Dear Source:
A bill pending in the VI Legislature to establish a history textbook commission seems to have created a scramble between radicals and demagogues.
There is little doubt that if Dr. Malik Sekou, Mario Moorhead or Percival Edwards are involved in the process, it would rapidly degenerate into an exercise in political indoctrination. They simply can't help themselves.
The Source reported that before the Senate, " Moorhead emphasized the need to teach the history of the people of the Virgin Islands, as opposed to the history of the U.S. or of the minority of European colonial elites, arguing those histories are already well documented."
This idiocy presumes that children have already learned all they need to know of US history, civics and Western civilization. Perhaps he thinks that each child has memorized Kagan's The Western Heritage at home and is now ready to move onto more specialized learning?
In the same article, Messers Moorehead and Edwards are described as a "radio personality" and as a "civic activist". What scholarly, peer-reviewed works have they published? Penning flyers and editorials does not constitute proper training for selecting, much less authoring, textbooks.
Messers Moorhead and Edwards can, almost, be forgiven for this wag at indoctrination as their income and standing derives from producing a kind of year-round, D-list, grievance theater. It is informed only by the hue of one's skin and is eternally inflamed by oppressors long gone. At least these two gentlemen do not try to hide the fact that they seek to fold politics into textbooks for children.
Dr. Sekou's involvement is a good deal more disturbing because he uses his standing as a UVI department head for the likely purpose of injecting a radical brand of ideology into textbooks–and it appears he will not be up front about his agenda.
It is worth noting that Dr. Sekou is a fawning admirer of Fidel Castro–and all things Communist–as exemplified in his recent editorial. He wrote:
"Speaking from the Pan-Africanist side of the political spectrum in the Virgin Islands, Cuban President Fidel Castro's recent illness is a reminder of the mortality of revolutionaries but immortality of revolutionary ideas. We on the left wish Fidel a speedy recovery, but we are well aware that as he passed the 80-year milestone on Aug. 13, his physical presence has reached the golden stage. […] Even when Fidel leaves, his ideas will last forever within the Cuban Communist Party and Cuban People"
I presume Dr. Sekou forgot to add, "I hope" at the end of his sentence. Now, it's all well and good that an unalloyed Stalinist teaches at UVI: his students are adults and they may freely elect to dream dreams of a Glorious Workers' Revolution with him.
It is, of course, quite another to require children to read and acquiesce to such drivel. Any child who stood up and said, "hold on there… this is just utter nonsense" would fail VI history as he would be commanded to regurgitate whatever far-left propaganda Dr. Sekou saw fit to add to the curriculum.
When Dr. Sekou testified to the Senate that, "Expertise should be a primary factor rather than politics, and UVI should have a seat at the table" I get the impression that it's not UVI he's talking about. Dr. Sekou seems to be jostling for a seat at the table himself where he could get a crack, perhaps, at imparting the joys of scientific socialism and virulent identity politics to youngsters in the form of a VI history textbook.
In Dr. Sekou's aforementioned editorial, he twice acknowledges that his ideology is well removed from center. There is nothing to the left, ideologically speaking, of Dr. Sekou's worldview.
After reading his other public works, it seems to me that he is incapable of a recitation of historical events without larding it up in an uber-leftist context. In my opinion, his is not the work of a scholar so much as it is that of an ideologue. And yet he testifies before our Senators that politics should be eliminated from the process. I find that statement to be deeply duplicitous.
To expect that this bunch will engage in a dispassionate, scholarly review of VI history, or of any history for that matter, is foolish in the extreme.
Jay Craft
St. Croix
Editor's note: We welcome and encourage readers to keep the dialogue going by responding to Source commentary. Letters should be e-mailed with name and place of residence to source@viaccess.net.
