Richard Thieme wrote:
> Kevin Gowen <kgowenNOSPAM@myfastmail.com> wrote in message
> news:beii0l$5ioc5$1@ID-105084.news.dfncis.de...
>> Scott Reynolds wrote:
>>> In any case, I don't think we can hold America up as a model to be
>>> copied. Both because the two countries' educational systems are
>>> different and because, frankly, the US education system does not
>>> seem to
>>> be doing a very good job of nurturing critical thinkers with a good
>>> grasp of history, if recent events are any guide.
>>
>> Indeed. It's a good thing we have people like Ann Coulter to write
>> books that debunk the leftist myths about Joe McCarthy that have
>> been drummed into the heads of two generations of American students.
>
> Just for the heck of it, what communists did McCarthy actually expose?

T.A. Bisson
Mary Jane Keeney
Cedric Belfrage
Solomon Adler
Franz Neumann
Leonard Mins
Gustavo Duran
William Remington

See the Venona Intercepts and Coulter's _Treason_ for more.

>>> I think the education ministry's textbook review and selection
>>> system has had problems in the past, but that things seem to have
>>> improved since. My big problem with them right now has less to do
>>> with ideology and more to do with competence. Have you seen the
>>> English texts currently in use in junior high schools? My son's
>>> textbook, for example,
>>> contains outright errors and gross inconsistences that make me
>>> wonder how it ever passed the review in the first place. The
>>> reviewing system,
>>> after all, is *supposed* to weed out errors. But it is clearly
>>> failing in this mission. I wouldn't be surprised if the history
>>> textbooks are full of mistakes as well.
>>
>> I have the Tsukuru Kai's history book on my bookshelf. I've only
>> read the section on WWII, and its errors go without saying. Now
>> you've got me thinking that I should read it straight through to see
>> if there are other bumbles.
>>
>
> Could you state some of these errors?
>
> Please state some of these errors.

Here's one for now, from page 277, second full paragraph:
日本の戦争目的は、自存自衛とアジアを欧米の支配から解放し、そして、『大東亜共
栄圏』を建設することであると宣言した。
This, quite simply, is bullshit.

Oh! This is also choice, from page 277, first full paragraph.
これは、数百年にわたる白人の植民地支配にあえいでいた、現地の人々の協力があっ
てこその勝利だった。　この日本の緒戦の勝利は、東南アジアやインドの多くの人々
に独立への夢と勇気を育んだ。

It's 4:30 am here so I am about to sleep, but those are two choice excerpts.
If you want to read someone who has addressed errors of fact and methodology
in the book's treatment of WWII as well as other events in Japanese history,
I suggest Ethan Segal's paper, "Rethinking History Education and the
Japanese Textbook Controversy".

-- 
Kevin Gowen
"The constant loss of U.S. soldiers in Iraq--after the war is "won"--is
a tragedy. However, if this is what it takes to retire the Bush
administration at the next election, the sacrifice is justified."
- Arie L. Bleicher of Mill Valley, California, expressing leftist
respect for human life