The Tragedy of American Education
Robert E. Holloway is a high school teacher in suburban Northern Virginia. He is probably considered a decent man by his neighbors, a competent educator by his peers, and a figure of some authority by his students. He is the embodiment of much that is wrong with this country’s education system, however: a bigot, a genocide denier, and a disseminator of falsehoods. He does not even realize what he is—not because he is mad but because he is an ignoramus. Having teachers like Holloway in American classrooms is worse than a crime, it is a mistake.
EPIC IGNORANCE—In the second week of February Mr. Holloway gave his students an assignment on Aristotle’s “Three Points,” and instructed them in some detail on how to proceed:
The recent breakup of Yugoslavia into separate countries provides many examples of the power of this kind of rhetoric. Yugoslavia was created after the second world war [sic!] out of several smaller states, including Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzgovenia, and Slovenia. Within each state there were ethnic and religious minorities with long histories of conflict. While Yugoslavia was under the control of the Soviet Union, these conflicts were kept in check by military force. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, new political structures were necessary, and political opportunities arose for the ambitious. The leaders of various factions, understanding Aristotle’s tlree [sic!] points very well, began to mobilize their followers to war by reminding them of their historical grievances against other groups. Serbian leaders published photographs of atrocities alledgedly committed by Croatians during WWII, reviving a conflict from 50 years earlier. Individuals were inspired through this angry rhetoric to attack, rape, and kill neighbors that had lived near them all their lives, simply because of their ethnicity or religion.
Mr. Holloway’s ignorance is astounding. While causing Aristotle to turn in his grave, it prompts both laughter and tears among the living:
- Even a superficially informed Middle American is dimly aware that Yugoslavia was the product of the First World War and that Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina had not been independent states but Austro-Hungarian provinces before its creation.
- Even a casual listener of Morning Edition knows that Yugoslavia’s dictator Josip Broz Tito broke away from Stalin in 1948 and that Yugoslavia remained outside the Soviet orbit (let alone Moscow’s “military force”) until its demise in the 1990’s.
- Even an occasional reader of a quality broadsheet may recall that the collapse of Yugoslavia was simultaneous with that of the Soviet Union, and not contingent upon it.
Mr. Holloway’s teaching is the equivalent of a Belgrade high school teacher, say, telling his Serbian charges that the United States of America came into being by the merger of the Union and the Confederacy in the aftermath of the Mexican War of 1861-1865, but remained under the British yoke until President Coolidge’s New Deal in the 1940’s.
GENOCIDE DENIAL—The morally outrageous part concerns Mr. Holloway’s dismissive reference to the Ustaša-instigated holocaust in Croatia, a gruesome yet relatively little known chapter of the Second World War which killed, by conservative estimates, half a million men, women and children… “simply because of their ethnicity or religion,” to paraphrase his rhetoric. Try to imagine Mr. Holloway instructing his students as follows: “Jewish leaders published photographs of atrocities allegedly committed by Germans during WWII, reviving a conflict from 50 years earlier” and thus instigating the Jews to commit mass murder, rape, and ethnic cleansing of innocents. Mr. Holloway would be clearing his desk and contemplating a new career in fast food catering by now, and justifiably so.
As I noted in my keynote presentation at Yad Vashem Center’s June 2006 symposium on the Holocaust in Yugoslavia, presided by Professor Yehuda Bauer, the most widely respected living authority on the grim issues of the period,
The number of victims at the Croatian death camp at Jasenovac—the only Quisling extermination outfit entrusted to the locals—is still uncertain. The lowest estimate with any pretense to seriousness—tens of thousands of victims—was made by the late Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, famous for saying “Thank God, my wife is neither a Serb nor a Jew.” Tudjman’s “estimate” on Jasenovac fits in with his other assessments:
“In his book Wastelands: Historical Truths, published in 1988, Mr. Tudjman wrote that the number of Jews who died in the Holocaust was 900,000—not six million. He has also asserted that not more than 70,000 Serbs died at the hands of the Ustashe—most historians say around 400,000 were killed.” (The New York Times, August 20, 1995)
Other sources provide estimates tens of times greater than Dr. Tudjman’s: “Jasenovac”—entry by Menachem Shelach in Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Yad Vashem, 1990, pp. 739-740—says, “Some six hundred thousand people were murdered at Jasenovac, mostly Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, and opponents of the Ustasa regime.” The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team estimated “that close to 600,000 … mostly Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, were murdered at Jasenovac.”
So much for the Jewish sources. Let us look at what the contemporary German allies of the Croatian Ustaša regime had to say on the subject. Hermann Neubacher, Hitler’s foremost political expert for the Balkans, in his book Sonderaufrag Südost 1940-1945. Bericht eines fliegenden Diplomaten (Goettingen, 1957, p. 18) wrote: “The prescription for the Orthodox Serbs issued by the leader and Führer of Croatia, Ante Pavelic, was reminiscent of the religious wars of the bloodiest memory: One third must be converted to Catholicism, another third must be expelled, and the final third must die. The last part of the program has been carried out.” [I.e., one-third of cca. 1.9 million were killed.]
In a report to Himmler, SS General Ernst Frick estimated that “600 to 700,000 victims were butchered in the Balkan fashion.” General Lothar Rendulic, commanding German forces in the western Balkans in 1943-1944, estimated the number of Ustaša victims to be 500,000. In his memoirs Gekaempft, gesiegt, geschlagen (Welsermühl Verlag, Wels und Heidelberg, 1952, p.161) he recalled a memorable exchange on this issue with a Croat dignitary:
When I objected to a high official who was close to Pavelic that, in spite of the accumulated hatred, I failed to comprehend the murder of half a million Orthodox, the answer I received was characteristic of the mentality that prevailed there: Half a million, that’s too much—there weren’t more than 200,000!
