I mentioned in a post this morning that I had received a letter form the Anti-Defamation League warning that comments on my blog displayed “insensitivity” and that I should take this opportunity to warn readers about the dangers of “hurtful analogies,” especially in referring to Hitler and the Holocaust.
A reader wonders if he was the one who wrote the comment that was reported as offensive to the Anti-Defamation League:
I think that the comment referred to was mine. I am a teacher in one of the 24 “closed” NYC schools. I went back to look for what I actually wrote but could not find it but I definitely remember reading the comments after that post and being surprised at the reaction.First, let me say that I am also Jewish. Whichever members of my family remained in Poland at the start of the war, were totally wiped out in the camps. I am also a history buff, I read and make analogies. (Obviously, I am a product of a great public education, Thomas Jefferson HS, Brooklyn, NY.) If I offended anyone by my comparisons I am sorry, but I do not withdraw my statements. Let me instead, back them up.
I typically refer to the Holocaust and our situation in 2 ways and I don’t remember which I used in that previous post. First, I believe that our mayor, his flunkies, and all those trying to tear down public education are using what my World History text back in 1962, called the “Big Lie” technique. Tell a lie often enough and boldly enough and even those who know it is a lie will back down. Hitler and Stalin were both masters of the “Big Lie” and used it to secure and maintain their power. The “Big Lie” technique includes scapegoating. Again, as a Jew I am particularly sensitive about scapegoating but now, as a teacher being scapegoated, I think I have have an even better understanding of what my Jewish/Polish/Austrian family and their friends felt as they heard Hitler rant about how the Jews were responsible for every bad thing in post WW I Germany. Yes, I know that there are (currently) no camps to be transported to, but the lie still hurts every time I hear it. This leads into the second way I draw analogies to the Holocaust. As I said above, my family split just about the time of WW I. One branch came to America, the other branch stayed in Poland and Austria and were decimated. My grandma spoke German as well as Yiddish and English. Even after the holocaust, she proudly referred to our family as Austrian. From her, from other friends and family and from my reading I have learned that most German and Austrian Jews thought of themselves as Germans. Even as the Nuremberg laws went into effect, even as Kristal Nacht destroyed their businesses and homes, they told themselves that they were good Germans, important to the Reich and the minority of hotheads will eventually see this and respect them for the contributions that they made to their country. Many Jews continued this denial until they were packed off to the camps. A few days before the end of this school year, as we were sitting in the heat grading the Regents exams, my colleagues and I were being told our fate by those involved in this ridiculous hiring system. I know that the ones not hired are not going to camps but the damage to their spirits was still substantial. These are people who have been teaching for 10 even 15 years. One of the main centerpieces of their identity is teacher, right up there with mother, father, Jew, Christian or other identity labels. This central part of their identity was ripped out unjustly and with violence. Not the violence of guns but more like the violence of the Judensau when Jews were forced to bend down and kiss the statue of a pig for only one purpose . . . public humiliation. Teachers were being divided into 2 lines. The “effective” teachers who were staying and the “ineffective” teachers with astonishment and tears in their eyes who could not understand this injustice that had been done to them. As my friends and colleagues were told their fate my thoughts went back to the words of Victor Frankl, a survivor of the camps who said, “the best of us did not survive.” No, I don’t expect the Brown Shirts to be knocking on my door tonight. In fact, as much as I think teachers are being falsely scapegoated and blamed for things beyond our control, I think the real holocaust (note the lower case) is being carried out against the children of NYC. Under performing students need smaller classes which means more teachers. They also need more experienced teachers. Privatizing education siphons off money that should be going to the children and sends it to overpaid CEOs and shareholders of these charter businesses. Thomas Jefferson saw public education as necessary to maintain a democracy. Wouldn’t it be terrible if after true public education is gone we discover that Jefferson was right. I could go on about the economics of fascism as taught to me by Mr. Kraft in the 5th grade, Mr. Hudesman in the 7th grade and Mr. Horowitz in the 10th grade (great teachers among other great teachers who I remember fondly) how we can draw parallels to big business today, but this is already a very long post so I shall stop now. |
I think that it’s important to draw from history in terms of human behavior. What we saw in Germany has occurred elsewhere and we must learn from these immoral, horrific and devastating experiences even if it means going back to remind ourselves that what happened before can happen again if we are not careful and mindful of our past.
Dora
Recently a retired staff member from my district, who happens to be Jewish, posted on Facebook that she supported mandatory drug testing for welfare recipients. I told my BFF Larry, who also happens to be Jewish. His reply was, “Jews, of all people, should know better than anyone how quickly civil rights can be taken away”.
