From: Mel Dubnick
Date: 4/28/99
Time: 5:50:33 PM
Remote Name: 24.218.44.187
I paid an extended visit to the site suggested by Mr. Eggum, and while I appreciate the hard work that went into designing it, I do not think it does what he claims. While touting the need for students to become more factually informed, what the site provides is a rhetorical context for a libertarian political agenda.
But rather than putting on my political science hat and dismissing such efforts as irrelevant (and even counter-productive), I want to stress the need for teachers of American government to become familiar with these sites and their orientations. Just as Ayn Rand attracted (and still attracts) some of the best and brightest of our high school and undergraduate students, so these sites will serve as a source of "information" and "understanding" for the growing number of our students who have access to (and seek out) alternatives to our textbook rhetoric and narratives. We can't be indifferent to such sites, no matter what our professional reactions might be. They need to be taken into account in our classes -- and perhaps even sought out as the foundation for lessons where we can engage students in a dialogue that will (we hope) let them see such material with a more critical eye.
Mel Dubnick