Julia Gorin reminded us in The Jerusalem Post (Feb. 22, 2010) of some facts of life, and death, in the Croatian state established and controlled by the Axis powers:
Germany entrusted Croatia with running its own concentration camps, without oversight... Archive photos of sadism that would make horror filmmakers blush survive today: Ustashas displaying an Orthodox priest’s head; an eyeless peasant woman; Serbs and Jews being pushed off a cliff; a Serb with a saw to his neck; and a smiling Ustasha holding the still-beating heart of prominent industrialist Milos Teslitch, who had been castrated, disemboweled and his ears and lips cut off. Italian writer Curzio Malaparte in his 1944 book Kaputt offers this detail: “While [Croatian Fuehrer Pavelic] spoke, I gazed at a wicker basket on his desk which seemed to be filled with mussels, or shelled oysters... ‘Are they Dalmatian oysters?’ I asked. [Pavelic] said smiling, 'It is a present from my loyal Ustashas... Forty pounds of human eyes’.”
BETTER RED THAN BRAIN DEAD—The Holloway farce brings to mind my own high school education, in Tito’s Yugoslavia, four decades ago. Its diploma—obtained after a grueling final exam known as the Matura (equivalent to Germany’s Abitur, or France’s Baccalaureat)—was the graduate’s entry to university or the civil service. By the time I attended the Tenth Gymnasium, a quarter of a century of Communist neglect was in evidence everywhere. It was nevertheless a very good school. It had a solid contingent of old teachers (then still titled “professors”) inherited from the old times, who firmly believed that their role was to teach, not to interact and connect. They used the polite “vous” form when addressing people half a century their juniors, but had no qualms about telling a wanting student that he was unfit to be in class, or his parents that he was too stupid for the Gymnasium and should transfer to a vocational school instead. The grading system was unabashedly meritocratic, from 1 for “F” to 5 for “A”, and designed with no allowances for social rank or parents’ clout (race, gender, and sexuality were not an issue in those days).
In contrast to the United States, we had a clearly articulated relationship between what is taught and what is tested. The workload was heavy, and necessitated several hours of serious study every day. At the end of it all the Maturant was a jack of all trades and a master of none, just as he was meant to be. He had a solid grounding in most areas once considered necessary for an educated, civilized person, and the assumption was that eventual excellence would be attained in his chosen field of university study.
In practical terms this meant that we all had some idea of what Leonidas did at Thermopylae and what Caesar said at the Rubicon; what was the Protagoras and who was Pythagoras; who was Attila and who was Totila; what was natural law and what was the second law of thermodynamics. Attendance at the symphony orchestra, ballet and opera matinees, every first Sunday of the month, was not obligatory but it was necessary for a good grade in music; and what started as a chore soon became a habit for at least some. Latin was on the whole easy, and making puns—I prided myself on rephrasing Descartes’ Cogito ergo sum by removing the g from “cogito”—was deemed only slightly pretentious.
Some areas of our curriculum were burdened by the veneer of the Titoist brand of Marxism—notably sociology, 20th century history, and modern philosophy—but the stamp was not deeply felt in most subjects. For the most part we had a curriculum essentially similar to the Gymnasiums of Austria-Hungary that provided the model for the Kingdom of Serbia in the 1880s and remained in force ever since. Under this system an ever-present principle, mostly implied and only rarely explicitly spelled out, was that moral and aesthetic norms are not a matter of personal choice. There were “standards” and we were supposed to conform to them, and to accept the lasting norms that antedated and transcended the rules of the current regime. In addition there was the home, and friends, where one could be free.
I have often wondered if the Communists allowed old-style schools to survive by design or by default, and on balance I give more weight to the former. For many middle-ranking apparatchiks having good schools was a personal need: they wanted their own children to be “properly educated,” and, secretly knowing the limits of their abilities, they were loath to experiment with the school system the way they had experimented—with catastrophic effect—with the economy and society. They wanted their children to assume the positions of leadership that they had come to regard as rightfully theirs, and—being largely half-educated peasants—they had enough common sense to find the answer. They intuited that the only way to forge a New Class from their offspring was to combine the usurped privilege of power with the inherited privilege of good education that develops the mind and enhances character.
My high school days came at the tail end of a period of uneasy coexistence between Us and Them, the society and the “comrades.” The schools produced young people capable of thinking for themselves, able to read between the lines of the official media, and at the same time to be unintimidated by “the West” to which they were increasingly exposed. When I took my Matura we had our dreams and we were smarting for action; four decades later we are mostly dispersed over three continents, which is a generational defeat, but we did well conventionally and financially, which is a credit to our long-dead teachers.
Even before the first shots were fired came the destructive reforms of Yugoslav education of the late 1970s and early 1980s, which were inspired more by the fashionable Western notions of egalitarianism and visceral hatred of excellence than by the old Marxist orthodoxy. The reformers of the past two decades have declared that the Gymnasium was an elitist institution incapable of responding to the demands for greater equality of educational opportunity and the growing need for vocationally qualified personnel. It was to become a mass institution, and effectively abolished in the process.