I think anyone of Jewish heritage as well as those of us who were children during the Civil Rights Movement as well as members of the GLBT community have a grasp on discrimination. It only takes a few moves to create an underclass. You mentioned the drug testing. This is part of the “reform” movement also. East Baton Rouge Parish schools, one being beseiged by charters and the Recovery District requires teachers who are injured on the job to take a drug test prior to getting medical treatment. This seems to be one of the early symptoms of disrespect for the underclass.
Well said @twinkie1cat. I’m 99% sure that the retired staff member collects social security, which she deserves. Wonder what she’d say if she had take a drug test to continue those benefits?? It could happen.
What’s a BFF?
Best friend forever.
Reblogged this on Kmareka.com and commented:
Comments on Diane Ravitch’s blog result in a letter from the Anti-Defamation League…the teacher who made the comments speaks again.
Come on, people! Let’s give these reformers respect. They are just trying to make money by privatizing and destroying our public school system.
those who do not learn from history, are condemned to repeat it…
I see fascism everywhere in this world… and I point it out… and I draw analogies with what happened in Nazi Germany… and I constantly get flak for it – being told that I’m being hyperbolic, that I’m being crass, insensitive… and I will continue to call it for what it is…
and I am Dutch and my parents and relatives suffered under the Nazi occupation and that personal, family experience gives me the authenticity, the right to call it as it is, whenever I see it…
seems to me that people are afraid of the truth, and to acknowledge their own complicity in what is going down now…
Thank you for drawing the comparison to the “Big Lie” technique employed by fascists. The complexiity of this issue makes it easy for corporatists to target teachers with a truly mean spirited public campaign. As a social studies teacher I find the assault on public education truly sinister, and applaud your ability to make these connections. I have to wonder if the KIPP academy students are given time to explore this type of critical historical thinking in their overly regimented environment. This pedagogy begs another comaparison, but I’ll leave it here for now.
Referencing Hitler when speaking of the charter school movement is valid, even if there are never any of the physical and societal abuses of teachers that there were of Jews, Gays, and Gypsies (and before them, old people and those with disabilities) during the Holocaust. Look at what is happening. Teachers have never been high earners, but have always gotten respect from the community. Now they are regarded in the conservative media, the Religious Right and others who would destroy public education as the cause of the problems in the schools. We are the only profession where high levels of education and experience are devalued! We are also the only one in which our governmental leadership—principals, superintendents and state superintendents—are not always us. How is this so different from the way the Jews were demonized? How is it so different from when African Americans were considered too slow minded to do any but the most menial jobs?
One interesting point is that a lot of this goes back to the Religious Right. A few years ago Focus on the Family suggested that conservatives should not send their children to public schools because public school teachers were not Christians since they did not read the Bible or pray in school. This is the beginning, along with the loss of segregated schools of this whole mess, I believe. They told parents to either home school or send the children to Christian Academies. In other words, CHARTERS.
It is also interesting that there is a reference to Thomas Jefferson supporting public schools. Jefferson is a founding father who is not looked upon so fondly by conservatives.
To the reader from one of those 24 schools who wonders.
As a Jewish teacher of world history for decades who taught about the Holocaust to students from many diverse backgrounds and who created unit called Genocide to show how these same techniques are not just Hitlerian, and as a past member of the Westchester Holocaust Commission, I applaud your statements.
Pointing out to the world how these current tactics like the big lie are being used vs teachers (as scapegoats) is important. We can’t hide behind labels and fears that prevent us form learning from history.
The ADL overreacts. Should The Italian American Societies react every time someone correctly points out that these are also Machiavelian schemes?
Oh by the way, these are as much Machiavellian as Hitlerian, Or Stalinist, or Aminist, or Pol Pot ist….shall I go on?
Yes and more. Hurricane Katrina was blamed on gay people and the earthquake in Haiti, Oh, that was because the Haitians made a pact with Satan to lose the slavery. Said and spread right there on the 700 Club with Pat Robertson.
The Big Lie is even more of a problem today with electronic media as these radical right people use social media and quote each other as validation.
I want to hear about: “…the economics of fascism as taught to me by Mr. Kraft in the 5th grade, Mr. Hudesman in the 7th grade and Mr. Horowitz in the 10th grade (great teachers among other great teachers who I remember fondly) how we can draw parallels to big business today….”
I am African-American. Unfortunately, the “Big Lie” is something used over and over again in history. Slave owners quoted from sections of the Bible where it instructed slaves to be obedient to their masters. I think the the “Education Deformers” are using the essence of those scriptures to do the same thing to poor and minority families today. It’s not the words that are offensive, it’s the meaning behind them and the affect it has on society. Some people can’t handle the fact that it-is-what-it-is. I wish they were as concerned about the destruction of public education as they are about the analogy.
