LEFT BACK: A Century of Battles Over School Reform by Diane Ravitch is one of those The More Things Change books, showing how debates over what should be in the curriculum, the merits of social promotion and phonics, what will keep kids interested and whether the real lessons should be critical thinking, rote facts or life-lessons have been going on since well before World War II (the child-centered schools I heard about during the seventies were really just recycling 40 year old experiments). Ravitch definitely sides with those who favor a strong academic core curriculum and tracks how this concept fell into disfavor for various reason including a Rousseau-style vision of education (“Critics pointed out that even the least ‘authoritarian’ schools still maintained a rigid meritocracy when it came to athletics.”) anti-intellectualism (“Who says it’s necessary for every child to learn to read?”) and a mix of classism, sexism and racism that argued teaching the hard stuff to anyone outside the academic elite would at best be a waste of time, at worst giving students ideas above their station.
VOODOO HISTORIES: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History by David Aaronovitch, is a look back at the big conspiracy theories of the 20th and 21st centuries, starting with the Elders of Zion and moving into FDR Knew theories of Pearl Harbor, McCarthyism, JFK’s assassination, Michael Baigent’s Holy Grail theories (and yes, DaVinci Code) and the current waves of Truthers and Birthers (there’s also a detour into one fringe British fuss over the supposed murder of an anti-nuclear activist—understandably of interest to Aaronovitch, since he’s a British author). Aaronovitch unsurprisingly concludes that the root of conspiracy is the desire to have it All Make Sense (“And if events you dislike aren’t the work of random actors, that means you can confront them and reverse it!”) and that however comical we find them, even Diana Was Murdered theories shouldn’t be ignored (“The Duke of Edinburgh is rich and grumpy, true, but that doesn’t mean he deserves to be labeled as arranging the murder of his daughter-in-law.”).
THE COLDEST WAR: America and the Korean War was David Halberstam’s last book, reminiscent of The Best and the Brightest in detailing how multiple miscalculations on all sides brought about the Korean War: A failure by the US to identify Korea as part of a strategic perimeter, a conviction by Kim that he could easily take the South, MacArthur’s conviction that the Chinese would never cross the Yalu, various Chiang supporters’ conviction this could lead to a war that would oust Mao and the reluctance of anyone in Washington to remove MacArthur even as his arrogance increased. MacArthur with his wilful denial of the Chinese threat comes off as the big bad here (though Halberstam points out Mao was just as stubborn when it came to accepting that the war had turned against him), but the book also goes into a lot of details on specific battles, casualties and the memories of the guys on the frontlines. An impressive job, though while seeing foreshadowings of Vietnam in this is certainly plausible, I do wonder if Halberstam might not be fitting some of the facts into a prism he’s most familiar with. Still, well worth reading.
