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The importance of open education stems from the interest of the Islamic Sharia in education without being restricted to a certain age. This was manifested in the words of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him): "Seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave." Man is required to pursue lifelong learning. It was therefore necessary for the State to provide many forms of education suitable for age, occupation, accommodation, and work. It was the movement from education to learning through the so-called open education that does not require the student to share his teacher in terms of time and place. He is not required to be present throughout the period of study, but can study from his home. Work, age or scientific degrees do not present any obstacles to man's right to complete his education. Many social, cultural, political and other factors made open education and distance education inevitable. The capacity of the traditional universities is not able to absorb this large number of students due to urbanization and the increase in population in all countries of the world in general, and in Arab countries in particular. Therefore, the State had to move from a traditional style that required a student's personal presence at the university to a more flexible system that did not require presence in time or place. The technological advances have progressed rapidly and electronic educational methods have been introduced. This has led to full interaction between the teacher and his student to the point that the teacher can guide his student without the barrier of time or place between them. Therefore, in open education, the teacher's role changed from mere indoctrination to guidance. The learner is instructed teach himself in a self-learning situation. Despite the advantages achieved by open education, there are some obstacles that stand in the way of achieving the objectives of this type of education; so the subject of this research addresses these obstacles and develops solutions to remove them, and sets the mechanism to put these solutions into effect, for open education to achieve full interactivity, and achieve the desired goals and compete traditional education, if not precede it in this regard.

In this paper, we want to address how the educative growth of children’s spirituality within religious education can be better understood through Dewey’s theory of valuation. We would like to draw attention to the link between an education for authentic spirituality and the pursuit of a genuine democratic life, because education, even religious education, is always political. In doing so, we point to the urgency and importance of fostering spiritual education for children in the face of the current rise of authoritarianism throughout the world and the demise of authentic democratic life. In order for genuine democracies to survive and thrive, their citizens must be educated. Unlike indoctrination and propaganda, which control populations through manufacturing public opinion by which individuals are compelled to comply to an officially approved consensus, education is emancipatory by offering opportunity for dissensus. Emancipatory education enables individual citizens to initiate and participate in activities at the grass-roots level that pursue public and global goods, without waiting to be led by various authorities. Such an educated way of being, which is essential for democratic life, requires young people to be educated spiritually so that they are able to transcend the pressures to conform to public consensus and the will of authoritarianism, and instead to actively live their spirituality by undertaking activities that pursue the good, even when such activities are deemed to dissent from public opinion.

The extreme right hate speech propagated currently in Brazil addresses a broad social spectrum, from feminist movements to traditional communities. The academic community and higher education institutions are also targets, as they are identified as poles of democratic resistance. Specific hate speech towards academy in Brazil is the subject of this paper. The persecution of academic community and knowledge itself occurs through the discursive dispute especially on social networks, and thus in this analytical exercise, we looked up at Facebook’s largest bolsonarista’s group – the “Jair Bolsonaro Presidency Support Group”, which brings together 317,000 members. We analyzed the memetic discourse on the page, focusing memes that were published between April and June 2019, thematizing higher public education, and presenting a bimodal verb-visual composition. These criteria led to the collection of 115 memes analyzed with the support of a QDA package. Analysis reveals the disqualification of university institutions and their actors through ironies, negative associations including stereotypes, simplification of debate to the shallower. Students are often associated with nudity as immorality, professors of indoctrination and ridicule, protesters of ignorance, or bad character. Political debate is reduced to extreme left-right polarization, with the criminalization of the left.

The political control on Chinese higher education had long been an impression for a lot of people working in the field of higher education. Some might think universities in China lack university autonomy, academic freedom, and critical thinking, as they are controlled politically by the party-state in various ways; for example, 10% of students’ total credits must come from political education courses, academic staff need to be cautious about what they say, and discussing certain historical events in class is taboo. However, these and other mechanisms of political control might not necessarily eliminate all efforts at seeking for university autonomy and academic freedom. The state, in an effort to improve the global reputation of Chinese higher education, has encouraged Chinese universities to be innovative, and to promote the critical thinking required of world-class universities. However, this may largely counter the effectiveness of the political indoctrination the CPC (Communist Party of China) wishes to implement in China’s higher education system. This book focused the research problem on the dynamics and complexity of the interplay among the state, university, faculty, staff, and students in the process of socialization through political education and academic affairs. Theories on political socialization and higher education will be used to guide this study.

