On the degradation of the national unity

Let me quote:

<< A study by Paul Vitz of twenty-two readers for grades three and six published in the 1970s and early 1980s and used in California, Texas, and many other states revealed that only five out of 670 stories and articles in these readers had "any patriotic theme." Seventeen of the twenty-two textbooks did not contain any story with a patriotic theme. All five patriotic stories dealt with the Revolution; none had "anything to do with American history since 1780." In four of the five stories the principal person is a girl, in three the same girl, Sybil Ludington. The twenty-two books lack any story "featuring Nathan Hale, Patrick Henry, Daniel Boone, or Paul Revere's ride." "Patriotism," Vitz concludes, "is close to nonexistent" in these readers. In another study of six 1970s high school history textbooks, Harvard professor Nathan Glazer and Tufts professor Reed Ueda found that "not one of the new histories claims as a principal objective inculcating patriotism, a function embraced by the history texts that appeared during and soon after World War I. Moralism and nationalism are both out of date." In the 1970s histories "the central processes that integrated American society are trivialized."

An analysis by Sandra Stotsky of twelve grade four and grade six readers published in the 1990s concluded that "the trends Iiams and Vitz detected have continued, if not accelerated." In these readers, "selections about national symbols and songs are almost nonexistent." The emphasis is instead on ethnic and racial groups. From 31 percent to 73 percent of all the selections dealing with America dealt with ethnic and racial groups, and in 90 percent of these selections with ethnic content the groups referred to were blacks, Asian-Americans, American Indians, and Hispanic-Americans. As a result, a 1987 study of high school students found that more knew who Harriet Tubman was than knew that Washington commanded the American army in the Revolution or that Abraham Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation. "The net effect," Stotsky concludes, "is the disappearing of an American culture as a whole." Summing up the situation in 1997, Nathan Glazer highlighted "how complete has been the victory of multiculturalism in the public schools of America."

 

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The was written by Samuel Huntington, an Ivy League professor himself, in a book titled "Who Are We?" published in 2004. I would argue that the deconstruction of the national unity has progressed very significantly since that time.

This is a GREAT - and a very short - presentation, highly recommend!

As a comment - among other things, it tells you a [rather trivial] fact that seeing each other as parts of the same entity promotes understanding and sober consideration of facts. And this is why the "progressive" efforts of separating us into groups are extremely harmful. Here is just one illustration from my own personal experience. After attending a certain "diversity and inclusion" event at my organization (this event deserves more attention, perhaps I'll address it in later posts), we were sent an assessment form by one of the senior administrator of the university. Here is one of the questions, verbatum:

"After attending this listening circle, I am more aware that every interaction with another person is intercultural; this may be due to differences between me and the other person that are invisible or perhaps there are things at play for each of us that we are unaware of ourselves."

The above concept was a huge topic of the actual event. We are encouraged to seek out differences in each other, and then, of course, we are blamed for discriminating against others because we see them as not being members of our reference group.

 www.facebook.com/Upworthy/videos/1901311583243024/