By now Serbia is reintegrated into the “international community” and ready to welcome the creative input Robert E. Holloway. Going east may be an astute career move for a man of his creative sweep and talent.
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Mr. Halloway must be very young not to know Yugoslavia was outside the Comintern orbit. What is sadder is a Wikileaks release signed by Ambassador Rivkin shows the American Embassy in Paris is pushing American style multi-culturalism in French education. Good bye French Revolution, hello mandatory seeing France from the eyes of newcomers from the Magreb. The national AP American History exam does not include a single question on military history from the Civil War. Thoughtful people without employment prosepcts are too dangerous in the new world order.
Photographs are "rhetoric"?
A very bitter-sweet memoir of growing up in Belgrade. I remember at what is now the eighth gymnasium in the early seventies, the offspring of the new class was mostly failing the Matura, but was allowed to graduate nonetheless. They all wanted to become lawyers and chose sociology (marxism) as the main Matura subject. The film "Hey babu riba" (also known as "Bal na vodi"), depicts the conflict you are referring to, between us and them.
By the way, Dr. Trifkovic, lately I have noticed a series of virulent attacks on the film director Kosturica in the Serbian media. Although I am not a great fan of his, I remember "When father was away on business" was a beautiful film, which I would recommend to anyone. Anyway, why are they after him? I feel a column in his defense at the "Chronicles" would do a great deal of good.
Kusturica is a world-class film director but also a Sarajevo-born Muslim who declares himself a Serb and who was baptized an Orthodox Christian a few years ago and received the name Nemanja (like the first Serbian monarch back in the Middle Ages). That is an unforgivable sin in the eyes of the International Community. A Serb who comnverts to Mohammedanism would be their hero, of course.
Where did Mr Holloway present his "thesis"? I want to address a response to him, his colleagues and his audience.
Peter Maher
Captures quite vividly just how bad today's schools have become. Dr. Trifkovic knows from our conversations that I envy his education in the gymnasium. My own comparably more expensive education in an English-style boarding school here in America didn't come close to the breadth or depth of his Yugoslav education. That is why I spend many free hours years after graduating still catching up on an education that should have come decades earlier, not to mention de-programming elements of a miseducation of the sort Dr. Trifkovic described.
Anecdotal evidence is often amusing but more often misleading. Hyperbole aside, Mr. Holloway is no criminal. He is a H.S. history teacher - not a historian. Nor is he a Gymnassium professor . His ignorance is lamentable, but far short of astounding. Moreover, his historical errors are not at all equivalent to the fantasies concocted by the fictitious Serb. The capture of one prisoner hardly "captures quite vividly " how bad the battle goes.
Some of you may be interested in reading "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America" by Charlotte Iserbyt. Iserbyt served as Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), U.S. Department of Education, during the first Reagan Administration.
http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/MomsPDFs/DDDoA.sml.pdf
Does a joker like Zizek (a Slovene, I know) count for anything in Serbia? or do they recognize him for what he is and wisely leave him to the West?
@3 & 4:
Well, that certainly explains why "Underground" has been sitting in my Netflix queue for almost a year with "Availability Unknown."
@5:
Ditto. I also envy the gymnasium education, as my private pre- and post-secondary Catholic education was less than comprehensive. A two-year foreign language requirement is inept and immersion options should be offered from Kindergarten.
Two of my saving grace's: Grandfather and father. During my youth, they kept me balanced, but the de-programming was only successful due to my own thirst for truth and knowledge, as well as an innate talent to read between the lines. It will continued until my departure.
I suppose this defines my many conflicts with the nuns during my youth . . . we never did see eye-to-eye;-)
Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (August 31, 12 – January 24, 41 C.E.), most commonly known as Caligula had been exposing Oral law instead of written law and even when he did so the writings would be captured with small letters.”No one shell know what I do”. Analogy with Mr. Robert E. Holloway might be poor but from the higher instance very significant. The power of mind rule the world .The facts are always more complex than any description we may give. Under such circumstances do we expect “the national interest “as actually articulated and pursued to be simply the outcome of the application of rational faculties to objective data or to be expression of specific class interests?Will to power Nietzsche would say and should I add a “little”of military arsenal? I would say that decision makers would agree with Mr. Robert E.Holloway only in one that he might have done a good job, for now.
To harsh? Hooping that my observation is wrong(in this specific case).
Dr.Trifkovic we meet once at the law university in Nis and recently in Melbourne…It was truly a pleasure to listening your presentation.
Sasa,Melbourne
r.a.schulz @ 6 "Mr. Holloway is no criminal. He is a H.S. history teacher – not a historian."
But Dr. Trifkovic did not accuse Mr. Holloway of being a criminal, only of being ignorant of the subject he "teaches." The crime is committed by those who let him teach. I have some experience here because my older daughter has a degree in early childhood education from the University of Maryland. Based on her curriculum, knowing anything about the subject you teach is not important. All you need to know is the latest theories on instruction and how to put them into practice, plus the latest politically correct issues being used to indoctrinate young students. With the exception of issues like racism and environmentalism, for example, it’s not what you teach, but how you teach it, that is important.
In this instance, Mr. Holloway was pointing out that those nasty Serb leaders persuaded their Serb followers “to attack, rape, and kill neighbors that had lived near them all their lives, simply because of their ethnicity or religion.” I mentioned elsewhere on this site that my younger daughter is taking an on-line course in Western Heritage from the local community college. The assigned text also accuses the Serbs of instituting a policy of “ethnic cleansing” during the 1992 conflict between the Croatians and the Serbians to “divide Bosnia-Herzegovina.” The text (The Western Heritage, 2010, Tenth Ed., Donald Kagan, Steven Ozment, and Frank M. Turner) also describes the Bosnian Muslims as innocent victims “crushed between the opposing forces.” (In perusing the text, I notice a pro-multiculturalist, anti-racist theme throughout.)