The state built a system into universities to maintain its control over politics, and though its mechanisms have been well implemented, there remains some buffer space between state requirements and student expectations. Students’ counselors’, CYL cadres’, and students’ role therein is subtle; on the one hand, their interactions with students dilute their efforts at political indoctrination and increase their openness in party activities; on the other hand, students can find autonomous spaces in university—e.g., joining a political organization to benefit their job hunting, or even leaving the campus physically to be exposed to other cultures and ideologies. This scenario is also different from the promotion of academic freedom and critical thinking which composed a third situation in the complex process.

When and how does state indoctrination work? Building upon research on motivated reasoning and family socialization, I argue that only those individuals whose parents have connections to political patronage are subject to state indoctrination because their pro-regime biases transmitted from parents induce higher receptivity prior to government messages. Focusing on political education in China, I conduct a quasi-experimental analysis exploiting the sharp variation in textbook content generated by China’s most recent curriculum reform. Results based on a national survey show that the new politics textbooks successfully affected only those individuals whose parents had worked for the government. The finding survives extensive robustness checks and falsification tests. I also consider several alternative explanations of the effects: preference falsification, selective attention, parental indoctrination, and educational quality. This paper not only highlights the role of intergenerational transmission in moderating the effectiveness of state indoctrination but also casts doubt on the actual degree to which regimes can change minds by changing educational content.

Since opinion leaders are usually university graduates, the field of study has an influence on public support for economic policies and policy reforms intended to enhance efficiency because advocating such policies often requires appreciation of the beneficial roles of markets and economic freedom. We investigate whether the field of study influences German university students' political attitudes. We disentangle self-selection from learning effects and reveal systematic differences between incoming students' political attitudes across eight fields of study. In a second step we explore how the students' political attitudes change as they progress in their academic training. Only studying economics has an unambiguous pro-market influence on political attitudes: by the time of graduation, economics students are some 6.2 percentage points more likely than they were in their initial year of study to agree with free-market policy positions. Studying humanities and natural sciences has a pro-leftist influence.

This paper explores how the new Communist government developed a political consciousness of discipline and collegiality among traditional rural midwives in Chinese villages during the 1950s. It argues that selected traditional rural midwives were taught to observe discipline by attending meetings and studying, and to develop collegiality with peers through criticism and self-criticism of their birth attendance techniques and personal characters in short training courses from 1951 onwards. A legitimized midwife identity gradually formed in rural communities, but with it came conflicts and rivalry. By keeping these midwives under institutional surveillance and creating a dynamic and constant moulding process, the new government intended to foster professional and political discipline and collegiality within the group based on a normativized notion of selflessness performed within a changing series of indoctrination schemes that demonstrated continuity and complementarity and which I have described as common, preliminary, institutionalized, and dynamic schemes. This article examines how the state attempted to retrain marginalized and derided midwives with appropriate class backgrounds in order to incorporate them into the modern medical world, then still dominated by doctors and nurses with suspect class backgrounds. Ironically, in creating “socialist new people” to intervene in traditional rural birthing practices and introducing fee-for-service professionalism, the CCP accidentally created a degree of petit-capitalist thinking among women whose traditional mode of work may have been more selfless, thus complicating the process of indoctrinating selfless dedication.

