American civilisations. In some places over 90% of the people died from introduced diseases within a few short and horrible years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_American_indigenous_peoples

On the other hand, the casual brutality of the conquistadors and other, later colonists is recorded frankly in their own diaries. Those few Hispaniolans who did not succumb to disease succumbed to enslavement or slaughter by Spaniards within a couple of decades, a total ethnic cleansing. Though they were not responsible for the greatest part of the destruction they wrought, their personal testimony doesn't indicate that they would have felt any remorse for it.
Posted by xoddam, Friday, 5 October 2007 1:14:21 PM
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Too true Ben - history could use a good scientific re-write, based on cui bono this time.

Where would we oldies be without the resources of the internet? Turns out I was living in a fractured fairytale all along - and every page of history that I revisit is infested with silverfish.

The silverfish are the beneficiaries of the popular historical narrative. They even lent a claw in the writing of it - and still do.

The best way to cover up the silverfish is to invoke the old left - right boondoggle. Turn attention away from personal gain and direct it towards the indefineable zealotries of a multitude of isms and schisms. Then sew it all together into a patchwork for which there is no correct way up.

That's a pretty good quilt you stitched sir - but it gives no warmth.
Posted by Chris Shaw, Carisbrook 3464, Friday, 5 October 2007 1:37:43 PM
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Typical right wing trip build a strawman and blow it down. Ben has much the same mindset that Japanese history book writers have. They gloss over the bad parts of their history too, their books say WW2 was a war of defence against the west.
Posted by Kenny, Friday, 5 October 2007 2:11:26 PM
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