Textbooks: Better Well-Read Than Red

Paralyzed by the notion that teaching about Communism might make some students Communists, and frightened by cold war controversy, most U.S. high schools evaded the subject for a decade after World War II. Now, the cultural lag having elapsed and Khrushchev having toned down Communist belligerence, schools are beginning to see the task as a scholarly opportunity for their history and social studies departments.

The best schools—for example, Andover and Exeter—are doing all possible to weave facts about Communism into regular history courses; a gold mine of their ideas is David Mallery’s Teaching About Communism (National Association of Independent Schools; 75¢). The worst are offering separate hate-Communism courses that indoctrinate more than they illuminate. Louisiana, for example, teaches high school students the superheated proposition that all Russians “are our mortal enemies . . . They are working day and night to destroy America.”

Black-White Fallacy. The obvious need in areas with compulsory courses is for texts that avoid the black-white fallacy. An example of the scholar’s dilemma is Florida, where the legislature has ordered high schools to offer 30 hours of “Americanism v. Communism” (in practice, cutting six weeks out of American history courses), with emphasis on “the evils, fallacies and false doctrines of Communism.”

Florida’s Textbook Adoption Committee considered 21 texts, finally adopted three levelheaded books: J. Edgar Hoover’s new A Study of Communism, Daniel N. Jacobs’ The Masks of Communism, and The Meaning of Communism, published this week by Time Inc.’s Silver Burdett Co. (Simon & Schuster carries a $3.95 bookstore edition). The Hoover and Jacobs books are adult-level studies of the theory, structure and spread of Communism. The Silver Burdett book is Florida’s “basic” text. Its author is LIFE Staff Writer William J. Miller, in association with two noted Russian experts, Columbia University’s Henry L. Roberts and Marshall D. Shulman of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

As its premise, The Meaning of Communism argues that Communism, though “implacably dedicated to destroying freedom,” is undergoing such “evolutionary changes” that its dogmas “may in time become something different in practice.” In a concise analysis, the book traces the process right back to Marx, whose prophecies of capitalism’s doom seemed brilliantly plausible, but “were proved wrong by capitalism’s ability to purge its worst evils without revolution.”

With sweep and color, the book tells how Lenin turned from a peaceful student into a fiery revolutionist after the czarist police killed his brother. In detail, the authors unfold the subsequent chain of tragedies: Lenin’s minority-party power grab in 1917, Stalin’s further perversion of Marxist ideals. Russia’s nationalistic heroism in World War II and its postwar imperialism, the chilling struggle for Kremlin power after Stalin’s death, and the sharp differences among Communist countries. Adlai Stevenson praises the book for its “new insights” and “fresh, factual appraisal.”

What to Do. As for “what we can do,” the book calmly views Communist subversion in the U.S. as a problem for responsible law agencies, criticizes the “near-hysterical excesses” of congressional investigations in the 1950s. In contrast to Communism’s “persistent failures of performance,” notably in producing farm and consumer goods, the authors point to U.S. capitalism’s rejuvenating anti-Depression devices—social security, unemployment insurance, corporate pension plans, the SEC. The authors argue that the U.S., while maintaining military might, must now “fight back by supporting the use of our nation’s resources in helping others.”

The Meaning of Communism skims some important history much too fast: little space is given to Communism’s takeover of China. Nor does it tackle the enigmatic appeal that Communism has in so many other backward countries—their dogged belief that fast industrialization comes from collectivism rather than capitalism. But the book cannot help being a boon in the hundreds of U.S. public schools where even now Asian and European history are practically unknown. Hopefully, it will spur young readers to learn a lot more on their own.