If a Class Name has 'Studies" in it. It Might Be Stupid

I thought that courses that teach this kind of nonsense were only found in higher education. It's no wonder that our high school graduates are deficient in substantive subjects such as Math Science, and History-Geography when they spend time on this gunk.

At Bethesda-Chevy Chase, Peace Studies is taught by Colman McCarthy, a former Washington Post reporter and founder and president of the Center for Teaching Peace. Though the course is taught at seven other Montgomery County high schools, some say B-CC's is perhaps the most personal and ideological of the offerings because McCarthy makes no effort to disguise his opposition to war, violence and animal testing

Students might spend one class period listening to a guest speaker who opposes the death penalty and another, if they choose, standing along East West Highway protesting the war.

...Although a staff teacher takes roll and issues grades, it is McCarthy as a volunteer, unpaid guest lecturer who does the bulk of the teaching. He does not work from lesson plans, although he does use a school system-approved textbook -- a collection of essays on peace that he edited.

I remember Colman McCarthy from his columnist days at the Post. He and Mary McGrory were a great source for amusement because they were both such moon bats, McCarty being the battiest. Now he's teaching a class using a book he edited. I can imagine the articles he chose for that tome.

Here are a few quotes:

What first came to mind when you realized that the Twin Towers had been deliberately crashed into?
Shock but not surprise. The depth of the horror was initially beyond imagination. But the attack itself was not a surprise. On April 4, 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr., said that "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today is my own government." He was right then and is right now. In only the past 20 years, the U.S. government has sent troops to kill or threaten to kill people in Lebanon, Grenada, Libya, Panama, Haiti, Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia and now Afghanistan again. All are poor nations and mostly people of color.

"Warmaking doesn't stop warmaking. If it did, our problems would have stopped millennia ago."
-- Colman McCarthy

"Everyone's a pacifist between wars. It's like being a vegetarian between meals."
-- Colman McCarthy

Or check this article he wrote about teaching peace in school.

Making Headway in Teaching Peace

January 23, 2004 | If it's true that all governments say they want peace and that all human hearts yearn for peace, a question arises: Should schools be teaching ways to create the peaceable and just society?

So here we are with a "studies" class in a high school being taught by a former columnist at the Post getting them out to protest the war and like learning about non violence and stuff. I know why this class is popular, it's an easy A.

Carnival of Liberal's Wrongs #6

Basil's