sept 18, 2020
"...We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control... Hey, teachers, leave them kids alone..." (Pink Floyd)
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Incline Village, Nev. (EOC)--The concept is nothing new, it's been around as long as the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). Now, the president has adopted the theme in order to set the record straight in the classroom;
"Speaking at a conference in Washington DC on Thursday, the president announced a new national commission to promote 'patriotic education' and counter the 'decades of leftwing indoctrination' to which he claims US schoolchildren have been subjected. 'Our youth will be taught to love America,' he said." (1)
The phrase, although associated with the DAR, also has a dark side as any program or commission does with the aim of re-education. When the Japanese invaded China in 1937, the United Press bureau chief in Peiping, F. M. Fisher, reported for the St. Louis Star and Times;
"... describes in the following dispatch the detailed program of 'thought-control' and 'patriotic education' which the Japanese army is imposing on the conquered areas of North China." (2)
One of the first steps the Nippon army took was the burning down of the American-supported Nankai University in Tientsin. Resistance by Chinese soldiers who were killed in action was described as "misguided heroism." A few weeks later, the Bucyrus, Ohio Telegraph Forum reported that the DAR, "gather in all of the children and give them a patriotic education as a means of combatting Nazi tendencies in the United States." (3) By 1939. the military had drafted the phrase to incorporate the will to resist foreign influence with the dual threat of fascism and communism on the horizon. Navy Commander LP Lovette spoke at a DAR convention in Washington and warned;
"that 'patriotic education' will fail entirely in its mission if it does not emphasize emphatically that our citizens must be prepared to fight if necessary to preserve the liberties for which our colonial ancestors fought." (4)
Sentiment leading up to the outbreak of World War II varied from dissent that patriotism could not be legislated to fears of the Fifth Column infiltrating the nation's educational system. Throughout the war, the theme was linked to the DAR and national defense. Six months into the Korean War in 1950, Time magazine used an image of the American GI as "Man of the Year," with the following story by Robert W. Smith in The Minneapolis Star;
"The armed forces really appears to have fallen down on the answering of the soldier's question, 'What am I fighting for?' Here again, however, the military leaders ask, 'Must we, in addition to training men to fight, complete their political and patriotic education?' " (5)
At the time, the 1st Marine Division was bottled up at the Chosin Reservoir in North Korea by over 100,000 Chinese soldiers in subfreezing weather. (6)
Apparently, the indoctrination program by the DAR for school kids was met with enthusiasm but giving the grunts on the front line impetus to resist the hordes of communists behind snow berms wasn't on the agenda. The stigma that exists today over the American soldier and his place in society may well have evolved at the outbreak of the Korean War. There were 1.5 million men drafted to fight in the war, that ended in a stalemate in 1953. (7) The answer to the question posed by the man of the year in 1950 is best left to those who were drafted.
Just prior to escalation in Vietnam, by various archived newspaper accounts, other organizations, the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and the Children of the American Revolution (CAR) were on board the patriotic education bandwagon. At the height of the Southeast Asian campaign, the fervor for nationalistic indoctrination died down, or was at least underreported in the media. In the Soviet Union, however, it was on the rise, as reported in 1969 by Leon Goure in the Miami News;
"Possibly because of the growing ideological agnosticism of Soviet youth and its boredom with the communist catechism, the patriotic education campaign has a distinct nationalistic flavor." (8)
Noted was the effort to glorify the Iron Curtain soldier and close the gap between young and old.
The Soviet program (vospitanye) was linked intrinsically to military indoctrination. Though not much has been heard of the concept post-9/11 and during the Afghan-Iraq campaigns in the US, in China it has been associated with the strongarm tactics to subvert Tibetan Buddhist monks under the influence of the Dalai Lama into communist philosophy. (9)
With the reintroduction of the indoctrination plan into the educational system in America, it calls into question the ethical nature of rewriting history books again to suit a political agenda. Certainly the self interest organizations as the DAR and the VFW have their own goals, but they are outsiders when it comes to the classroom and should remain there.
Cited
1.) Whitewashing, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/18/first-thing-whitewashing-us-history-with-patriotic-education
2.) Fisher, The St, Louis Star and Times, 02 Sept 1937, Page 2.
3.) Nazi tendencies, , Telegraph Forum, 24 Sept 1937, Page 1.
4.) ancestors, Reading Times, 22 April 1939, Page 5.
5.) Man of the Year, The Minneapolis Star, 28 Dec 1950, Page 18
8.) Soviet, The Miami News, 20 Dec 1969, Page 8
9) Dalai Lama, The Miami Herald, 25 March 2012, Page A21
Pink Floyd lyrics, https://www.lyricfind.com/
Another Brick in the Wall, https://youtu.be/6DXocljc268
Prism image, https://www.briansolis.com/2014/02/quality-prism-secret-co-creating-brands-social-media/
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