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| Europe |
| French schoolbooks |
| 2005-11-19 |
| OT : the new pics posting option is way kewl! Great work! Now, if only I had a sense of humor... The French Educational System's Role in the Riots: A few days before the riots began, Le Figaro's weekly France-Amerique edition published a disturbing article detailing how French public school textbooks justify terrorism. The article is a summary of the new book ÉlÚves sous influence by Barbara Lefebvre and Éve Bonnivard, published by Editions Audibert, and which details how French high school and college textbooks treat terrorism. The article is Quand les livres scolaires "expliquent" le terrorism: Les manuels d'histoire réduiraient le djihad islamique àune contestation de l'Oncle Sam, by Cécilia Gabizon. (When schoolbooks "explain" terrorism: History textbooks reduce Islamic jihad to a dispute with Uncle Sam.) Summarizing ÉlÚves sous influence, Gabizon explains that textbooks say almost nothing about the role of Islamic fundamentalism or theocracies in their explanation of terrorism. Rather, terrorism is explained as "l'arme des faibles" (the weapon of the weak), used by people who cannot frontally attack the great powers: the United States and Israel. Textbooks criticize the attitude of condemning only terrorists, and not their enemies. Islamism is justified as resistance to western domination and globalization. The Taliban are described merely as favoring a "rigorous" Islamic moral order. One textbook quotes with approval an article written in the run-up to the Iraq war, arguing for the urgency of containing American power, which imposes its will by force and is contemptuous of allies. Also approvingly reprinted in a textbook is a student essay: Terrorism is a revolt against aggressors. As in France during the Nazi occupation, terrorism appears when a people suffer and have no other solution except explosives. After the riots began, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy denounced the rioters as "racaille," which translates as "rabble" or "scum," depending on who is doing the translation. As the French begin to ponder how their nation came to be filled with a Fifth Column of Jew-hating, French-hating criminal scum, I hope that France re-examines its educational system which, by justifying terrorism against Americans and Israelis, appears to have taught principles that were readily usable to justify terrorism against the French themselves. |
| Posted by:anonymous5089 |
| #1 Now, if only I had a sense of humor... apparently God has a really wicked sense of humor. |
| Posted by: 2b 2005-11-19 19:33 |