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Patriotic civics
According to Donald Trump, American children in public schools are being taught an “ideological poison” that has the potential to destroy the nation. He does not have in mind the centuries-long message of the country’s manifest destiny to wipe native peoples from the map so as first to span the continent and then to become the world’s police force. Nor does he mean the belief that wealthy people achieved their riches through hard individual work alone and thus are entitled to keep all of it out of the hands of the undeserving poor. What, instead, he is referring to is the 1619 Project, a history of slavery, racism, and minority contributions beginning with the Jamestown colonists and proceeding onward to the present day.
Oh, the horror. The response among Democrats on social media was to make comparisons with the Hitler Youth, a reaction that while true typically works hard to miss the larger point, namely the fact that education has always been delivered from a perspective, a point of view that generally is the one approved of by the people in power. The bargain that is made is for the people to hand over money to private tutors or public institutions so that they or their children may be turned into productive employees and soldiers. Occasionally, a bit of something else leaks through, and every so often, a John Keating manages to confuse hiring boards so as to get the opportunity to corrupt the minds of the…
