Education: A Lesson for Teacher

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As any Communist schoolboy knows, the wisdom of Marx (as interpreted by his disciples) is the only true gospel. But somehow the writers who sat down to reslant Czechoslovakia's schoolbooks two years ago completely missed the point. Clucking with alarm last week, the Czechoslovak Central Committee denounced the new editions as a bundle of vicious capitalistic claptrap, riddled with bourgeois misconceptions.

The textbook on Russian grammar* barely touched on the "inseparable friendship" of Czechs for their protectors in the U.S.S.R., barely mentioned the "immense love of Czechoslovak peoples for the great Stalin." The books on geography were guilty of "objectivity," failed to show "the real face of capitalism—the misery and oppression of the working class." The writers of the history textbooks did not even seem to know when the "New Era" began (i.e., with the Russian Revolution). And nowhere was there anywhere near enough attention paid to the life & works of Joseph Stalin or of his faithful servant, Czech President Klement Gottwald.

Without a hint as to the fate of the hapless rewriters, the committee glanced nervously eastward, solemnly promised that the dreadful mistakes would not sully the next schoolbook editions.