Hitler wuz mean

Sometimes the flashcard marathon must stop for a moment, for a chance to catch up with the blogosphere while eating Reece's Pieces and chasing an Orens coffee with a diet Coke.

Via Rita, a fantastically ridiculous Weekly Standard article suggesting we scrap public education entirely. And via Gawker, an equally absurd New York Observer piece that leaves one thinking private schools should be banished from our land.

As much as I love that the head of New York's posh Lycee Francais was called "Little Napoleon" in an angry anonymous letter, I will focus instead on David Gelertner's oh-so-original rant about public schools and all the lefty crap they teach the kids these days. As with all such whines, there's a glimmer of truth--I attended school in this country in the height of the PC 1990s--and a whole lot of nostalgic cliche. The angle he takes is that we should get rid of public schools altogether because they lean too much to the left. How brilliant and, dare I say, practical! I am at this very moment holding my breath.

You might argue that the solution is to have two varieties of public school, roughly "moderate left" and "moderate right," each with its own curriculum, textbooks, and standards, and its own version of a worldview or moral framework to teach children. Every neighborhood or local region would vote on left versus right local schools. In many areas such elections would be extraordinarily hard-fought and bitter--yet the solution might work, except that the school establishment's bias is so consistently left (and not moderate left either) that it seems unlikely we could trust it to operate "moderate right" schools--or even "neutral" schools, if there were such a thing.

That's the only problem he can forsee, that the remaining schools would still teach Things Fall Apart and Heather Has Two Mommies? The better question: do five-year-olds have politics? Do high schoolers necessarily share the politics of their parents? Isn't the point of public school that whatever nonsense your parents teach you, you will learn a new and contradictory form of nonsense from your teachers and a third one from your peers, thus forcing you, the individual, to make decisions on your own?

Many urban schools were overcrowded, especially as more and more immigrants piled in. Segregated schools for blacks were often miserable. Yet throughout America--rich and poor, black and white, urban and rural--schools in general and teachers in particular were regarded with respect. And America's various creeds and colors agreed on the fundamental skills and principles with which a child should be equipped.

As with all arguments that begin with, 'Segregation was bad, but...', this one fails to inspire the wistful mood the author intends. For Gelernter, parents willing to go to jail to defend their child's right to grow up homophobic are demonstrating "courage and persistence." And yes, teaching schoolchildren that their classmates' same-sex parents are sinners is homophobic. Are the faithful not asked to find sin frightening? And then, because discussion of Jewish matters must always be put in parentheses, so as not to force the reader to hear too much about those whiny Jews, the following:

(A related dispute arises when schools insist on teaching young children about the Holocaust in all its revolting evil. Sensitive children get nightmares, are scared of going to bed--I've seen this happen in my own family. Yes, American children must be taught about the Holocaust--but intelligently, dammit, with some regard for the child's own well-being. Children are not mere adults in miniature. We are supposed to have outgrown that primitive idiocy sometime in the 19th century. But it has returned to plague us in America's dim-witted schools establishment. Evidently common sense is another divisive issue in modern America.)

Oh the poor babies! Let's try, "The Nazis were Germans who did not celebrate Chanukah," and leave it at that. I don't remember a time before I knew about the Holocaust "in all its revolting evil" (although most of the Vichy historiography I had to wait for grad school for; thanks a lot, kindergarten!) and yes, I did get nightmares. And that's exactly the reaction you have to learning about the Holocaust if you are, in fact, learning about it.