Truth, Penn State and NCAA "revisionist history"

[ET]

[Haruo]

[Haruo]

[Sandy]

My house is about two hours driving time from the Penn State campus, and I live in the closest major media market. It's been interesting, and that's not an adequate word to describe what is going on.

Making Penn State vacate all of its wins since whenever it was, 1998 or something like that, is not only revisionist, but to be consistent about making that a punishment, it creates a whole backlog of things that should be done. For example, should they not have to send all of the bowl game trophies that they won to their opponents, since technically, their opponent won the game? Someone commented on a talk show here recently that if losses to Penn State during that period can now be counted as wins, that changes the conference standings, and the championship of the Big 10, in several seasons, and Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio State and Northwestern would all benefit from receiving either an outright title, or a share of it, because games they lost to Penn State are now wins. How will that work out? Fact is, it won't.

Prager gets his digs in at the California public school teachers, and the revisionist history they teach. I've got news for Mr. Prager. Public education in the United States has not been focused on teaching the basic skills in math, science, language arts, reading and social studies for a long, long time. The public education system has long been a means of indoctrination and foundational social reform, going back to the philosophies of such individuals as Horace Mann and John Dewey, among others. Starting with colleges and universities that train teachers, what has been known as "progressive educational reform" has had a major effect on the curriculum and content of public education. The social reformers are getting exactly what they aimed for, generations of people who don't have critical thinking skills, and who can be easily manipulated. We are now seeing a generation of Americans under 25 years of age of whom only 6% remain connected to the Christian church following their graduation from college. When you spend nearly forty hours a week under the influence of your teachers in school who are either required to be passive about their faith, or who are actively teaching against it, and you spend two or three hours a week in a church setting, with education operated by volunteers, it is easy to think that since one of them must be wrong, it has to be the church.

In this whole situation, no matter how many times someone prefaces a statement, the bottom line of the discussion and the actions taken always revolves around the money generated by the Penn State football program, and the impact of decisions on them, and other universities with multi-million dollar money generating football machines, and the kids always fall through the cracks.

[Neil Heath]

[ET]

[ET]

Haruo, I don't think it's a matter of excluding anything. I take the point to be that history is what it is. If the overwhelming contributions made in one field are from one demographic/ethnic group, then politicians shouldn't be attempting to force teachers into teaching about some favored voting block.

I've long been a history junkie. Military history is one of my favorite sub-topics. A few weeks ago I watched George Lucas' movie about the Tuskegee airmen, "Red Tails". Some years back I saw the movie "Windtalkers" about Native Americans who fought in the Pacific Theater. "Glory" about the 54th Massachusetts Infantry in the Civil War is one of my favorite movies. Both blacks and Indians made contributions to the war effort in WWII and the 54th in the Civil War, but historically their contributions were almost miniscule compared to the overall effort. That doesn't mean their stories aren't something worth learning, but diverting class time, by political directive, out of proportion to their contributions in order to teach about them for the sake of "diversity" is pandering to voting blocks and not doing a service to students. If students have an interest in nuanced parts of history, then provide them with book lists, web links, etc. for them to chase that stuff on their own.

It would be like teaching some noob the history of NFL running backs in the last 30 years and spending 1/2 the time talking about the contributions of great white running backs just for the sake of "celebrating diversity".

As for the NCAA issue, I've always found the vacating of wins to be rather silly, but Prager is right in that it leads to the devaluing of truth.

[Dave Roberts]

I join in that I can't see what vacating wins has to do with punishing those who were responsible. Young men took the field and won. Coaches hid a lie behing the scenes. Taking away wins does more the penalize the players than it does the coaches, and Paterno is already dead. It seems overkill on the wins--money is okay, but this seems more than sensible.

[Sandy]