Life in an American Fourth Grade: It Gets Worse and Worse

By Barry Rubin

Yesterday during the opening "warm-up" period, the students read one page on George Washington's childhood. Today there was a brief discussion of the text. This is apparently the total official county program to deal with the founder of the United States. It seems as if nothing will be done to commemorate Abraham Lincoln's birthday at all.

After the brief discussion on Washington there was a very long discussion about the same topic as has been the overwhelming one for the whole year: How the white Americans, in this case the early settlers, mistreated every other racial group. No discussion of the courage of the settlers, their development of democracy, the advantages of the new society over the one they had left behind in Europe, the growth of religious freedom, or anything else but just racial exploitation and racism. America=racism about sums up the almost six months of instruction the children have received.