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Thursday, Jul 9, 2009
How the conservative Washington Times helped create a myth about the teachers' union and Sept. 11 that has become conventional wisdom.
Sep 5, 2002 | Over the last few weeks, the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers' union, has been widely denounced for supposedly calling on educators not to blame the Sept. 11 attacks on al-Qaida. But this is a manufactured falsehood created by a kind of assembly line for political myths. The story is familiar: A distorted claim is fed into the echo chamber, where it is increasingly twisted as it is repeated over and over until it becomes conventional wisdom.
The controversy was created by an Aug. 19 article on Page 1 of the Washington Times about a Web site created by the NEA's Health Information Network. The site was designed to help schools plan lessons for the first anniversary of Sept. 11. Under the headline "NEA delivers history lesson; Tells teachers not to cast 9/11 blame," reporter Ellen Sorokin claimed that the NEA "is suggesting to teachers that they be careful on the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks not to 'suggest any group is responsible' for the terrorist hijackings that killed more than 3,000 people."
Sorokin wrote that "suggested lesson plans compiled by the NEA recommend that teachers 'address the issue of blame factually,' noting: 'Blaming is especially difficult in terrorist situations because someone is at fault. In this country, we still believe that all people are innocent until solid, reliable evidence from our legal authorities proves otherwise.'" According to the story, the NEA simultaneously "takes a decidedly blame-America approach, urging educators to 'discuss historical instances of American intolerance,' so that the American public avoids 'repeating terrible mistakes.'" Quotes providing context from NEA health information network director Jerald Newberry are largely buried at the end of the piece.
Sorokin does concede that "the suggestions and lesson plans" that are the source of all of her quotes "were developed by Brian Lippincott, affiliated with the Graduate School of Professional Psychology at the John F. Kennedy University in California," rather than the NEA. But she obscures the fact that every supposed NEA quote in her story is derived from a single lesson written by Lippincott that appears on the Kennedy University Web site, not the NEA's. The NEA did link to Lippincott's work as a suggested lesson plan. However, recommending someone else's work on an outside Web site does not mean that each word in the linked article represents the NEA's official position, and it is clearly unfair to state, as Sorokin did, that the NEA is "suggesting" something based on a few sentences that Lippincott wrote.
There are actually over 100 lesson plans and 60 outside links on the Remember Sept. 11 site, according to the NEA. The lessons are generally intended to help students cope with their feelings about the tragedy and to provide factual information on the attacks and the U.S. response. A wide range of outside resources are provided that cannot be easily stereotyped as "blame-America." These include links to the CIA, the proposed Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense; the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Bill of Rights and Pledge of Allegiance; and speeches by "great Americans" on "the foundations of our freedom, rights and responsibilities," including President Bush, Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln.
In addition, Sorokin's reporting of Lippincott's statements is intentionally deceptive. When she writes the NEA is "suggesting to teachers" that they not "'suggest any group is responsible' for the terrorist hijackings," she implies that Lippincott is advocating that teachers not blame al-Qaida for the terrorist attacks. This is not at all clear. In fact, he notes that "everyone wants the terrorists punished" and that "justice means punishing the real perpetrators." The lesson plan is intended to help prevent students or teachers from stereotyping Arab Americans or Muslims. The first item in his list of "Key Messages" is that "we must not act like [the terrorists] by lashing out at innocent people around us, or 'hating' them because of their origins." The second is similar: "Groups of people should not be judged by the actions of a few. It is wrong to condemn an entire group of people by association of religion, race, homeland, or even proximity." This continues throughout.
The key quotation in Sorokin's piece comes from the fourth tip for parents and teachers. Lippincott writes, "Address the issue of blame factually. Explore who and what may be to blame for this event. Use non-speculative terms. Do not suggest any group is responsible. Be careful to ensure students (e.g., Arab-American students,) do not assume blame in order to make classmates feel better. Blaming is especially difficult in terrorist situations because someone is at fault. However, explain that all Arab-Americans are not guilty by association or racial membership. Help kids resist the tendency to want to 'pin the blame' on someone close by. In this country, we still believe that all people are innocent until solid, reliable evidence from our legal authorities proves otherwise."
This passage is urging teachers to avoid stereotyping of a "group" like Arab-Americans and Muslims, not to let al-Qaida off the hook. Consider the last four sentences quoted above. In the Times article, Sorokin apparently drops the second and third (inexcusably, she fails even to include an ellipsis to indicate that there is a gap), avoiding the statement that "all Arab-Americans are not guilty by association or racial membership" and creating the implication that the final sentence is a statement about al-Qaida rather than the general legal principle that people are innocent until proven guilty.
