June 19, 2012
Che Guevara
Che Guevara, you see, was “a leader in Latin America” who was “saddened by how poor people were wherever he visited” and “decided that he would give all his time and energy to work to change that.”
I doubt I have to remind the average Taki reader why holding up Che as a role model to elementary-school kids (or anyone else) is, as today’s teachers are wont to put it, “inappropriate.”
But let’s pick apart the School Board’s teaching materials anyhow.
Beneath an especially dramatic colorized version of Korda’s famous photograph, children learn that Guevara was “a doctor.”
That’s a lie.
Kids are told that Che “is called a “revolutionary” because he wanted to change the way people…viewed the world.”
If by “how they viewed the world” you meant, “from the fatal side of a firing squad,” then I guess that’s kosher.
Kids learn that Che’s particular passion was literacy, making him sound like your average White House First Lady. Executing thousands of POWs seems like a weird way to teach them to read. Unlike the folks at the Toronto District School Board, though, I”m not up on the latest pedagogy.
We”re also helpfully informed that today, “Cuba enjoys a literacy rate of over 99.8% (that’s almost 100%…)” (!)
That literacy rate is another lie. Plus there’s no word on what reading materials are provided to all the homosexuals Castro’s put behind bars.
Once again, my husband’s post went viral, with mentions by Dennis Prager and others. Only one news outlet gave him credit, though. In the wake of Big Media exposure, the TDSB took down the Che materials.
However, questions remain unanswered”and will likely stay that way. The board’s “communications” department is notoriously uncommunicative.
Why are Toronto public schools dividing children by race (in this case, the impossibly broad designation “Hispanic”), then teaching them lies?
How must parents who fled Central and South American dictatorships feel about their children being told to admire a man who may have killed one of their relatives?
Then again: Why was my (white, Canadian-born, and childless) husband apparently the first human being in the city to complain about this material?
And how long until we uncover teaching aids designed (by white Canadian-born liberals, of course) to “help” the city’s “Asian” children learn about the wondrous achievements of, say, Pol Pot?
“Pol Pot was a leader of Cambodia. He cared very much about the diet of his people and those with bad eyesight.”
