CHINA AND FLORIDA:  WHERE TRUTH GOES TO DIE

“There is a price to pay for speaking the truth. There is a bigger price for living a lie.” -Cornel West, author and philosopher

“Truth-tellers are not always palatable. There is a preference for candy bars.” -Gwendolyn Brooks, poet and journalist (1917-2000)

“Once a country is habituated to liars, it takes generations to bring the truth back.” -Gore Vidal, writer (1925-2012)

The question was simple enough.  The Americans had just stepped out onto the huge open expanse of gleaming concrete that stretched from the Forbidden City past the Monument to the People’s Heroes all the way to the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall.

“So this is where it happened?  Right here?”

The gracious Chinese host smiled, and seemed excited to answer.  “Yes!” she said, “Here is where Chairman Mao announced the formation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, to a throng of many thousands.”

“No, I mean the protests.  Where so many people died.”

The host looked puzzled.  “What protests?” she asked.

“Well. . .when thousands of people marched and protested against the government. . .”

Now the host seemed utterly baffled.  “I’ve never heard of any protests here.  You must be mistaken.”

There was a long moment of awkward silence.  Then the group turned and began to walk out across “The Gate of Heavenly Peace,” otherwise known as Tiananmen Square.

All of that was over ten years ago.  And to this day, I don’t know if the host’s appearance of being completely baffled was because of a well-rehearsed denial strategy, or whether she honestly didn’t know what had occurred.

Not that it really matters.  Either way, the result was the same.  The actual truth was buried for political and nationalistic reasons.

Suppressing the truth.  It’s been going on for years.  And in so many ways, it keeps getting worse.

Let’s look first at history.  Someone once said “experience is the ability to not make mistakes, and the only way you gain experience is by making mistakes.

All countries, no matter how noble, have made mistakes.  Some have learned from them, others have not.  But you can’t learn from mistakes if you erase them and pretend they never happened. Like June 4, 1989.

Go back in time a moment.  Protests against the Chinese government had swelled to a massive crowd in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.  Despite orders to disperse, the gathering only grew.

The government had had enough.  Martial law was declared, and on June 4, troops attacked the protestors.  To this day, no one really knows how many were killed.

But you won’t find this in any Chinese school book.  In fact, just mentioning June 4^th could get you arrested, which has led some government critics to sarcastically call the date “May 35.”

Nationalism, conformity, and don’t step out of line.  It’s not only happening in China.

In India, publishing a map showing the disputed region of Kashmir as “disputed” is illegal.  So is any other depiction that isn’t in line with the government’s official cartography.  India’s nationalistic tilt has also impacted its schools, where science texts no longer feature the Periodic Table (developed by a Russian), evolution (described by an Englishman), or magnetism (also discovered by an Englishman).

Don’t expect to find anything critical of government policy in Russian textbooks, either, nor any mention of Stalin’s deliberate starvation of millions of Ukrainians. 

Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code makes it a crime to “insult the Turkish nation.”  You can guess how that impacts Turkish textbooks and how they cover, among other things, the Armenian genocide.

Be careful what you say about the Holocaust in Poland, home of Auschwitz, the most infamous of all Nazi concentration camps.  There, the official party line is that the killings were carried out solely by Germany, and that Poland played no role in the death camps.  In truth, some Poles did actively support the murders.  But say that now, and you can go to jail.  

Germany is a different story.  All German school-aged children are required to learn about the Holocaust.  Their nation’s role in perpetrating millions of murders isn’t denied.  Neither is its history of supporting the Nazi regime.

But alarmingly, this obvious issue of educational importance is being threatened by the far right.  The Alternative for Germany (AFD) party openly opposes teaching the Holocaust.  One AFD leader dismisses the Nazi killings as merely “a speck of bird poop on an otherwise glorious history.”  Others have derided Berlin’s monument to those murdered in the Holocaust as a “monument to shame.”  Still others have openly supported Holocaust deniers.

Some of the AFD will end up in government positions.  Others will become teachers.  Imagine the impact they could have on Germany’s future generations.

In his chilling book 1984, George Orwell wrote “He who controls the past controls the future.”  Which brings us to Florida.

I’ve already written my opinion on Florida overall , but education in Florida, America’s third most populous state, is entering a time of peril.  Under Governor Ron DeSantis, laws have been enacted that don’t just threaten educators, they put teachers in a straightjacket.

If you are a teacher, you are breaking the law if you teach anything about race that might make a student feel guilty or embarrassed by their own race.  That’s right—it doesn’t matter that you didn’t tell a student they should feel guilty, just the possibility that they could feel guilty means you are a criminal. 

