George Orwell wrote in his oft quoted and now prophetic book 1984, "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past".
"So what?", you might be asking. "Why do I care about history? I wasn't taught anything except what I needed to know to pass the state test to graduate and it sure doesn't put food on the table or pay the rent, now let me get back to the game, if you please! Besides, whatever I learned is all but forgotten anyway. The news is all bad, too."
O.K. you win! Quit now, and get back to the game, surfing the web, or whatever mind-numbing thing you do to pass the time, and I'll leave you alone. Great solution.
But seriously, folks there's a reason I raise this topic today and it is more than just a matter of passing interest, especially to a free society like ours. It is a matter of self preservation for a number reasons, some of which we'll get into here. If you have kids in school, this will become doubly important and perhaps a little shocking.
Last week on 9/11-perhaps like many of you-a couple of generations of my staff and I were gathered around the mail boxes in the office, socially distanced and masked of course, talking about the events of that horrific and world changing day in 2001.
As chats like these often go, people remembered where they were when the attacks took place, who told them, what they were doing, and how they reacted to the news. My newest and youngest staffer was a 9 year old fourth grader in school when her teacher responded to a PA system code to leave the class room. The teacher returned a while later with the news sanitized for young minds.
As might be expected, other points of history came up with the same taking points: The Kennedy assassination-JFK & RFK; Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr; The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
WHOA! What? My older staffer is the same age as me (62-OK Boomer) and the conversation we were having were with two kids who were in their late 20s. One asked me why December 7th was important. The other couldn't say why the attack on Pearl Harbor was significant. Neither could identify who Josef Stalin was, nor why World War II began.
I was stunned to say the least. These "kids" as I call them are very bright, disciplined, and skilled in their chosen profession. Definitely not your average college graduates. One has a Master's degree and the other is getting started on hers.
As if events of the past week revealed themselves to read my mind, a news report came out that fully 65% of New York City public school students either did not know the significance of the Holocaust or believed the Holocaust was the fault of the Jews themselves. This in a city well known for a large population of Jewish people. I remember seeing a video recently where an internet reporter asked a couple of college students who was worse: Donald Trump or Adolf Hitler? With no reservation whatsoever, both said-practically in unison-Donald Trump. Did I miss something in the news? What genocide, or indeed what war, was Trump responsible for getting is into? Last I looked, his administration just struck a couple more deals on the side of Middle-east peace.
Interestingly, as long as I've been alive most of the people I know that know anything about the Holocaust will tell you Hitler and his henchmen were responsible for the mass murder of over 6 million Jews and 5 million others over about seven years before and during World War II. Stalin, however, makes Hitler look like an amateur. Before Hitler was even in power, Stalin was getting warmed up on a psychopathic rampage that lasted nearly 30 years and was responsible for over 20 million deaths, mainly Jews. Hitler and Stalin had something of a bond on this basis before Hitler invaded his country.
The latest craze in historical revisionism has to do with the Black Lives Matter movement which has latched onto the unrest in a number of cities in America. Recently, an offshoot of BLM flew a People's Republic of China flag over Boston. The founder of communist China, Mao Zedong eclipsed both Hitler and Stalin with a body count of nearly 80 million people in less than 30 years. The current leader, Xi Xinping, is rounding up Chinese Muslims-known as Uighurs-numbering about 80 million into concentration camps as I write this. Perhaps he will break the record.
I guess it is important to ask what is important for young people to know about history when they're in school and at what age they should know certain things. My family passed along their experiences to me from when they were children and I retained them and built on them. They were important to know, and gave context and meaning to my life and what was going to be important to me as an adult. I was raised by their values, but I didn't adopt all of their values unquestioningly. No one would have wanted me to. Neither my wife nor I raised our son that way, either.
My Dad will be 88 soon and he has many stories to tell about his experiences in the space program, many secret projects which I won't discuss (neither will he), and his Naval Academy journey before then. My Dad has always been my greatest coach. I became a Naval Officer because of him. Hard, educational years, those. Likewise, my grandfather, grandmother, and Mom-all passed on, now-taught me about historical events from their firsthand experiences.
Oral histories for millennia has been the common folk's way of uniting their families, tribes, and communities, to an important smaller story and then relating those to a larger, wider story but this no longer seems to be the case. As adult parents get older, and historical lessons fall further in the past, this becomes more and more difficult.
That's why this is crucial to the present and future generations. Ignorance, once revealed must be remedied or it becomes a choice that condemns future generations.
Granted, I'm the oddball that loves history and knows a lot of it from many periods. It's important to know. It's important to teach our children the right lessons about history so that real learning, and a love for learning, take place. Not indoctrination. You will get an impassioned argument from me if you believe indoctrination hasn't replaced history and civics in schools from elementary school through high school all over America. One can see what has replaced open dialog and education on most college campuses. It is evident in about every aspect of the culture.
I pulled up the State of Florida History and Social Studies Curriculum for K to 12 public schools and there is nothing specific about what information is put forth by teachers at any grade level. There are topics for each year, but it seems pretty open to the instructor after that.
This past week, a teacher introduced a pre-packaged Black Lives Matter curriculum to her 4th grade students in Burlington, Wisconsin. I read the lesson plan. Historic revision at its best written at a fourth grade level, and without approval of the school board or any other curriculum approving authority. Remember what the founders of BLM say openly about themselves and their movement: They are Marxists and all of their solutions are Marxist. This is what Orwell wrote about.
The question begs: Do you even know as a parent what is being taught to your child?
Orwell's Thought Police have crept into the fabric of American culture and made headway because we weren't prepared for the sudden onslaught. Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg died last night and some of the first social media posts were from the media, among them a former CNN commentator named Reza Aslan, who threatened acts of rioting and sedition if the government did what was required by the U.S. Constitution to do to fill her vacancy. Then again, one would need to know what was in it wouldn't they.
Who knows what sedition is or how it has applied to our history? I won't tell you. Like my Mom used to tell me: "Look it up!"
So. Choices to make. Ignorance is a choice once. After that it becomes sheer negligence. Someone once said "knowledge is power".
Nope. Applied knowledge is power. Learn and then act on the truth of what you've learned.
