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How to teach our children to be heirs of Zimbabwe …education for stupidity

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“The inability of children to understand war, the bomb, the Negro problem, the Soviet Union, imperialism, and so on, has helped to bring us so close to universal annihilation that we may not be able to turn back.”
JULES HENRY, a renowned American scholar wrote this in 1968, in an article titled: ‘Education for stupidity’.
In this essay his critique of American education is that its curriculum is such that “throughout their schooling, children must be given subject matter that confirms legitimate stupidity and that whatever challenges it must be withheld.”
He outlines how in his random analysis of American school texts in social studies, history, and economics he finds that they are fraught with omissions, distortions, contradictions and downright lies that are meant to make the American child so unintelligent that it will never be able to correctly judge any situation, leaving it so susceptible to tyrannical leadership.
He cites social studies text books which contradict themselves about the Negro problem presenting it on the one hand as improving, and on the other as hopeless so that the learner does not know which is which.
He reveals economics texts whose treatment of issues such as the depression is so superficial that the learner gets more and more befuddlement, the depression is presented as a cycle that has got its own internal dynamics and no-one can do anything about it.
His review also exposed history textbooks which hide the claws of imperialism and colonialism for instance by talking about India becoming independent from Britain without talking about India’s struggle for independence.
Jules Henry also exposes the anti-communist mantra in the text books telling the learners that communism is moribund, devoid of any respect for personal liberties at the same time failing account for its eminence in science and the admission that it is the greatest revolutionary which has in 40 years made economic strides that have made it a world force to reckon with.
However, his most shocking revelation is that American textbooks lied to the children about why America dropped the atomic bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945.
He clarifies the truth:
“Before going further I must point out that as chief of the analysis section of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey I went to Japan in October 1945 to study the effects of the bombing of civilian population centers on the population’s willingness to resist the US.
“We turned up, at that time, the fact, since become common knowledge, that long before the atom bomb was dropped, it was known to President Truman that Japan, through the Emperor, was suing for peace.
“The following, from Our United States is therefore wrong and distorted from several points of view:
“President Truman warned the Japanese to surrender or face the consequences. When he received no answer to his warning, he authorized the use of the atomic bomb.
“The main part of (Hiroshima) was wiped out.
“Two days later an atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki with the same devastating results.
“The Japanese leaders, realising that it was hopeless to continue, asked for peace (pp. 575-6).
“It will be noted that here again there is no reference to casualties.
“There is also no reference to the bomb in the review at the end of the chapter, no question about it on page 577 under “What do they mean?,” and nothing about it under “Things You May Wish to Do,” “Remembering Your Geography,” or “Milestones” on pages 577-8.
“Thus the student is invited to forget the bomb.”
Below are the actual details of the casualties of these attacks which the American school children were denied:
“Some 70 000 to 80 000 people or some 30 percent of the population of Hiroshima were killed by the blast and resultant fire storm, and another 70 000 injured.
“Over 90 percent of the doctors and 93 percent of the nurses in Hiroshima were killed or injured-most had been in the downtown area which received the greatest damage.
“Out of some 70 000 to 80 000 people killed, 20 000 were soldiers.
“Most elements of the Japanese Second General Army headquarters were at physical training on the grounds of Hiroshima Castle when the bomb exploded. “Barely 900 yards from the explosion’s hypocenter, the castle and its residents were vaporised….All died in less than a second.”
And at Nagasaki, “the explosion had a blast yield equivalent to 21 kilo tons (88 TJ).
“The explosion generated heat estimated at 3 900 degrees C, (7 050 degrees F) and winds that were estimated at 1 005 km/h (624 mph).
“Casualty estimates for immediate deaths range from 40 000 to 75 000.”
These details reveal the heartbreaking gravity of the crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Americans on the Japanese people, and these are the crimes American school text books falsely justify by claiming the Japanese had refused to surrender, these are the crimes the textbooks would have American children gloss over and forget.
Glossing over such catastrophes is what Jules Henry warned as the kind of social stupidity that has brought mankind to the verge of self annihilation.
The culpability of lying about such a heinous crime is staggering, if such a weapon of ultimate destruction can be used on such false pretexts, then there is need to be very afraid for those who live under such regimes and for the rest of the world even.
Still on the same note, but with reference to Zimbabwe, what is noxious is the similarity between our school textbooks and American school textbooks analysed by Jules Henry.
Our textbooks gloss over the liberation struggle the way American school texts gloss over the catastrophic events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Our people died in their thousands at Nyadzonia, Mukushi, Chimoio, and other places.
The Smith regime committed gruesome murders of our people by the thousands, and the people gladly surrendered their lives for this land.
People should not be allowed to forget such catastrophic events because they just might happen again.
Remember Blair was going to attack Zimbabwe for the very reason for which the British had colonised us, our land.
Thus it is acrimonious to leave out details about the liberations struggle from children’s books, it is suicidal, when the imperialists come back to Zimbabwe it will be with a vengeance we have not yet seen, when they are done there will be nothing to salvage.
This continued intransigence is a statement that there is no need to transform our nation from what the British colonialists made it to what we want, what the people fought for and died for, because if we raise young people who do not know that something went drastically wrong in September 1890, and that a bitter war was fought to end this devastating evil, how can these young people work to protect their country from such ever happening again.
When will we in Zimbabwe learn to protect the truth by teaching it to our children kuitira kuti vagova nhaririredzedu, tisafa takatapwazvakare?
One day the children just might not know or care what the ‘fuss’ is all about and will fail to identify the intentions of a tyrant, and the country might just be neatly packaged and surrendered to the British or the many others who covet this land; Zimbabwe just might go for a song.
Dr Mahamba is a war veteran and holds a PhD from Havard University. She is currently doing consultancy work.

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