Shaping the Future

Many students question the need to learn history. We can’t undo the past anyway, why waste time learning about it? The obvious answer is that through the study of history we can educate ourselves about our own country and other countries, as well as learn from past mistakes as history tends to repeat itself.

What happens, though, when history books misinform or mislead? The damage that is done when children are fed misinformation and lies is immeasurable. Yet according to two articles I read recently it seems that there are Western democracies that are feeding their students material that is clearly undermining other Western democracies.

A recent study shows that many of the textbooks French children use in school teach anti-American propaganda. In Eleves sous Influence (Students Under Influence), two authors examined 24 French text books, most of them written in 2003 and 2004, to see how they presented the U.S. in the post-9/11 world. They found many text books with a strong anti-American bias.

Text books read: “Americanization leads to deculturalization, populations lose their values if not their most elementary reference points.”

Any country, society, or culture can Americanize. The democratic way has never been to force their way life onto others, which the repressive regimes have no problem doing. ‘Americanization’ includes tolerance, diversity and democracy. Is that what France is trying to discourage? The French should be teaching their students about suppression, dictatorship and terrorism causing people losing their identity; not freedom and democracy.

Additionally, French textbooks often failed to criticize terrorism as a means to achieve a goal. In fact in what can be considered frightening, terrorism was presented as a legitimate response to American policies. If the text books don’t criticize the terrorism being used to fight a cause, students learn that the end justifies the means.

One school book read: “Islamic radicalism remains an ideology of mobilization against the West for those who see in globalization a risk of cultural uniformity and U.S. dominance.”

“America’s power provokes outbreaks of anti-Americanism whose extreme form takes the name of holy war or jihad launched by bin Laden,” states another text, published by Magnard.

The French are ignoring the fact that it’s not American power per se’ that is attacked, it’s any power other than Islam, as attacks in Jordan, Indonesia, and Turkey show us. As far as Muslim extremists are concerned, the French are no better than the Americans – and they shouldn’t try to fool themselves of that by blaming the United States. France should lay the blame where it belongs – with the terrorists.

Since children are influenced by what they are taught, it is disturbing that French are using their schools as a platform to teach this subtle anti-Americanism and undermine another democracy, instead of focusing on those who do real damage to human rights.

Though I was disturbed about the anti-American material being taught in French schools I was truly upset when I read an October 2005, JTA article called: “TAINTED TEACHINGS What your kids are learning about Israel, America and Islam?”

The basis of this article is that many American public schools, sometimes unbeknown to the taxpayers and school boards, are teaching American children anti-Israel, pro-Islam material which is funded by the Saudi Arabians.

According to the JTA “in thousands of public school districts across the United States, without ever knowing it, taxpayers pay to disseminate pro-Islamic materials that are anti-American, anti-Israel and anti-Jewish.”
The “Arab World Studies Notebook” is one such example. It was written to supposedly correct misconceptions about Islam and the Arab world, but the manual for secondary schools has been criticized for distorting history and spreading bias.

Ironically, it is the USA who gives credibility to the circulation of these warped materials since they enter the school systems with the help of the Title VI of the Higher Education Act, a 1958 federal program set up to train international experts to meet the nation’s security needs.

Lately, criticism has come from parents offended by the anti-democratic, pro-Islamic material that their children are learning. Parental pressure led to some text books being banned in school districts in places like San Francisco, California, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Anchorage, Alaska, and Scottsdale, Arizona.

The United States has had a difficult time understanding the extremists’ ideology. Americans don’t like to interfere in the religion of other people. But the reality is that this isn’t religion that is being promoted, but a politicized radical ideology. As we have seen in cases where non-Muslims committed acts of terror in the name of the Jihad, children who are taught this ideology are prime targets for recruitment by terror organizations.

The USA, and other democracies, must recognize that the best way to shape the future is by educating the children, hence, texts that criticize other Western democracies and praise terrorist countries don’t belong in our classrooms.

The anti-American bend in French school texts bothers me as the French should be worried about suppression and dictatorship, however what happens in American schools scares me even more. If we don’t understand that allowing our children to be influenced with anti-democratic propaganda is a danger we will, G-d forbid, suffer the consequences.

Who is Rabbi Shea Hecht?

Shea Hecht is a Rabbi and activist in the Jewish community. More than a decade ago, he rose to national prominence as a community leader during the Crown Heights riots in New York. As a result, he received numerous awards by both government and private organizations for his work in fostering racial harmony. Shea was a member of Mayor Giuliani’s task force on police/community relations. He received the Community Relations Award from the American Jewish Committee for his leadership of the Crown Heights Coalition, seen as a model for healing a polarized community. For seven years, Shea Hecht was a Commissioner of Human Rights for the city of New York.

Shea serves as chairman of the Board at the National Committee for the Furtherance of Jewish Education where he has continued the tradition of social services management and outreach that began with his father, the late Rabbi Jacob J. Hecht.

Shea is Dean of Hadar Hatorah School for College Youth and a lecturer at the Ivy League Torah Study Program. He is a co-founder of the Ari Program, an innovative school for at-risk kids.

As a life strategist, Shea’s expertise centers on family crisis intervention- guiding and advising troubled youths and their families, marriage counseling, and as a drugs and cults consultant. As an activist, he serves as a liaison between the government/law enforcement, fostering racial harmony and diversity in his community

Shea’s articles and commentaries on various topics are printed in many prominent newspapers and periodicals worldwide.

He can be reached at 718-735-0200 or at rabbishea@aol.com