"Having teachers like Holloway in American classrooms is worse than a crime, it is a mistake."
Having teachers like Holloway in American classrooms is worse than a mistake, it is a crime?
Mr. Hollway better be careful otherwise he may be brought up on Holocaust denial charges for such stunning ignorance.
Continuing my previous post, I believe that education, at least in the U.S., is a criminal enterprise. One example from my older daughter’s experience at U of MD: her curriculum had requirements to take elective courses and students were bribed into taking courses in areas like feminist and black studies because those courses counted double credits toward a degree. You saved money by taking worthless courses. What other than a criminal enterprise would encourage students to take such courses instead of studying more important subjects?
My second example is my younger daughter’s text. Apparently not much care is taken in revising it. When using the index to look up topics, I have discovered incorrect page references. For example, there are two pages listed in the index for “ethnic cleansing,” but there is no mention of ethnic cleansing on one of the pages. In the section of the text on the Old Regime, there is no mention of Tocqueville, nor is he included in the recommended readings, so I looked in the index. There is one page referenced for “Tocqueville.” The reference to Tocqueville is in a lead-in to an excerpt from a report on Kristallnacht by David Buffum, the American consul in Leipzig in 1938. It says, “Compare the events recorded in this document with the predictions that Alexis de Tocqueville made to Count Arthur de Gobineau about what might happen when racial thinking affected mass politics. (See Chapter 24.)”
There is nothing in Chapter 24 about Tocqueville’s predictions to Gobineau. Gobineau is mentioned as a “reactionary French diplomat, [who] enunciated the first important theory of race as the major determinant of human history.” Apparently, what Tocqueville has to say about the Old Regime is not important, but what he had to say about racial thinking is, or at least was in a previous edition of the text. Disregarding the inaccuracies and poor editing of the text, one gets the idea that the Western heritage consists of racism and sexism. All this is from a text that cost the student $120. Of course, you can get an on-line version of the text for about $70. But you do not actually get anything except access to the text on-line, and then for only a few months while taking the course.
I did my college thesis on revisionist history in American textbooks. I was shocked to discover that much of the content wasn't so much revisionism but just flat out ignorance on the subjects. Almost like the author heard it from some one who heard it from someone so it must be true type of history.
The current history text which I have to teach from (thank God only for a year), although meant to give an authentic account of American history from a Catholic perspective, is filled with factual errors and gives only small doses of the whole story. If given just the book, the reader would have a vague error ridden "knowledge" of US history. I think much of the problem are these people with Bachelors and Masters degrees, as well as Doctorates thinking that they are these great intellectuals because of the alphabet soup next to their names or because they wrote a book. The fact is many are just too lazy to do their research and rely on he said she said first grade level history.
Dr. Trifkovic states that even the superficially informed Middle American is dimly aware that Yugoslavia was a product of the First World War. I would like to believe that this is the case, but I have my doubts as I have juniors and seniors coming into my high school classes not even aware that Lee commanded Confederate forces at Gettysburg. Juniors and Seniors! I doubt they could point out Eastern Europe on a map, let alone former Yugoslavia. Excellent article Dr. Trifkovic.
#15
Actually, there are some things that education enterprises do that, if done by any other private enterprise, would lead to the private businessman being arrested.
It is illegal to ask customers information about household income, family status, and other irrelevant data, unless absolutely necessary. Universities get to ask these useless things.
It is illegal to conduct price discrimination with such information and charge what the traffic will bear. Universities get to do that too.
It is illegal to form trusts and price agreements on what all enterprises in the industry will charge. Yes! Universities get to do that too.
Either the law can decide to do away with all these restrictions altogether or it can stop having universities be above the law. Universities have professors who frequently condemn corporate cronyism, but these people will never ever apply it to themselves.
r.a. schultz would have us believe being ignorant of the subject one teaches is acceptable because, well, expectations are set low at the high school level. Given this country's once much higher expectations and much better educators and students in some time past then this example is indeed quite vivid as I stated and quite tragic as Dr. Trifkovic wrote. I fail to see how it isn't just because schultz says so. But in a world without belief in objectivity or firm morals, I can see where schultz may indeed believe what he/she writes.
Further, there is nothing "fictitious" about this Serb posting, merely anonymous to the general reader reading his online pen name. But well known in person to Drs. Trifkovic and Fleming and the editorial staff at Chronicles.
As I understand it, Schultz's "fantasies concocted by the fictitious Serb" is a reference to my "Belgrade high school teacher telling his Serbian charges that the United States of America came into being by the merger of the Union and the Confederacy in the aftermath of the Mexican War of 1861-1865, but remained under the British yoke until President Coolidge’s New Deal in the 1940’s."
Thank you, Dr. Trifkovic. I was confused because he had quoted from my comment.
Your fictitious Serbian teacher actually sounds like he could well be teaching US history alongside Mr. Holloway.
I'll add one other thought. There is also recent literature that addresses how bad students are as opposed to teachers. I also agree with the viewpoint that students today aren't what they used to be in terms of discipline, hard work, and manners as enforced by strong home lives. No doubt of this. But at the same time it hardly absolves teachers and institutions of being negligent in curricular development and knowledgability in subject matter taught. Even the best students cannot learn from the likes of a Holloway. I wasn't sure if RA Schultz was leaning toward the student blame narrative.
