The Greatest American and What They Should be Teaching Our Children

Children learn little in school about George Washington these days and that's a real shame. Perhaps they would be a little less likely to believe the propaganda they hear in the classroom and be a little prouder of being American if they did.

Washington had the opportunity to become king after the American Revolution, but displaying a foresight not often seen before or since, he rejected that idea, stating that this government was supposed to be of the people. Making him king would have simply replaced one tyrant with another (albeit, more palatable) one.

A couple of things make me think of Washington today, aside from it being President's Day. The first is the news that Maryland officials plan to unveil the original draft of Washington's resignation speech.

(A)mid festivities celebrating his birthday, Maryland officials plan to unveil the original document -- worth $1.5 million -- after acquiring it in a private sale from a family in Maryland who had kept it all these years. It took two years to negotiate the deal and raise money for the speech, which experts consider the most significant Washington document to change hands in the past 50 years.

The speech, scholars say, was a turning point in U.S. history. As the Revolutionary War was winding down, some wanted to make Washington king. Some whispered conspiracy, trying to seduce him with the trappings of power. But Washington renounced them all.

By resigning his commission as commander in chief to the Continental Congress -- then housed at the Annapolis capitol -- Washington laid the cornerstone for an American principle that persists today: Civilians, not generals, are ultimately in charge of military power.

I'm always awed when I read and learn about chapters of American history. Sometimes, the history is sad, cruel, and difficult to handle. Other times, such as this one, are inspirational. Washington could have had it all, but he rejected the treasures because he believed so strongly in the cause.

The second reason I thought of Washington today was a recent discussion I had with my 15-year-old daughter. She is taking world geography in high school, and apparently, geography has changed a lot since I was in school. Now geography isn't just learning about temperate zones, tundra, deserts, flora and fauna, it is a lesson in political brainwashing.

"When you think of the words 'concentration camp,' what country comes to mind?" she asked me one day.

"Germany," I answered.

She shook her head. "Try again."

"Austria? Poland?"

She continued shaking her head. "Great Britain," she replied. "They set up the first concentration camp."

My mother was British, so smacking the British ranks second in insults only to insulting the U.S. I decided to go look up the information to find out what this teacher was pouring into her head. Sure enough, I did find an entry for Great Britain and concentration camps, one referring to the Second Boer War.

The English term "concentration camp" was first used to describe camps operated by the British in South Africa during this conflict.

These had originally been set up for families whose farms had been destroyed by the British "Scorched Earth" policy (burning down all Boer homesteads and farms). However, following Kitchener's new policy, many women and children were forcibly moved to prevent the Boers from resupplying at their homes and more camps were built and converted to prisons.

The camps were horrible.

The conditions in the camps were very unhealthy and the food rations were meager. The wives and children of men who were still fighting were given smaller rations than others. The poor diet and inadequate hygiene led to endemic contagious diseases such as measles, typhoid and dysentery. Coupled with a shortage of medical facilities, this led to large numbers of deaths — a report after the war concluded that 27,927 Boers (of whom 24,074 [50% of the Boer child population died]were children under 16) and 14,154 black Africans had died of starvation, disease and exposure in the concentration camps. In all, about 25% of the Boer inmates and 12% of the black African ones died (although recent research suggests that the black African deaths were underestimated and may have actually been around 20,000). However the precise number of deaths is unknown. Reports have stated that the number of Boers killed was 18,000-28,000 and no one bothered to keep records on the number of deaths of the 107,000 Black Africans who were interned in Concentration Camps.

That is, indeed, tragic. But does it really compare to what the Germans did in Auschwitz or Treblinka?

After reading about the British in the Second Boer War, I had to return to the subject with my daughter.

"Now, about those British concentration camps," I began.

She nodded.

"There's a big difference between what happened there and what happened during the Holocaust. The purpose of the camps in the Second Boer War was to prevent civilians from aiding the rebels in fighting the British. That's a lot different from herding hundreds of thousands of people into cattle cars so they can be gassed and killed."

"They think the British had gas chambers," she said.

"Who do?"

"My teacher said so," she answered. "But they haven't proven it yet."

By this point, I was getting angry as well as frustrated. "Your teacher is giving you a lot of propaganda. If they haven't proven it, it didn't happen."

She looked at me funny, like I was crazy for not willingly accepting the idea that our British antecedents were monsters like the Nazis.

I finally said what I'd been avoiding all weekend. "There are people determined to prove to kids your age that there's nothing special about being American or being from the West. They want you to think that all atrocities are equal, and that Westerners, like Americans and the British, are as likely to commit them as the communists did in Eastern Europe, as Mao did in China, or that the extremists in Iraq are doing now. But I want you to know that there is a difference between the type of deaths that happened in one war because of malnutrition and disease, and the types of death that happened at the hands of the Nazis or the communists. Don't allow your teacher to brainwash you into thinking all events are the same because they aren't."

I'm still angry at what this teacher is trying to do to my daughter. This isn't the first question I've had about this teacher's methods, but I find it despicable that any instructor wouldn't distinguish between deaths attributable to war conditions with the Holocaust.