[WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia for education

[Daniel Ehrenberg]

--- Sheldon Rampton <sheldon.rampton at verizon.net>
wrote:
> Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> 
> >  I heard a news story the other day that in
> >  California, textbooks
> >  are now forbidden to mention Mount Rushmore. 
> See:
> >  http://www.wtvw.com/Global/story.asp?S=1288473
> 
> Well...for starters, I'd personally recommend being
> wary about any 
> information that comes from the blow-dried "talent"
> on Fox News. In 
> any case, here's the "rest of the story":
> 
> (1) The news story above (by a woman named Ann
> Moore, who apparently 
> does a regular feature called "The Moore You Know")
> cites a number of 
> examples of alleged neutering of textbooks, all
> seemingly for reasons 
> of leftist "political correctness," such as not
> allowing the 
> representation of women as nurses, depictions of
> junk food, etc. 
> However, she doesn't mention any specific textbooks
> in which this has 
> happened.
> 
> (2) With regard to Mount Rushmore, the story is a
> bit more 
> complicated than Moore's brief mention suggests.
> Back in the days 
> when I was in school, my textbooks didn't mention
> that the guy who 
> built Mount Rushmore was a leader in the Ku Klux
> Klan. Here's a 
> discussion from a review of a book on the subject by
> Jesse Larner:
> 
> >There are complex stories behind those faces on
> Mount Rushmore that 
> >have been edited out of the guidebooks and
> textbooks. There is the 
> >story of how the land on which Rushmore stands was
> expropriated from 
> >the Lakota Sioux in 1877, abrogating a major
> treaty. There is the 
> >story of the sculpture's creator and ideologue,
> Gutzon Borglum, a 
> >leader in the Ku Klux Klan, who saw in the
> expansion of European 
> >settlement across the American West the fulfillment
> of white racial 
> >destiny. Rushmore is prefigured in the story of
> Custer, who sealed 
> >the fate of the Black Hills when he discovered gold
> there in 1874. 
> >Larner traces the meaning and evolution of the
> Custer battle 
> >commemorations, and pursues the ways in which
> Custer's defeat, the 
> >killings at Wounded Knee, and Rushmore, are linked
> in the story of 
> >the Indians' loss of the Black Hills. Mount
> Rushmore also traces 
> >modern political uses of the monument, from Cold
> War television 
> >broadcasts to Boy Scout conventions to political
> campaigns. It looks 
> >at Rushmore's semi-religious status as the national
> shrine of 
> >Democracy, and contrasts this with political
> restrictions on the 
> >practice of Indian religions in the Black Hills.
> Finally, Larner 
> >deals with previous works on Rushmore that have
> avoided its message 
> >of conquest, preferring to focus on a simplistic
> narrative of 
> >national glory. Even the tour guides at Rushmore
> understand little 
> >of its real history, or of the legal fact that the
> land from which 
> >it rises belongs to the Lakota.
>
http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=16-1560253460-2
> 
> Viewed in its full historical context, therefore,
> this example 
> illustrates how the story of "censorship from
> textbooks" involves a 
> whole lot more than the decision to mention or not
> mention some 
> monument. My old school textbooks never mentioned
> the genocide 
> against Native Americans, and judging from Larner's
> account, it seems 
> that this is something that ought to be mentioned
> when students learn 
> about Mount Rushmore -- unless, of course, we think
> "history" should 
> consist solely of self-congratulatory propaganda.
> 
> (3) With regard to depictions of things like "junk
> food," 
> unfortunately there is no shortage of this in our
> schools. Channel 
> One, a for-profit company, provides video equipment
> and programming 
> to many cash-strapped schools throughout America, in
> exchange for 
> which the schools have signed contracts promising to
> show kids a 
> daily quota of TV commercials for companies like
> Pizza Hut. There is 
> a long and sad story (which I will truncate here)
> involving the use 
> of schools as marketing venues for fat- and
> sugar-laden fast foods. 
> If anyone wants to know more about this, read Marion
> Nestle's 
> excellent book, "Food Politics." (Nestle is a
> nutritionist who bears 
> no relation to the chocolate company.) One school
> got so carried away 
> by these promotional activities a few years back
> that it actually 
> suspended a student for the "disruptive" thought
> crime of wearing a 
> Pepsi T-shirt to a Coke Day rally. Here's an
> interview with the 
> student that I personally found amusing:
> http://www.fadetoblack.com/interviews/mikecameron/
> 
> The bottom line is that all sorts of forces --
> commercial, political 
> and social -- take an interest in influencing the
> way we educate our 
> youth. It isn't just coming from some "politically
> correct" clique. 
> And should we expect or want things otherwise? I
> think most of us 
> *hope* school boards would step in and exert
> editorial oversight if a 
> textbook referred to black people as "niggers" or
> described Hitler as 
> a great man. Judgments about appropriate content for
> textbooks don't 
> qualify as "censorship," and different people are
> bound to have 
> different views about what is and isn't appropriate.
> Some people may 
> think that a decision not to mention Mount Rushmore
> is absurd and 
> ridiculous. Outside our national cult of patriotism,
> however, I 
> imagine some folks in Europe and elsewhere think it
> is equally absurd 
> and ridiculous that Americans would revere a
> mountain-sized statue of 
> the heads of dead presidents.
> -- 

I'm lucky. I don't have to worry about censorship in
my social studies class. The textbooks (20 years old)
censor some (not as much as the modern, colorful
textbooks), but my social studies teacher fills in the
gaps. I also look things in Wikipedia that I learn
from  social studies class if they sound funny.
--LittleDan

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