The article presents the main facts from the biography and scientific activity of historian Stasys Matulaitis with a special focus on the final years of his life. Matulaitis’ public speech delivered on 10 November 1950 in the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic which was targeted against the head of the institute Juozas Žiugžda as a falsifier of history is one of the examples of attempted resistance to the policy of control and indoctrination of historical memory undertaken by the totalitarian system. A former long-year Bolshevik and advocate of the Soviet system convinced in the rightness of his activities, Matulaitis took a critical approach towards his earlier position and became an unpersuadable opponent of the Soviet regime. The metamorphoses of Matulaitis’ life reflect the dramatic changes of the epoch. The present article evaluates the evolution of Matulaitis’ attitudes in the context of the attitudes of various other leftist intellectuals who admired Bolshevism for a certain period of time in their lives or leftist intellectuals who were simply sympathizing with the USSR towards Soviet regime and their disappointment with it. The article comes with some previously fully unpublished Matulaitis’ texts of anti-Soviet content: the act of finding of anti- Soviet texts (Matulaitis’ proclamation Citizens and Diary), written by the employees of the State Museum of History and Revolution of Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, Matulaitis’ Diary written at the end of 1950 and a proclamation Citizens as well as his anonymous letter to the editorial office of the newspaper Tiesa. Keywords: biography of Stasys Matulaitis, Soviet historiography, historian’s relationship with the totalitarian regime, effect of ideology and censorship on the studies in history, the conflict in the Institute of History in 1950. Summary The article presents the main facts from the biography and scientific activity of historian Stasys Matulaitis with a special focus on the final years of his life. The twists and turns of the life of Stasys Matulaitis, a leftist by ideological orientation, were tightly linked with important events in Lithuania’s public and political life. A personal, intellectual and political biography, which was influenced by those events and itself influenced them (as well as acted through them) encompassed the tension, drama and controversy that shaped the history of Lithuania of the second half of the 19th century–the first half of the 20th century. Certain little known (or barely known until recently) aspects of evolution of attitudes of Stasys Matulaitis as a historian and politician after World War II are especially noteworthy. Matulaitis’ public speech delivered on 10 November 1950 in the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic targeted against the then head of the institute Juozas Siugžda as a falsifier of history is one of the examples of attempted resistance to the policy of control and indoctrination of historical memory undertaken by the totalitarian system. A former long-year Bolshevik and advocate of the Soviet system, Matulaitis took a critical approach towards his earlier position and became an unpersuadable opponent of the Soviet regime. The strong personality, especially productive on the creative dimension, would often draw the attention of nearly all governments within whose jurisdiction he lived owing to his peculiar and independent positions, which he had no fear of demonstrating in public. The final conflict with the representatives of the official government in Lithuania under the Soviet occupation, which occurred at the end of 1950 in the Institute of History, Matulaitis being its certain “guilty party”, could easily come to a tragic end for him. He succeeded in avoiding another arrest and deportation; however, he spent the last years of his life in a state of constant nervous tension and in straitened circumstances. The documents enclosed to this article do not only reflect the personal opinion and experiences of their author; in addition to his resentment against the system of that time, they contain rather accurate characteristics and facts which were about to fall into oblivion. The metamorphoses of Matulaitis’ life reflect the dramatic changes of the epoch. The present article evaluates the evolution of Matulaitis’ attitudes in the context of the attitudes of various other leftist intellectuals who admired Bolshevism for a certain period of time in their lives or leftist intellectuals who were simply sympathizing with the USSR towards Soviet regime and their disappointment with it. The article somes with previously fully unpublished Matulaitis’ texts of anti-Soviet content: the act of finding of anti-Soviet texts (Matulaitis’ proclamation Citizens and Diary), written by the employees of the State Museum of History and Revolution of Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, Matulaitis’ Diary written at the end of 1950 and a proclamation Citizens as well as his anonymous letter to the editorial office of the newspaper Tiesa. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15823/istorija.2015.24

Physical education and sports maintain a position of high prominence in Soviet Estonia, as indeed they do throughout the Soviet Union. The Estonian people have a long tradition of participation in sports and other various forms of physical activity; consequently, the contemporary scene reflects, in part, the pre-1940 heritage. The preceding statements about the aims and philosophy of the physical-culture movement are proclaimed in newspapers, journals, and mass gatherings. The very aims of the physical-culture movement encourage political indoctrination. The organization and administration of the Soviet Estonian physical-culture program follows the all-union model, and allunion changes have also been effected in Estonia. Physical-education teachers and sports coaches receive their professional preparation at the Faculty of Physical Education of the University of Tartu and at the Tallinn Pedagogical Institute. Although the sport and physical-education programs have proclaimed Soviet political objectives, the majority of Estonians participate in them in order to fulfill their needs and desires for exercise, health, and recreation.