I am so thankful, and I mean this from my teacher soul and my person heart. I am so thankful to have found this blog and all the people on it. To find cyber-mentors and kindred spirits and to just know that somewhere in the USA you are all fighting the same dragon clones. I have learned so much and the links you and Diane post give me the background info I need.
This beautifully written letter that Diane shared is so enriching to read and the responses here are uplifting. I needed this after a 3 hour meeting on PBSI team training here in Louisiana; after going to my classroom and dragging in another set of steel shelves, in this heat and humidity which my body HATES, to get stuff more organized(HA!); after no rain for yet another day where the weather channel was showing all green over my house for a couple hours and outside the sky was blue.
Thank you! Sounds corny and perhaps I could have worded it better but consider it an “excited utterance” from the heart.
Granger Babcock asks me to explain what I meant by ” the economics of fascism.” I remember 2 points although I must admit I have never really attempted to verify these for myself. In 5th grade I remember a lesson discussing the difference between the American free enterprise system, the Soviet system of planned economy and fascism. Forgive my aside but I have to add that in writing this I have actually remembered the context of the discussion. We were learning our lines for our class play. It was about a Soviet cosmonaut who lands on the moon and was shocked to learn that the people there had a capitalist society.) About fascism we were taught that industry was closely linked to the rulers. We were taught that Hitler controlled the economy but we were also taught that German industry was also very influential in moving Germany towards war, what in America we might have called “the good old boys network” even though none of my teachers ever used that phrase in that context.
I remember similar discussions in junior high and high school. I realize that this is simplistic but they have stayed in my thoughts these many years. When I hear of education company CEOs getting paid salaries in the millions (and at least some of that money is coming from public money that should be going into public education), of their lobbying (lobbying of course is subtle and sometimes not so subtle bribery). When Germany rearmed for war, yes, it was drive by Hitler but it also made lots of money and increased the power and influence of those industrialists. I was taught that those industrialists pushed the rearmament for their own agenda, i.e. making profits. We’ll isn’t that what these education CEOs are doing, pushing privatization for the profits, children be damned?
I don’t claim to understand economics, I really don’t, but at least I hope I have explained what my thought was and why. I am scared and worried. I think that many things in our current political situation are suggestive of a tendency to divide and polarize people, including economically. As long as 1 out of 4 American children lives in poverty there can be no equal opportunity. Somehow, I think our neediest children are going to be damaged in the privatization of education while these education industrialists and their politician friends will do very well indeed.
I have been deeply concerned about this very issue for quite some time. I feel like Cassandra though because I always get shouted down and/or told that I am being paranoid or exaggerating the dangers. FDR said this to Congress in 1938:
“The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.”
The Encyclopedia of Marxism, via Wikipedia, provides this (condensed by me) list, which seems all too apropos today:
“1. Rightwing: Fascists are fervently against . . . the progressive left in total. [See Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, O’Reilly, Coulter, Fox News, et al.]
2. Nationalism: Fascism places a very strong emphasis on patriotism and nationalism. [See flag lapel pins, Romney saying that Obama is not American, doesn’t understand America, and the Bachman witch hunt in Congress]
3. Hierarchy: Fascist society is ruled by a righteous leader, who is supported by an elite secret vanguard of capitalists. [There seems to be a lack of a dominant leader currently but there are several contenders. Also, school “reform”, the “smartest people in the room”, hedge funders, etc.]
4. Anti-equality: Fascism loathes the principles of economic equality and disdains equality between immigrant and citizen. [See the destruction of the safety net, opposition to unions and the minimum wage, the Minuteman movement, Arizona, etc.]
5. Religious: Fascism contains a strong amount of reactionary religious beliefs, harking back to times when religion was strict, potent, and pure. [Every Christian denomination in America is in the throes of battle over orthodoxy vs. liberalism]
6. Capitalist: . . . fascists can be elected into office (though their disdain for elections usually means manipulation of the electoral system). [See Citizens United, Voter ID laws, the presidential election of 2000]
7. War: . . . War can create markets that otherwise wouldn’t exist by wreaking massive destruction on society. [Iraq, Afghanistan, and others]
8. Voluntarist Ideology: . . . they believe that an act of will, if sufficiently powerful, can make something true. [See the bootstrap mythology, denial of global warming, rewriting history and misrepresenting the Founding Fathers, etc.]
9. Anti-Modern: Fascism loathes all kinds of modernism, especially creativity in the arts.” [See the defunding of NPR, Public Television, grants for the arts, elimination of arts from schools, etc.]
We may not be in thrall to fascism yet but the warning signs are there and history tells us all too often good people tend to overlook and ignore the warning signs until it is too late. I hope I am wrong.