Posted on 12/10/2005 4:58:35 PM PST by blam
'Official' history angers teachers
By Kim Willsher in Paris
(Filed: 11/12/2005)
Teachers in France have accused their government of using the tactics of dictators by enacting a law that imposes an "official history" of their country, requiring them to highlight the "positive aspects" of the French empire.
They claim the legislation ignores the torture, slavery and massacres "that sometimes went as far as genocide" and sometimes accompanied French colonialism.
The law aims to protect the reputations of "pieds noirs" - French people born in Algeria - and "harkis", Algerians loyal to France who were allowed to settle in the country when Algeria became independent in 1962. The legislation states: "School programmes are to recognise in particular the positive role of the French presence overseas, especially in North Africa, and give an eminent place to the history and sacrifices of fighters for the French army raised in these territories."
Hubert Tisson, general secretary of the History and Geography Professors' Association, said: "History shouldn't be used as an instrument to benefit this or that group or community.
"It's for historians to write history and for teachers to teach it. There shouldn't be an official history as in dictatorships."
Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the president of Algeria, a former French colony, has threatened to call off a proposed friendship treaty with France. He said the law was "a mental blindness akin to negationism and revisionism".
In France, teachers, professors and civil rights campaigners have petitioned for it to be repealed, stating it "imposes an official lie about the crimes, the massacres that sometimes went as far as genocide, the slavery, the racism that has been inherited from this past".
The French occupation of Algeria began in 1830 and was the start of 132 years of colonial subjugation. In the early years native Muslims and Jews were viewed as French nationals but not as French citizens.
The French prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, is among a string of government figures who have tried to distance themselves from the law. The interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, cancelled a visit to the French Caribbean because of fears of angry protests, and Leon Bertrand, tourism minister, called for it to be changed.
Mr de Villepin told France Inter radio: "It is not up to parliament to write history. There is no official history in France." He said he understood the anger of those who were offended by the law. "In the history of colonisation, those who were thrown into the belly of the galleons, who were taken across the Atlantic into the heart of the plantations - these are all living memories," he said. "This still causes great pain."
"In the history of colonisation, those who were thrown into the belly of the galleons, who were taken across the Atlantic into the heart of the plantations - these are all living memories," he said. "This still causes great pain."
Living memories?
My god, they must be over a hundred and fifty years old,
simply amazing.
When asked to comment, Winston Smith said, "Two."
That should be a short lesson.
What a useless country.
I'm wondering if it is in France as it is, recently, in our country. Perhaps the history teachers are only focusing on the areas of French history that make the French look as bad as possible. I know, here, I would like ALL our history taught, but not with a particular emphasis on the worst aspects, like slavery.
Yeah, acording to the French Left, we're all a bunch of torturers and murderers.
Sound familiar? The pattern of leftist treason was first practiced in 1940 and the French war in Indochia and perfected in Algeria: it is very difficult for any democracy to fight for its survval or territorial integrity when major political parties and a plurality of the population deny the evil nature of the enemy, root for defeat, and accuse their own country of atrocities on a daily basis.
The US left and media used the same technique during the Vietnam War here, and they are trying the same script for Iraq.
How can the President and the rest of us ask the officers and men of our armed forces (and their families) to make the sacrifices they make every day fighting with great discipline and patience while they are defamed continuously by the likes of Kerry (who calls them terrorists), Dick Durbin (who likened them to Nazis) and Murtha (who described them as a broken army, living 'hand to mouth'), to say nothing of the daily drumbeat of MSM defeatism that magnifies every loss and buries any heroism and improvement in a narrative of futility?
IMHO, Bush should suspend habeus, and ship the copperheads to join their buddies in Gitmo.
"official history" of their country, requiring them to highlight the "positive aspects" of the French empire.
--- There was a French empire?
Are the teachers admitting that there are no positivie aspects of France?
Colonel Mathieu
How about when they shipped Jews off to death camps.
Great book about the Algeria war
The Battle of the Casbah : Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism in Algeria 1955-1957 (Hardcover)
by Paul Aussaresses
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/192963112X/104-7658784-2060762?v=glance&n=283155
One of the biggest difference between the USA and the rest of the world is that we look at the Good parts of our country, and we hold up the ugliest, most horrendous parts up for public scruitny.
France on the other hand ignores the negative aspects of their country (cowardice, treason, betrayal, slavery, there is a LOT of stuff to ignore) and finds whatever small piece of positive stuff to brag about. Hmmmm, not a whole lot to brag about since Louis Pasteur, and Curie, eh?
From what I understand, we do hold up for public scrutiny the ugliest and most horrendous parts and we don't, much, look at the good parts of our country. I'm all for studying BOTH sides, I just need to know that BOTH sides are being taught.
Such are the rewards the current Republique Francaise gives to its old soldiers.
http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/2005/09/dark-soul-of-colonel-mathieu.html
"Mathieu understood himself simply as a professional, a tactician. He did not introduce the brutality you describe to the war in Algeria: he found an enemy who employed disgusting atrocities as a means of waging war and simply decided that if that was how the game was played in Algeria then he would show them how to play it well.
Implicit in your statements is the notion that such brutality was the inevitable outcome of French colonialism, or even that it was introduced by the French into the conflict.
Do you think the FLN was fighting for independence by singing Kumbayah?
So hiding behind the self-righteous indignatation about Mathieu's brutality is the implicit approval of the FLN's brutality. Or do you think that they could have won withut such methods?
You're simply relying upon the same tired leftist narrative about the 'horrors' of colonialism that were in fact provoked by the atrocities of another group of Third World communist thugs.
The real analogy with Iraq and Vietnam is that the United States has a chorus of back-stabbers who are willing to turn against their own country on behalf the throat-slitters and bombers just like the CGT and French 'progressives' stabbed their own country in the back on behalf of the FLN."
Never got a reply from Farley.
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