Letizia Roxas Constantino on Miseducation and WorldBank-Funded Textbooks

The distorted worldview of Palestine, South Africa, and Iran

Views of the World

Also well in line with U.S.-World Bank goals is the view of the world that the young student gets. Some U.S. allies and client states are singled out for praise and never mind if their governments are racist, micro-imperialist, or dictatorial.

South Africa is presented as a country so rich in gold and diamonds that children play on mounds of gold. If we leave it at that as one book does, young minds will picture South Africa as a fabulous paradise. This is surely a distorted view of a country whose apartheid policy has made it a vale of tears if not a hell on earth for the black majority to whom this land rightly belongs.

Israel is likewise attractively projected as a plucky little country surrounded by enemies, inhabited by victims of Nazi oppression who have at last found a home. Challenged by an inhospitable environment, the brave, hardworking Jewish people have made even the desert bloom. Nothing is said about Israel’s forcible occupation of territories belonging to its neighbors nor of its refusal to recognize the rights of the Palestinians. Instead, one book states that in Israel, Jews and Palestinians live harmoniously together animated by the same goals and fired by the same commitment to defend their country in war.

For fourth graders reading their textbook, Iran under the Shah was a happy country, modernizing rapidly through land reform and industrialization with the help of Iranian agriculturists trained by IRRI in Los Baños, and experts from Europe and the United States. Increased production improved the livelihood of peasants and workers so that they were able to build better houses, buy radios, TVs, motor vehicles, etc. Unfortunately, this idyllic society was shattered by some trouble which forced the Shah to leave and finally Ayatollah Khomeini took power. Nothing is said about the Shah’s immense wealth, the corruption of his family and government, the unspeakable tortures endured by hapless citizens at the hands of his secret police, the dreaded Savak. The Iranian Revolution, that explosion of hatred of the Shah, is dismissed with the phrase “nagkaroon ng kaguluhan,” [there was unrest] as if it was the work of troublemakers rather than the concerted action of a people to get rid of a tyrant.

South Africa and Israel are important anchorages of U.S. world strategy in their respective regions. South Africa is not only a source of scarce uranium, its economic and military power are used to keep neighboring states from straying out of the U.S. orbit. As for South Africa’s military operations against Angola, these are quite in line with U.S. destabilisation objectives.

Israel is the U.S. surrogate in the Middle East and a useful leverage against the Arab states as well as a probable base for the U.S. Rapid Deployment Force in the area. It is therefore useful for American objectives to develop favorable attitudes among Filipinos towards these two American allies.

Iran under the Shah served much the same purpose in addition to being a rich source of profits for American transnationals and arms manufacturers. Its economic development is held up as a model along with those of South Korea and Brazil.