In recent years, the Uyghurs in Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) have increasingly been viewed disapprovingly by the Chinese government. This followed a series of unwanted incidents that broke out in Xinjiang, especially from the 1990s onwards. Consequently, the Uyghurs who are a minority group of Turkic origin have been subjected to some repressive measures aimed to undermine their Turkic-Uyghur and Islamic identities such as the prohibition on the wearing of veils or burqas, growing beard by young men, as well as restriction on performing prayers in mosques, fasting during Ramadhan, etc. Additionally, mass internment camps were set up for indoctrination purposes. While the Beijing government argued that the measures are necessary in order to curb possible threats to Chinese national security posed by some Uyghur nationalist and separatist groups, the latter viewed the oppressive policy as an unjustified ethnic discrimination against the Uyghurs primarily due to their Turkic–Uyghur–Islamic identity that does not blend well with the dominant Chinese or Han culture. Using mainly content analysis and library research approach, the paper sheds light on the brief history of Xinjiang and the Uyghur community, as well as their socio-economic and political conditions under the Chinese rule. The contemporary situation in Xinjiang including the tenacious issue of Uyghur nationalism and separatism form the central discussion of the paper followed by the countermeasures of the Chinese government to overcome the problems, some of which are repressive, and finally, the reactions of the Uyghurs towards those measures.

Do states manage to build education systems that produce students with political values they uphold? We test the indoctrination hypothesis using World Value Survey data spanning 96 countries. We devise an empirical strategy that can identify the effects of education on political values by using information about the political regime under which individuals live, and regimes under which they got educated. Our results suggest that state indoctrination is at work. For example, we find that higher education increases voting behavior by at least 45 percent more for cohorts that have studied in a democratic rather than an autocratic country.

Durante el transcurso de la Guerra Civil, así como durante la posguerra española, la propaganda se convirtió en uno de los elementos políticos esenciales; y el arte, principalmente la arquitectura, la escultura y la pintura, cumplió esa función desde un primer momento. Sin embargo, los más pequeños tampoco fueron ajenos al adoctrinamiento, conseguido mediante la propaganda en los tebeos. El caso de Un miliciano rojo resulta ejemplar dentro de este campo, pues muestra cómo el bando nacional, nalmente vencedor en la contienda, se sirvió de un recurso tan antiguo como la kalokagathia para infundir el miedo hacia modelos considerados erróneos en la perseguida y futura nueva sociedad.

International audience; Can social work produce empowerment ? This is what this article shows, by following youth organizing groups in Los Angeles ghettos, which offer both political trainings and social services to poor teenagers. Long term commitment in these organizations results in the learning of certain skills and knowledge, concerning the social and political organization of the country and the origins of the marginalization of poor people. This can only be described as empowerment provided these new skills foster both a subjective process of increased efficacy and self-esteem and a political approach aiming at social change. The roots of learning lie indeed also in the collective actions and mobilizations organized by these groups, targeting the improvement of daily life, and in particular of education, in the ghetto. Despite clear results, the article also emphasizes a darker side of empowerment processes. In this case, it also appears as a form of indoctrination to the organizations’ values. This allows forming efficient activists, ready to fight to influence local public policies. This new collective power is therefore partly achieved at the price of a limited individual autonomy.; Le travail de jeunesse peut-il produire de l’empowerment ? C’est ce que démontre cet article, en suivant des associations américaines particulières, qualifiées d’organizing de jeunesse, qui offre des services à la jeunesse déshéritée des ghettos de Los Angeles mais constituent également des espaces d’éducation populaire très politique. La participation dans la durée au sein de ces organisations se traduit par l’acquisition de certains savoirs – sur l’organisation politique et sociale du pays ou sur l’origine de la marginalisation des classes populaires – et savoir-faire. On ne peut cependant parler d’empowerment que parce que cet ensemble de compétences s’inscrit dans un processus subjectif de revalorisation de soi et politique de transformation sociale. Ces organisations de jeunesse sont en effet à l’initiative de mobilisations visant à l’amélioration des conditions de vie, et en particulier d’éducation, des habitants du ghetto. En dépit de résultats concrets, l’article indique également une face plus sombre de l’empowerment. Celui-ci s’apparente en effet souvent à un endoctrinement aux valeurs promues par l’organisation. Ce travail permet la formation de militants convaincus, qui vont s’investir pour influer les politiques publiques locales. Ce nouveau pouvoir collectif permis par la remise de soi des activistes entre néanmoins en tension avec l’autonomie des individus.

