Why Don’t We Teach About the Crimes of Communism?
Letters, March 8, 2023, WSJ
The refusal of the Democrats in Virginia to teach children about the history of mass murder by Communists comes as no surprise to me (“A Teachers Union Smears Asians as Communists” by Wai Wah Chin, op-ed March 3). The problem goes way beyond the
commonwealth of Virginia.

I spent 12 years as a history teacher in a Catholic high school in northern New Jersey. When, in my curriculum, I got to the Russian Revolution, I would ask my students, “Who is the greatest mass murderer in history?” Twenty-five voices would answer
in unison: “Hitler!” Then I would say “Hitler? Haven’t you ever heard of Stalin? He murdered 20 million of his own people. And Mao in China was an even much greater killer.” This came as a shock to the students.

I would teach them about Joseph Stalin, and invariably one student would ask, “How come we never heard of him?” I would answer that they had heard of Hitler but not Stalin because those who determined their curriculum wished to associate mass murder
with Nazis but not with Communists. Why? Many educators were ideologically sympathetic to Marxism, and the history of mass murder by Communists was an embarrassment to them.

What happened in Virginia is part of the same story, despite the local Democrats’ nonsense excuse that teaching about the crimes of communism would encourage “anti-Asian sentiments.”
---Joseph C. Kuhns, Oakland, N.J.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/teach-crimes-communism-stalin-hitler-school-43f76f4f

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