The fruits of the Gramscian march: California’s high school curriculum and anti-Semitism
Unfortunately, this is unsurprising news:
The California Department of Education is facing backlash after permitting a host of anti-Israel activists to build a statewide educational curriculum that demonizes the Jewish state and is said to be fostering hatred of Jewish and Israeli-American students, sources said.
Already, 83 pro-Israel and anti-discrimination organizations have petitioned the state’s education department to reform its Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC) to remove multiple instances of what they say is anti-Semitic and anti-Israel bias…
“The anti-Jewish, anti-Israel bias of the proposed ESMC curriculum—including its implicit portrayal of Jews and Israel as part of ‘interlocking systems of oppression and privilege’ and its endorsement of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement as a form of ‘direct action’ or ‘resistance’ that students are encouraged to engage in—clearly exposes the politically motivated and directed nature of the curriculum and its drafters,” the organizations wrote.
“Not surprisingly, more than one-quarter of the Model Curriculum Advisory Committee members, appointed by the State Board of Education to draft the ESMC, have publicly expressed animus towards Israel and its supporters, with some members openly supporting BDS,” the letter states. “There is no doubt that these committee members have unconscionably used the state-mandated curriculum as a tool for politically indoctrinating California’s high school students with anti-Israel propaganda and encouraging them to engage in political activism against the Jewish state.”
Slowly but surely, the Gramscian march through the institutions is accomplished. Perhaps it’s already been accomplished.
And in semi-related news, we have this:
The European Union is poised to mandate that Israeli products made in contested territories carry consumer warning labels, a decision that could trigger American anti-boycott laws and open up what legal experts describe as a “Pandora’s box” of litigation, according to multiple sources involved in the legal dispute who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon.
The Advocate General of the European Court of Justice recently issued non-binding opinion arguing that EU law requires Israeli-made products to be labeled as coming from “settlements” and “Israeli colonies.”
The decision was seen as a major win for supporters of the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or BDS, which seeks to wage economic warfare on Israel and its citizens. Pro-Israel activists, as well as the Jewish businesses involved in the legal dispute, see the decision as an ominous warning sign that they say is reminiscent of Holocaust-era boycotts of Jewish businesses.
The left is patient and dedicated.
If we were sensible, elementary education would incorporate the fundamentals of American history, geography, and civics. At the secondary level, most manpower would be devoted to drill in basic education and life skills for slow students or to vocational subjects, with only a minority taking academic subjects. The academic sequence would consist of a survey of world civilizations, occidental civilization, and American history. There’d be very little time devoted to the contemporary Near East, and mostly as an aspect of discussions of European or American history. It’s a niche subject properly taught at the tertiary level. Secondary level students need more foundational study. That someone is even suggesting incorporating the contemporary Near East into the curriculum is a red flag.
The left is sick and somehow that mind infection spread so wide and deep that an entire curriculum is tinged with hatred. I never thought I would see it get this bad but I see more and more surprising things daily.
The Democrat candidates openly calling Darren Wilson a murderer of Michael Brown when Obama DOJ cleared Darren Wilson shocked me.
The March has been successfully completed. Now it is on to Cloward-Piven.
Invest in ovens.. the side thats underdiscussion is dominant and eventually will have ehough power… not just in germany… so… invest in ovens… the only thing they want is a quicker change to whence things cant return
No doubt there are Californians who are surprised that this curriculum has been developed. That number is probably dwarfed by the number of Californians who agree with it. Sick.
The proposed curriculum isn’t just biased against Israel, it makes no mention of Jews in America, nor does it discuss Jew-hatred when discussing bias and prejudice. Essentially, it eliminates Jews from America’s story.
That number is probably dwarfed by the number of Californians who agree with it. Sick.
Rubbish. The broad public hasn’t a clue what’s up and hasn’t any vigorous opinions about any public policy or any question of historiography. This sort of thing isn’t obtrusive enough to get their attention and it doesn’t inconvenience them or resonate with something going on in daily life.
The American marquee politician who in the last generation most thoroughly destroyed her standing with her constituency was Jane (“Not-too”) Swift, quondam Governor of Massachusetts. She had single-digit approval ratings by time she left office. What had she done that some other business-as-usual pol hadn’t done? Well, there were some trivial instances of abuse of power: patronage employees on her staff occasionally babysat her children and she made occasional use of a state helicopter for personal travel (her office was in Boston and her home was in the Berkshires; Massachusetts has no official residence for the Governor). Our politicians are risible, but much of the public is so unserious about public life that risible is what they’ve earned and deserve. We live in clown-world.