#9.ON Zizek: I do not feel qualified to pass judgement on his books and thought, however the warning signals were going off as I read his biography. For instance: How can one be a Slovene separatist and a communist at the same time, or the notorious shell game of being a part of the cultural counterculture (elitist and separatist magazine called Youth-Maldina), while in fact pushing the envelope for the ruling class. Slovenes like to point out to how successful their national project is in the same terms as the Romanians do (per capita gnp is supposedly four times greater than before), but in reality Slovenia is the same pitiful place it always was and even more so. If the separatists had wanted to return the society to the ways of yesteryears, their project would have made sense. But they made things worse than before by replacing traditional culture and values with pseudo scientific psycho babble. I assume that the worldwide promotion of Zizek is one of the many ploys to convince the populace and the world that Slovenia is better off now than when it was a part of Yugoslavia. Time to wake up.
@13 Prateek,
Dr. Trifkovic is paraphrasing Tallyrand.
In 2006 when my daughter was spewed out of the 12 years' compulsory attendance system, the local paper ran a puff piece on the school's valedictorian. She took all the most pathetically easy classes, was accepted into Elizabethtown College where she intended to major in the rigorously intellectual program of "kindergarten education."
Fellow men, this is the triumph of egalitarianism. I'm going to watch Mike Judge's movie Idiocracy for the tenth time.
The school is Colonial Forge, and the paper is the Fredericksburg Free Lance Star.
Belay my last, 2006 was not the year. It may have been 2005.
A stunning indictment of American public school education. Not that any further proof of Dr. Fleming's charge that it is evil to send one's children to public school was necessary, but this provides it in spades.
Quoting Julia Gorin as an authority only diminishes the seriousness of your conclusion. She is a radical neoconservative follower of Trotsky. The truth is unimportant to her. Her agenda is all that matters.
I expect better from Dr. Trifkovic and Chronicles.
Dr. Trifkovic
Thank you for enlightening eagle.
Mr. Holloway's ignorance is not at all astounding but typical of even well informed Middle Americans. What I find truly astounding, is that you actually believe "even a superficially informed MIddle American", "a casual listener" and "an occasional reader" possess the knowledge you so generously attribute to them. On that score I happen to think you are constructing strawmen up on Rock Candy Mountain. Now Mr. Holloway is lacking in knowledge that to you is second nature. However, to the casual observer and the occasional reader it is arcane. But for lack of that knowledge, Mr. Holloway-granted he is a teacher- is savaged and placed in a pillory. And I would bet that Mr. Holloway is probably the perfect poster-boy for the "casual listener" and " occasional " reader" you had in mind.
No impertinence intended and I do enjoy and benefit from your articles.
Your rephrasing of Descartes is most amusing. My own, commenting on the "sexual revolution" of the past half century, offered the new motto of this era: "Veni ergo sum."
#27. Mr.Schulz, while you are making a small but valid point, do you really think mr. Holloway should be left off the hook? Shouldn't even a highschool teacher be required to reconcile his worthwile project with proper facts?. Suppose he made an assignment by stating that Al Gore invented the internet and then a year later Gore discovered the theory of global warming. Wouldn't this constitute a similar misconduct where a teacher appears to have a handle on a concept while in reality has only superficial or incorrect knowledge of the subject. Granted noone cares where the Balkans are, but had he made a similar blunder concerning the Shoah, his teaching caremer would be over forever. In this situation the person who snitched on him, most likely needs to worry whether he will graduate or not. This is the ultimate lesson from Dr. Serge's article.
Perhaps we are seeing the end game of a process that inevitably occurs when education is made compulsory. In the long run, having a captive market created through compulsory education laws means that the 'educators' become a privileged class who dont have to deliver, just another set of useless bureaucrats leeching off the poor taxpayer. And even dedicated teachers cant do a good job because of the environment they are forced to work in, and also because, in the wake of continuous dumbing down, they dont even know what a good job is, even if they think they do.
Any time you have a set of public employees who get praises loaded on them for supposedly 'selfless' 'dedication' to 'society', you are looking at a con game.
Looking at some of the teachers who keep popping up on the news, even during mundane news casts about mundane issues, it never fails to occur to me what pathetic, messed up people most of them are nowadays, and I would never want them around my children, much less would I want them to have power and authority over them.
Mr. Bailey
Thank you for spelling my name correctly.
1.off the hook- No
2. proper facts-Yes
3. superficial/incorrect knowledge - with age and hindsight I now recognize superficial and incorrect knowledge aplenty. I'm looking at a few bookcases containg books I'm certain are as full of It, as were some teachers I've known. I still love those books and respect those same teachers. Shortcomings don"t constitute misconduct but are part of growing up.
4. ultimate lesson- let us save that conversation for a few millenia hence.
I don't think that a teacher can be pardoned for ignorance of historical facts that were well known to elementary school children in the 1950s. High school graduates may not retain any of what they are exposed to, but the creation of Yugoslavia at the end of WWI was until recently a fact that could not be escaped. If Holloway is typical of today's high school teachers, it does not matter. Such people are fraudulently taking money without putting any time or energy into acquiring even an elementary knowledge. Dr. Trifkovic may be too demanding, but teachers who pass off disinformation as fact are the same as liars. Imagine an engineer who could not be troubled to learn math because, well, Americans don't like to study math. When the bridge falls down and people are killed, it's not his fault for possessing an incompetence that is average, is it? So when American children grow up stupid, ignorant, and illiterate, we cannot, after all, blame their teachers who are too stupid even to know how little they know? I suppose it would be easier to forgive them, if we were not forced to pay them.