The world should be glad that DeSantis is only screwing up Florida.  If he were Chancellor of Germany, he’d probably oppose teaching about the Holocaust, because it might make those German kids “feel bad.”

Just a note on hypocrisy here.  If a student from a liberal family felt offended by something they heard at school, what would the DeSantis crowd be saying?  “Snowflake!  Suck it up, Buttercup!”

But when it’s a sensitive little conservative Johnny or Suzie, it’s a different story.

Of course, “teaching critical race theory” is also out, even though there’s zero evidence that it’s ever been taught in Florida schools.

Somewhere north of 350 books have been banned from Florida school libraries.  DeSantis bristles when this is brought up, and insists that the state itself hasn’t banned any.  But in truth, the state legislature set in motion the process that allows individual schools to deep-six books on the basis of parental complaints.  In Duvall County, don’t try to find biographies about Hank Aaron or Roberto Clemente—they were removed because parents complained.

Ditto Beloved and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in several counties.  The Kite Runner is unavailable in still others.  Of course, The Handmaiden’s Tale is out, along with The Life of Rosa Parks.  Apparently, in the Duvall Counties of the world, not having your feelings hurt is way more important than whether you can think critically.

What is critical thinking?  It’s the ability to take different sets of facts that seemingly are at odds with each other, and logically analyze the information into a usable form.  But it’s tough to critically think about something if it’s been pulled off the shelves.

I’ve talked about the whole book banning thing before  When I was younger, I read everything I could get my hands on.  I was reading books written for teenagers when I was in the second grade, and adult books a couple of years later.  Did I make my mother nervous when I read all 872 pages of Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead when I was thirteen?  She never said a word, despite knowing that the word “fug” appeared over a thousand times in the book.  She understood the author’s message was far more important.

In Florida, textbooks must be approved by the State Board of Education, which recently turned down over 50 math books because they supposedly had inappropriate racial content.  What’s race got to do with math?  I don’t know, but if you see Ron DeSantis maybe you can ask him.    

Because of Florida’s large population, their schools purchase a significant number of America’s textbooks. So if you’re a publisher, the last thing you want to do is be shut out of the Florida market. Thus, the “banning” movement has had a chilling effect on what gets published–and therefore what gets taught.

And a chilling effect on the truth.  One history text for Florida children removed any reference to Rosa Park’s race.  Better to sell a watered-down version of history than to sell no books at all.

What did the final version say?  Just that Rosa Parks was a lady who was “tired.”  No mention of her as a civil rights pioneer.

Of course, it doesn’t stop there.  A vaguely worded piece of legislation called the “Parental Rights in Education” bill (its detractors call it the “don’t say gay” bill) restricts gender related discussion, and opens the door for any parent to sue the school district if they think their little Johnny or Suzie has been offended, with the school district (meaning the taxpayers) left to pick up the legal tab.

An advanced placement course in African American Studies was banned by Florida’s all-knowing Board of Education.  The reason? It “lacked educational value and was historically inaccurate,” according to the Board.  Just what about it was inaccurate?  The Board wouldn’t say.

Don’t say gay.  Don’t talk about race.  Don’t use the wrong Math book.  Don’t check out the wrong library book (even if you could). Water down history.  Is it any wonder Florida has a shortage of over 5,000 qualified teachers?  As if being paid salaries that are next to the lowest in the nation weren’t enough, teach the wrong thing and you could well be sued, or even fired.

But if you are a gay school teacher, Florida is quick to point out that your sexual orientation can’t be grounds for dismissal.  You can even have a picture of your gay family in the classroom.  But you’d better not talk about that picture with your students.  That can get you canned.

Make no mistake.  You can’t embrace critical thinking if you exclude any topic you don’t like.  You can’t critically discuss ideas if you keep locking them up.  You can’t arrive at a true picture if you insist that a part of the picture stays shrouded from view.      

Throughout history, there’s been a sure-fire way to shoot down an idea before there’s even a word of discussion.  Create an impossible-to-define term, call it evil, then use it to smear anything you choose.

Woke! Woke-ism! CRT! CRT-ism!  Cultural Marxism!  Undefinable words that can be used as an excuse to ban just about anything you don’t like.  In Florida, Ron DeSantis and company have done a masterful job in this arena.  But be forewarned.  The ultimate victim of these policies won’t just be students.

It will be the Truth.

Because in Florida, each day is starting to look more and more like May 35^th.