The more radical the left’s extremism, the more surely they are overplaying their hand. It also should be kept in mind that the radicals are really a small subset of those who vote democrat. Hundreds showing up at an antifa protest is, as a percentage, a minuscule amount and snowflakes melt when exposed to the sun. Which is why they only ‘protest’ where they know they are protected from consequence.
In trashing the rule of law with double standards, in their constant accusations of now all deplorables being less than human, in supporting INFANTICIDE… they are courting a truly biblical accounting. “What we sow, we reap” is as true in ‘modern’ times as it was in days of old.
The radicals imagine that all they have to do is vote out of existence the God-given rights that they imagine to be only privileges granted by the State. Never have so many been so divorced from objective reality. Never have so many imagined that they can force their wished for subjective ‘reality’ upon others.
How astonished shall they be when they finally push past all tolerance and learn otherwise?
Californians keep electing a super majority of Democrats to their legislature, and Democrats to all their high offices. I don’t think they do so without at least some degree of agreement with the policies they get as a result.
The proposed curriculum isn’t just biased against Israel, it makes no mention of Jews in America, nor does it discuss Jew-hatred when discussing bias and prejudice. Essentially, it eliminates Jews from America’s story.
If you’re putting together a survey course in 180 lectures, you’re not going to have much time to discuss an ethnic group that was hardly present prior to 1840 and never exceeded 4% of the population in number (currently it is less than 2%). Jews are most salient in discussing the history of greater New York and greater Miami and certain topics in business history and the evolution of culture. None of these are big topics in high school history (at least as I knew it).
I don’t think they do so without at least some degree of agreement with the policies they get as a result.
Here’s a hypothesis: elections do not tell you what people want. They tell you, in a vague way, what they’ll put up with. Or they’ll tell you something about their self-understanding.
With respect to the California controversy, I say a plague on both their houses. The people complaining are Jewish liberals who don’t object to a curriculum that denigrates and demonizes America, but complain loudly when Israel is criticized. They have made their bed, let them lie in it. The people writing the curriculum are at least intellectually and ideologically consistent, albeit consistently evil and stupid.
Even the Los Angeles Times editorial board has a problem with it — “Editorial: California’s proposed new ethnic studies curriculum is jargon-filled and all-too-PC”:
The people complaining are Jewish liberals who don’t object to a curriculum that denigrates and demonizes America, but complain loudly when Israel is criticized.
Why are the Jews held responsible for bad textbooks in your mind?
“If you’re putting together a survey course in 180 lectures, you’re not going to have much time to discuss an ethnic group that was hardly present prior to 1840 and never exceeded 4% of the population in number (currently it is less than 2%).”
[koff] Nobel prizes [koff]
“Here’s a hypothesis: elections do not tell you what people want. They tell you, in a vague way, what they’ll put up with.”
OK, that’s excellent. I’m steali…borrowing it.
[koff] Nobel prizes [koff]
Why would you divert attention from American history to history of science, why would you make much of this particular award, and why would you look at it from the angle of Jewish history?
Funnily enough, if Islam were actually a Religion of Peace™, its existence (consequently its threat to Israel’s existence and the existence of all non-Muslims) would be minimal at most.
“Why would you…why would you…and why would you…”
Me??? I’d have thought that a minority group displaying skills well outside the norm would have merited a mention or two. Unless science, eg, and American history are orthogonal.
I’ll leave the last word to you.
I would like to live long enough to watch California implode. It will happen eventually, but perhaps not within my lifetime. Illinois too. I hope my children or grandchildren take out all the bridges over the Big Muddy if I’m not walking the earth.
Three funny accented Jewish emigrant guys walk into a bar and in anxious chorus say to the barkeep: “We’d like a Manhattan . . . Project, please.”
The youngest says “I’ll drive the car”; the next eldest says “I’ll write the letter of proposal”; lastly the eldest, oddest looking, yet strangely most distinguished says “I’ll sign it.”