Has anyone ever seen the bumper sticker that says: "IF YOU CAN READ THIS, THANK A TEACHER?" I propose an alternative: IF YOU CAN'T READ ANYTHING MORE COMPLICATED THAN A BUMPER STICKER, THANK A TEACHER.
@21 Mr. Bailey,
It really is a mystery why Yugoslavia broke up, since it was governed benevolently by the peaceful, erudite, brave, just, and (above all) humble Serbs. What were the other countries thinking?
And why did Serbia seem so intent on keeping "pitiful" places like Slovenia under its boot? I suppose, it was yet another case of Serbian benevolence: Slovenia's friendly big brother just trying to do what was best for it. (Why are Serbia’s kind intentions always so misunderstood? It's a puzzlement!)
Surely, it had nothing to do with the fact that Slovenia was more prosperous and advanced than Serbia, and that there was a net flow of revenue from Slovenia into Belgrade. Nor the fact that Serbia routinely shut out Slovenia from political debate and control.
Oh brother, here come the demagogues opening a different can of worms altogether.
Mr. Ferkul is apparently a product of a Holloway-like education given he doesn't know about:
1. The Slovenes and Croats that dominated the Yugoslav politburo that was headed by the Croat Tito
2. The economic studies of the late 1980s that deomonstrated Slovenia and Croatia were given favorable trade status that insured their "superior" economy to Serbia's...which prominent Slovene economist grudgingly acknowledged were accurate
3. That Slovenes, as versus Croats, never had an ethnic "beef" with Serbs...as exemplified by the fact that a Serb was an elected mayor of the Slovene capital just a few years after Slovenia's secession
These, unlike Mr. Ferkul's ramblings, are readily verifiable facts from independent sources.
I could go on but why bother when all I'll read in response is other "facts" about being under the Serbian boot...or even being behind the iron curtain.
This discussion reminds me of a statement made years ago by a little known American philosopher, Vernon Howard. He usually didn't talk about politics, but when he did, he could be insightful. The following statement of Howard's on education, made as a brief detour when talking on a broader subject, was a gem, and it's been transcribed verbatim from a talk given in 1978:
'The time comes, hopefully, that we ... begin to see, instead of a mind training school, it was a mind robbing school. Wasn't it? It robbed us of our own intelligence, and...look, little kids dont know any better. We really dont.
Do you know what fiends adults are? Do you know what absolute devils they are? Fiends that are called parents, fiends that are called school teachers, fiends that are called government people. Those fiends take a little child from one day on, from the time he's one, two, three, four, five, six, eight, twelve, on up, and they take this whole classroom of little kids six years old, and infect them with poison. What do they care as long as they get their salary every year? What do they care as long as they get their pension after they retire, and they hope they can retire at thirty, and they'll agitate for that. " We love your children, let us retire on a big pension at thirty"....the fiends, the devils!.....and you are putting up with them, you're associating with them, you think they're decent people. You dont even know what they have done to you. You fell for it, we fell for it, of course we did.
Now look, we're all grown up, a little bit, physically at least, now let's begin to see what was done to us by all these nice people why are trying to "help" you, who are trying to raise your social security benefits, who are telling you about God.'
Eagle,
Dr. Ferkul has a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering and was one of two best men at my wedding. I have known him since 1979, and I can assure you that you're unlikely to meet a better man.
Apparently, it is OK for Mr. "Bailey" to denigrate Slovenia "as the same pitiful place it always was"--a comment that drew no criticism from you or anyone else--but not acceptable for a Slovenian-American to defend his ancestral homeland. Based on the many Slovenian-Americans I have had the pleasure of knowing, I doubt there are more than a dozen who wish that Slovenia was still part of Yugoslavia, and those dozen are likely to be Communists.
Mr. Piatak,
The online name jack bailey appears to have been used by several different people in the past. I do not know if this Mr. Bailey is the same Mr. Bailey as has commented in the past. Given that I have so often disagreed with a "Mr. Bailey" in the past I've given up reading any posts by any and all "Mr. Baileys". I simply didn't read the post that you mention and failed to notice Dr. Ferkul's remark was addressed to him. That was my oversight.
At the same time Dr. Ferkul unjustly smeared Serbia.
I would neither denigrate nor endorse the view that Slovenia is some "pitiful" place. It's actually a beautiful country and I have wonderful Slovenian friends and acquaintances from there.
Regardless of what Mr. Bailey wrote, as a Serbian-American who has become disgusted with the blatant lies bandied about Serbian history I was upset with Dr. Ferkul's mischaracterisations and outright fabrications.
No where in my post did I insist that Slovenia as an integral part of Yugoslavia was either a position that I held or insisted on. What instead I did was provide some facts that put into context Dr. Ferkul's accusations of Slovenia having been "under the Serbian boot".
