Big bad Marx

I just listened to episode #424 of This American Life, "Kid Politics". Like all episodes of This American Life, it was fantastic, but particularly so to to me because it focused on various incarnations of democracy in education. The first act got me especially riled up in terms of how we help students build knowledge. Do we didactically tell them what to think? Or do we give them information and help the build the skills to form their own opinions on issues? Obviously I favor the latter; the teacher from the program's first act certainly did not. She took her students on a field trip to the Ronald Reagan Museum's Discovery Center--in and of itself, a very cool field trip. It sounded like a pretty freaking awesome experience for middle schoolers (I think it was a class of 6th graders): a replica of the Oval Office, Air Force One, a "Command Decision Center", and the Press Room. Students were divided into teams of presidential advisors and press corps, with one lucky student serving as President Reagan himself, and role played the Invasion of Grenada.

I was really excited as I listened to the set-up of the activity; what a great way to explore different issues of leadership, decision making, and international conflict. But as the activity progressed, I became more and more frustrated at the disservice the teacher was doing to her students. Leading students through rote recollection of which countries were Communist and which were Democratic, she posed questions like:

• Why is Communism bad? (Because people don't get to have freedom, etc.)
  
• Do people in Communist countries get to keep all of their money? (No)
• Who gets all of the money in Communist countries? (the government)

Whoa. Talk about over-simplifying a very complex political topic. And posing such leading questions that clearly had a "right" answer....well, I just consider that to be completely unprofessional.
Yet, complex economic and political issues are often presented in such simplistic or skewed fashions in textbooks because....go figure.....publishers are "afraid of being labeled Marxist" as one top social studies editor told James Loewen in "Lies My Teacher Told Me".



The answer to being "labeled Marxist" is apparently to omit any reference to class struggle, present America as a flawless hero, and eliminate any debate about the course of history. When the student playing Reagan made a different decision than Reagan himself did, a buzzer went off and lights started flashing, clearly indicating that he had made the "wrong" answer. How are students supposed to truly build their own decision making skills if we insist on just thrusting information at them, and expect nothing from them but regurgitation of those same facts?