The barkeep, wiping down a glass says: “Hey, pipe down, you guys. You wanna lose the war? Now, lemme just give my pal FDR a call, and you’ll be good to go.”
Risible only for straining to be a joke, that.
Is it consequential American history on the other hand? Something like it. Heck, might could even rise to World Historical status if pushed hard enough.
Art Deco — If you’re putting together a survey course in 180 lectures, you’re not going to have much time to discuss an ethnic group that was hardly present prior to 1840 and never exceeded 4% of the population in number (currently it is less than 2%).
So why did they devote so much space to the Jews?
So why did they devote so much space to the Jews?
No clue who is the ‘they’ to whom you’re referring. I doubt the history of American Jewry takes up much time in the average high school history teacher’s lesson plans, but, of course, I’ve been out of school a long time and I wasn’t living in New York or Miami. If my own memory of high school is true and representative of common experience, Jewish history is limited to reading Anne Frank’s diary and stage productions thereof. E.L. Doctorow’s ragtime, which was current literature at the end of my adolescence, has a Jewish family front-and-center. Again, English class, not history class.
Israel’s a country that defends itself with force and doesn’t have much time (collectively) for the talking cure. That sort of disposition is anathema to most liberals in every sort of venue. In the U.S., that revulsion is mitigated by a counter-valing vector, which is the prominence of Jews in producing journalism and nonfiction for general audiences. The sort of leapfrogging loyalties that are bog standard for the word merchant element in this country (and their dependents and hangers-on) are more difficult to sustain when the kewel Other is someone who wants to kill you. American public discourse is not distorted by this counter-valing vector; that vector removes a distortion which is everyone among the international bien-pensant class.
Me??? I’d have thought that a minority group displaying skills well outside the norm would have merited a mention or two. Unless science, eg, and American history are orthogonal.
Again, why? Sol Kravitz winning the Nobel Prize for physiology is of professional interest to people on life sciences faculties. It’s also a human interest story that would (back in the day) sell some newspapers and magazines. Now, a downstream technological application of Sol Kravitz’s work might be of significance in the course of national life. But in that case, you’d discuss the technological application, not Sol Kravitz.
By the way, about 63% of the population is non-hispanic white, and the share is likely higher among those with bourgeois jobs. There was one person (among 20-odd) on that advisory committee who fit that description: an Arab woman. Quite a number of them teach victimology classes at the secondary or tertiary level. This is the sort of thing those sort of people produce.
Correction: they had one white woman named Phillips who teaches at Encinal High School in Alameda County. Her fare includes victimology classes, natch.
She’s teaching that, and we hand diplomas to youths who cannot locate in their minds the half century in which the Civil War was fought. Your government at work.
Said it before: It will be funny/sad when Jews discover their safe spaces are at Baptist churches and NASCAR events.
Art Deco — rather obviously, “They” are the people who wrote this curriculum. You seem to be referencing how high school history should be taught, or how it was taught when you (and I) were in high school. What the issue here is that “They” are putting so much emphasis on Jews and Israel, and that emphasis is negative.
What the issue here is that “They” are putting so much emphasis on Jews and Israel, and that emphasis is negative.
They’re doing that because (1) they lack the liberal education to have some passable sense of what is salient and what is not in the teaching of American history, and (2) they think their job is pushing political propaganda and (3) their politics are perfectly rancid, in a way that likely reflects on their character.
Now, if it’s their excuse that they’re teaching something other than American history, they’re still advocating indefensible allocations of time. Modern Israel is a small country and its history does not pre-date 1897. You want to write about occidental history, your pre-amble begins with Constantine. You got 16 centuries to cover.
Reza Aslan
After [El Paso] there is no longer any room for nuance. The President is a white nationalist terror leader. His supporters – ALL OF THEM – are by definition white nationalist terror supporters. The MAGA hat is a KKK hood. And this evil, racist scourge must be eradicated from society.
sadly, i wasn’t joking about their ideas towards…
the point is that there is more and more of this, and less and less push back
and the targets are not allowed to push back, or confirm the narrative..
Let me know when the Jews on the faculties of Berkeley and Stanford or running companies in Silicon Valley weigh in. Sometimes I think this nonsense is more of a Jewish civil war than anything else. I might also mention that a certain amount of antisemitism and racial prejudice is traditional among Hispanics, so the changing demographics of California might also be having an impact.