In ridiculing the National Education Association and its Web page's helps for parents and teachers in talking to children about the events of Sept. 11 (Sunday, Aug. 25), George F. Will uses unfair tactics but, more importantly, reveals the ignorance, prejudice and snobbery that disqualify him as a credible critic of the teaching profession.
With few positive suggestions of his own, he goes on to castigate the NEA, using quotations from their Web site that are most often misrepresented as to their purpose and wrenched from context. First of all, the site includes a wide variety of materials going far beyond what he calls a narrow emphasis on "the therapeutic rather than the educational."
Will presents the social climate in America following the 1942 attack on Pearl Harbor as superior to that the NEA would attempt to foster, including a recognition of "historical instances of American intolerance." He apparently finds the shameful incarceration of over 100,000 Japanese Americans at that time irrelevant to a discussion of terrorism.
As a final revelation of his ignorance, he ridicules the inclusion of works by Dr. Seuss in a long list of materials relevant to terrorism (not with the purpose of "soothing students' souls," as he says) as an idea "beyond caricature." Mr. Will needs to read Dr. Seuss' "The Sneetches," a wonderfully clever parable on prejudice and also his "Yertle the Turtle," a cautionary tale regarding snobbery and delusions of grandeur.
Gary Walton
Salt Lake City