1. Communist Yugoslavia's leader/dictator was a Croat (some say half Croat, half Slovene) Josip Broz Tito...and the politburo comprised of his lieutenents was comprised of influetial Slovenes and Croats while the two prominent Serbs of any power were purged...in fact most scholars agree that the most influential Tito advisor was the Slovene Edvard Karadjel...while scholars will readily explain that the Montenegrin Serb Milovan Djilas was imprisoned for holding heretical democratic views and the Serb Aleksandar Rankovic was purged and put under house arrest for threatening Tito's power position...no other Serbian heavyweights capable of exerting control over the whole of Yugoslavia existed in Yugoslav politics thereafter..pre- or post-Tito
2. There are credible economic analyses produced that demonstrate that the Yugoslav economy was structured (in terms of centralized industrial planning and trade rules amongst and by republics) to favor Slovenian and Croatian GDP growth at the expense of the Serbian (and other republics') economy...probably directly correlated to fact #1 above...relevant because too often Slovenia and Croatia's higher GDP was often used as "proof" that the two were "capitalist"/"western" oriented while Serbia was "communist"/"eastern" oriented...a view that is a falsehood in light of the economic analysis and in light of Serbia's cultural history...and whose truth serves as further proof that the whole of Yugoslavia was indeed not under the Serbian boot
3. Slovenes, in my reading and in my own personal experienece, do not in general bare a grudge or a chauvanist viewpoint vis-a-vis the Serbs and likewise with Serbs as regards Slovenes...which I characterised with one example: that popularly elected Mayor Jankovic of Ljubljana is a Serb...born in central Serbia...which is in some manner proof of Slovenian good ethnic relations with Serbs...the same could not have happened in Zagreb where there runs a fanatical dislike of all persons, things, and ideas Serbian...important in this thread because I was surprised to read about Slovenia and the "Serbian boot"...Slovenia in fact has a longstanding and still unresolved border dispute with Croatia...which acquired during communist times territory which may in fact be Slovenian
While I sympathize with whatever tragedies and crimes the Slovenes and Croats themselves suffered under communism - and they did - I do think it important to put the notions about that communism into thier factual context.
As an aside, I daresay I also hold a variety of post graduate degrees just in case that should be an important consideration as regards the validity of my own comments.
As an addendum I wish to add I've known my friend Mr. Piatak for years and intended no disrespect to him in clarifying the above. I'd say he and I routinely agree on most every issue, particularly as regards our passion for defending the American manufacturing economy which we've both watched disintegrate before our eyes here in the industrial heartland.
Eagle,
Thanks for the addendum. I didn't think you were being disrespectful toward me. I was merely defending my friend, who was responding to a completely gratutitous attack on Slovenia.
Mr. Piatak, it is commendable that you come to your friend's rescue. I will leave it at that. Sadly, Mr. Ferkul has in fact answered my statements better than I would have expected. Res ipsa locquitur.
The eagle has crash landed!
If Croatia and Slovenia were such poor members of the Yugoslav alliance, why not just let them go? Chalk up the entire alliance to a huge mistake and cast off the troublesome states that were such a problem for the rest of Yugoslavia. Why does Serbia need to burdened by carrying other less able states?
Matej, like every other Croatian nationalist encountered under these circumstances, i.e, faced with basic facts, chooses to ignore them and instead erect a strawman.
1. Serbia's wish for a responsible and orderly disintegration of the federal Yugoslav state in no way is indicative of her wish to retain a quarrelsome and perpetually unsatisfied Croat nation.
2. Croatia's theft of historically Serbian and Slovenian territory during that disintegration was predicated upon a map designed by a Croat communist dictator and enforced by a Croat-Slovene politburo, as previously described. (For further facts, see The Krajina Chronicle by Dr. Srdja Trifkovic.)
3. Contrary to media myth, Serbs participated in no fighting as regards Slovenia. Slovenian border guards skirmished with Macedonian conscripts of the Yugoslav People's Army during a 10 day stand off otherwise characterized as a "war" during the initial phases of the hurried, confusing, and irresponsibly rushed Yugoslav disintegration.
4. Croats provoked internecine militia fighting in the Serbian Krajina by insisting on an unnegotiated secession of all of the communist "republic's" territory without prior consent of the centuries-old populace over autonomy and minority rights. History will likely depend on now available recordings and transcripts which clearly demonstrate Tudjman's neo-Ustasha regime wished for fighting all along in order to justify the expulsion and killing of the Serbian population of the Krajina - their unfinsihed project otherwise begun during World War II under Nazi cover.
5. History will likely also depend on military statistics that were laid out for me by a Serbian military officer: Had she so desired the Serbian military could have within 24 hours leveled Zagreb in the period prior to 1994 rather than allowing Croatia to arm herself and prepare for Genocide Round 2.
If Matej would like to confront the facts about a Croat communist dictator, his Croat-Slovene politburo, his rigged economy, his doctored map of "republics" (an interesting re-invention for the Austro-Hungarian province of Croatia) I am here and reading.
Otherwise, please stop wasting our time with strawmen and petty lies.
I wonder how we can fault poor Mr. Holloway for his misconduct, when evreytime this topic comes up we have to refight the facts at the Cronicles and this time even with the name that is in its masthead. I thought at least here the consensus was that the Serbs were the wronged party. Apparently not, despite all the efforts of Dr. Trifkovic, Dr. Flemming and a large army of posters.
I apologize for the typos.
In light of the recent comments I want to return to an earlier question as regards the Bosnian film-maker Kusturica. I'd like to add a few observations to Dr. Trifkovic's insightful explanation of the man.
