Opinion

See No Evil, Think No Evil

By DOUGLAS LUMMIS

A little over two years ago I wrote a column for Shukan ST urging readers — particularly young people — to go to Okinawa (Shukan ST, April 19, 1996). This was when the Okinawan people's movement against U.S. military bases there was rapidly gaining power. I argued that a visit to Okinawa would offer a marvelous educational experience: the opportunity to observe a people in the process of making history.

According to the Asahi Shimbun, in 1996, 76 public schools in yamato Japan sponsored excursions to Okinawa, almost four times as many as 1989. I would like to think that one or two of these excursions were influenced by my column. But of course the real reason for the increase is that students, parents and teachers already understood the rich educational value of such a trip.

However, the board of education of Matsubara, Osaka, has a different view. Matsubara Sixth Junior High School had planned this year's excursion to Okinawa, in response to the wishes of most of the students and parents. But the board has ordered the school to change its itinerary. According to the board, "At a time when the issue of U.S. military bases is being debated, it is doubtful whether taking students [to Okinawa] can be politically neutral."

What the board specifically objected to was that the excursion included a visit to a hill from which you can look down into Kadena Air Base.

Think about this. Evidently the board fears that if the school takes its students to where they can see Kadena Air Base, many will form an opinion about it. That is, they will decide it shouldn't be there. Therefore showing them the base is not "neutral" education.

NOT showing them the base, according to the board, is being neutral.

But Kadena Air Base is not an opinion. It is not an ideology invented by the anti-base movement. It's there. What kind of education is it that avoids showing students the reality of the world in which they live, and calls that neutrality?

Several years ago the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., banned an exhibition that was to show photographs of the effects of the nuclear bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. To sponsor such an exhibition, the institution said, would not be neutral. In effect, the institution was telling us that the way to remain neutral about nuclear weapons was to keep people in ignorance of what they do.

Similarly, the Matsubara Board of Education is telling us that the way for schools to remain neutral on the bases issue is to keep students in ignorance of what bases are.

This is not neutrality, it is a cover-up. It is by promoting this kind of public ignorance that the U.S. government maintains a public opinion that supports nuclear weapons, and the Japanese government maintains a public opinion (outside Okinawa) that supports U.S. bases. Perhaps it is natural for politicians to manipulate public opinion in this way; for educators to cooperate in it, however, is shameful.

Shukan ST: May 29, 1998

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