When a new educational trend takes off, there's a great hunger for classroom materials. But it takes time for good materials to reach the marketplace. Meanwhile, there's a danger that groups that have ideological axes to grind will rush into the void - not with educational materials but with propaganda.
That's now the danger facing global education. Students do need to know more about world history, geography, different forms of government and the issues that cross national borders. They do not need to be caught in propaganda wars. States that push forward with global education are therefore obliged to make sure that recommended materials are balanced and rigorous.
Such is not the case in Minnesota, says Katherine Kersten, chairperson of the Midwest Coalition for Democracy in Central America. Kersten has long views on the region's controversies. But her main argument is that Minnesota officials responsible for global education have overseen the distribution of materials on Central America that are overwhelming one-sided and inaccurate.
Is she right? A key player in Minnesota's global education community is the University of Minnesota's Global Education Center. The Center published a special issue on teaching about Central America that recommended three curriculum units. In one, students are asked to read and act out simpleminded scripts about Nicaragua. The pro-Sandinista roles are all sympathetic: a child who now gets free education and a mother whose child is alive, thanks to free medical care. But the Sandinistas' opponents are nasty caricatures, people who fondly remember the days before the "Triumph," when "the rich people" could take a "taxi to wherever they wanted" and "people did whatever [I] told them without question." There are no roles for the democrats who overthrew Somoza with the Sandinistas and were later jailed by the Sandinistas. It's as if they don't even exist.
In a second unit, the tragedy of El Salvador is reduced to caricature. El Salvador's armed insurgents are represented by good-hearted churchwomen and the government by a prosecutor who doesn't care "if we kill 100,00 of our own people." It is also falsely asserted that the U.S. provides only military aid to El Salvador. In fact, U.S. economic aid has been substantial.
In all three units, students get an oversimplified picture of Central America. There are just two sides: cruel, anti-Marxist governments that favor the wealthy and oppress the poor, or courageous Marxists working to rescue peasants from death squads and crushing poverty.
The message being given is clear. Central America's salvation lies in more Marxist style governments. The message is so clear because the picture is so biased. For example, these units barely mention Costa Rica - the region's most successful democratic reform in El Salvador and Guatemala are also absent. You would think there were only left- and right-wing alternatives. No credible democratic alternative is even hinted at.
These units always question the claims of the U.S. and Salvadoran governments - as they should - but never the claims of the Sandinistas. They challenge the role of the U.S. in the region but not that of the Soviets or Cubans. The human-rights violations of El Salvador's death squads are examined but not those of the Sandinistas or the Salvadoran insurgents.
The main provider of these materials is the Central American Resource Center (CARC), whose Board of Directors is drawn mostly from the leadership of radical-left organizations. CARC, of course, has every right to produce these materials. And the materials should certainly be allowed in the schools. But should public officials recommend them to teachers without identifying the publisher's special interest? Without also recommending counter-balancing materials? Of course not - no more than a responsible official should recommend the use of a curriculum on smoking published by the tobacco industry without taking such precautions.
The Global Education Center is not alone in promoting these materials. Minnesota's Office of International Education sends out to inquiring educators CARC's "Central American Resource Directory," whose hundreds of recommendations include barely a handful that give any credibility to any democratic force in the region. This Office, along with the Global Education Center, also invited CARC to serve as the sole expert on Central American issues on the formal planning committee for a major conference they sponsored on teaching about Central America.
Officials at these institutions dispute some of Kersten' s facts. But these disputes don't call into question the main point: that the state (and its university) were carelessly promoting a set of materials aimed more at propagandizing students than educating them.
How should controversial and complex issues be handled in the classroom? This is not an easy question. Fortunately, a new coalition that seeks to expand and improve global education, the Association of Educators in Global and International Studies, is grappling with it. The group will soon be circulating a draft set of standards for balanced approaches to global studies. The Minnesota Federation of Teachers has also called for the development of such standards.
Such efforts are needed. Without them, global education itself will be undermined and its future jeopardized. And that would be a shame.