Westerners posing as moralizing multiculturalists have long detested the actually multicultural scene of the Serbian capital, in many respects an actual Yugoslav city. And chauvanist Croats and radically Islamist "Bosniaks" have fumed over the betrayal of "their own" as regards said real multiculturalism of Belgrade, even as they pretended that the newly reformulated Islamist capital of the Bosnian "Federation" was a multicultural utopia held back from its potential glory only by nefarious, scheming Serbs.
What I mean is that Kusturica is representative of the situation but he's hardly alone. Bosnia's most significant intellectuals and artists for decades gravitated toward Serbian culture and the Serbian capital in particular. The Nobel laureate Andric and world-reknowned writer Selimovic are two other even more prominent examples of the phenomenon. More recently Croat composer Bregovic and Sarajevan-born Albanian dramatist Fehmiu are examples.
Muslims, Croats, Albanians, the best of the intellectual fruit from Bosnia gravitated to and identified with Serbia. This iritates the lunatic chauvanists who would re-engineer the cultural orientation of the region.
Yet one is hard pressed to find a converse situation as regards say Serbs in the Croatian capital.
Once again, basic facts should make observers ponder if Serbian society really was as exclusivist and chauvanist as portrayed in the media narrative.
@ 33 Mr Ferkul
Slovenia has pretty much become comfortable with its new role as Baja Austria. German newspapers are selling well, and they have a good touch with grapes. The former ambassador is a friend.
From afar, the newly formed political units of the former Yugoslavia are about as important as the present political entities of the former Trust Territory(TTPI). The vast majority of Americans, even elementary school children in the 1950's, knew or knows little re these sovereignties. And if some hapless H.S. teacher tells his students that Palau is a part of FMC, it will not make for an american tragedy.
Eeagle at @45. Exactly. Belgrade was, is and will forever be the multicultural New York and Los Angeles of the Balkans. If you make it in Belgrade you can make it anywhere. Claims that the Serbs have exploited and used the surrounding areas is laughable to anyone with any insight or decency. Likewise are the claims that Yugoslavia had to fall apart. Those who made it happen deserve to be cursed with eternal shame. For this, Slovenian leadership usually escapes the blame. However, it is they that should be singled out and pilloried more than the others. The role they played in the destruction was under the radar. However, had they stayed patriotic and did their job, the country would have been saved. Instead of taking the high road and demanding reforms of the bankrupt communist system come Hell or high water, they engaged in a series of shameful and petty acts and theatrics designed to empower its local cleptocracy. Sending bananas to Hashim Taci during the fraudulent strike in the Trepca mine, the spitting at the Serbs at the Cankar house, the pantiless girls weirding out the recruits and servicemen, the shameful downing of the helicoper in the center of Laibach, the murders of the recruits and, after the fact, the erasing of hundreds of thousands from the residence lists. This is just to name some of the transgressions. Is this the comportment of honorable men? Now if I am not allowed to call such behavior pitiable and therefore their land pitiable, if I am not allowed to point out to the postmodernist fraud perpetrated by the dissolute and corrupt Mr. Jansa, then there is not much point in blaming Mr. Holloway for inadvertently stumbling into a thorny bush. And in the end, I am sure that Mr. Holloway will find a way to apologize, something that will never happen when it comes to the virulent nationalists who post here, since for them a civil Yugoslav society does not exist nor it ever had, despite the perfect example of the city of Belgrade. Belgrade was meant to be an Athens or a Paris for the South Slavs, something that was obvious to those intellectual giants from a hundred years ago that made the country happen. They are rolling in their graves looking at the dunces that selfishly destroyed Yugoslavia and the vermin that are now running their separate criminal satrapies, "countries", "republics", that are nothing but the laughing stock of the whole world. Unprofitable and dependent on charity from all over. Pitiable! And yes, Slovenia is on this list! Is she not pitiable? As a quick example, Slovenia had to take degrading orders with a smile from the State Department just a little while ago. But these things happen to her all the time and in all fields of endavor whether it's politics, universities business, medicine etc., humiliations that NEVER happened when she was a part of Yugoslavia. However, supposedly it's all good! After all, hurray, Slovenia got rid of those despicable Juznjakov (southerners), those Hrvatov (Croats) and Bosancov (Bosnians). Slovenian chauvinism is nothing to laugh about, nor are they any less irrational or violent than the other Southern Slav tribes, despite the fact that they pride themselves on being different and better than the rest.
#47. Mr. Schulz, I am starting to agree with you. Let's forgive poor Mr. Holloway. Unlike some, he did not mean any harm. And secondly, you are quite right, these countries have willed themselves into irrelevancy, and should be treated as not more important than Palau. By contrast, Taiwan is a little bigger than Slovenia but with 15X the population, yet per capita GNP is more than double! Who are they kidding? I apologize. I have posted more than my share and I shall stop on this thread.
#49 Mr. Bailey 1. From Dr.T's article it is not possible to tell if Mr.Holloway's instruction to his students are quoted in full. It appears to me that further instructions were forthcoming . But in any case I'm not now, nor have been , privy to his intentions. I have no reason to assume they were/are not benign. 2. small point- I do not assert these countries have willed themselves into irrelevancy - I simply state they are "as important as Palau'.
My intent has not been to praise Mr. H, only to defend him from what could possibly be an ever so slightly biased jury. I agree with G.K.'s observation that " something can be said for every error,but..whatever said..the most important thing..is that it is erroneous." Mr.Holloway has erred. I defend not his error, but the man's right to err. I defend Mr. H the man and teacher, not Mr. H the hapless pawn caught in the middle of a balkanized Hatfield/McCoy feud. My comments are meant to address education not balkanization.