CULTURE WATCH: Lesson Plans.(Brief Article)

The National Education Association is under fire for its advice to teachers on how to spend the anniversary of September 11. The critics say that the NEA's lesson plans are too relativistic and insufficiently patriotic. Students would hear a lot about "intolerance": the need to avoid it, America's shameful history of same. The critics would like students to learn more about America's virtues and about our enemies' deadly intolerance.

The critics both overstate and understate their indictment. The NEA compiled a list of lesson plans, many of them developed by others: the American Red Cross, the National Association of School Psychologists, PBS. There is not a lot of blame-America stuff in the plans. There are, indeed, links to America's founding documents. Overall, the mood is mildly adversarial toward Americans, who are assumed to be constantly on the verge of committing ethnic pogroms. But this assumption is now widespread among Americans who sincerely regard themselves as patriots. In any case, the focus of the lesson plans is less social than psychological. Students would be asked to talk a lot about feelings: their own feelings, their fellow students' feelings, and their feelings about their feelings. They would be told that it's okay to feel a variety of emotions and not to judge others. If they are in grades 6 through 12, they may be asked to perform a group exercise called "Remember to Laugh."

What the critics have uncovered, in other words, is not the NEA's lack of patriotism. ...