In Canada, education is a matter of provincial and territorial jurisdiction so that, while there is a federal constitutional framework, there is not a national system of education. This has had implications for regulation and protection of religion and religious diversity in and by education systems. This chapter examines the resulting regulatory variety but does so in the context of some of the conceptual ambiguities and creative social tensions inherent in the intersection of religion and education. Readers are encouraged to become critically aware of their own positionality in relationship with issues related to this dynamic and complex area of social engagement. This is an important topic because both education and religion are areas of social practice about which most people have strong opinions and feelings. Education represents huge investments of social and financial capital and regularly appears on political platforms during elections as an important measure of commitment to social equality. Education, in other words, carries a lot of freight and debates about education seem to generate a great deal of energy. This chapter is a contribution to an ongoing social conversation, encouraging readers to reconsider issues about which there is considerable accepted but often unexamined common sense.

This paper examines the relationship between an early Islamic education and academic achievement in Afghanistan. Fears of political indoctrination have dominated discussions of Islamic schooling among many Westerners, making some policy-makers hesitant to support the kind of education to which most children in Afghanistan have access. In addition, misunderstandings of Islamic education as well as assumptions about the lack of educational benefits from pre-primary or primary Islamic schools have helped sideline them in policy discussions. But mosque schools may play an important role in preparing children for academic success. Children who attend mosque schools score better on tests of literacy than those who do not. This is particularly significant in countries like Afghanistan where many children do not have access to formal education. These findings suggest that mosque schools merit more careful attention.

This chapter analyses the contextual representation of national heroes in books of English and Urdu languages for higher secondary school students in Pakistan. Political leaders during partition of India and military personnel killed during wars with India form its content. The master narrative behind the portrayal of these heroes, in all cases except one, emphasizes patriotism. The only text titled Sir Syed Ahmed khan, which is uniquely different, was not specifically written for the school textbook, but is taken from an already published compilation of essays by a famous Urdu humorist. Life stories and ideas of the national heroes are focused at indoctrination through language and emotions. The texts on war heroes are presented as more emotive than those on partition heroes. The difference in tone and style can be observed among texts in two languages.

Our study examined the respective relationships between two components of higher education in mainland China&mdash, science education and political indoctrination&mdash, and the religiosity of university students. Using a cross-sectional, representative sample of about 1700 college students in Beijing, we found first that students studying natural/applied sciences were less likely to perceive Protestantism, Catholicism, and Islam as plausible and less likely to have supernatural belief, relative to students in humanities/social sciences. In addition, the more students positively evaluated the political education courses&mdash, which indicates students&rsquo, acceptance of political indoctrination&mdash, the less likely they reported Protestantism and Catholicism as being plausible. Nevertheless, neither science education nor political indoctrination was associated with the perceived plausibility of Buddhism and Daoism or the worshipping behavior of students. We discuss the implications of these findings in light of the secularization debate and the research on education, religion, and state atheism.

The article is opened with definitions of terms utilized throughout the article. Terrorism is defined as the threat or employment of violence against noncombatant targets for political, religious, or ideological purposes by sub-national groups and/or clandestine individuals who are willing to justify all means to achieve their goals. Terrorist conduct is designed to attract attention to the terrorist’s cause and to spread fear and anxiety among wide circles of the targeted population. Subsequently the author analyses how terrorists use the Internet, and what can be done to counter their activities. The Internet is used to disseminate information, for propaganda, indoctrination, networking, psychological warfare, socialization, motivation, fund raising, spreading tactics, recruitment, planning activities and coordination. As the Internet became a major arena for modern terrorists, we need to devise appropriate methods to forestall their activities and establish security.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyze the changes that have taken place in the Russian higher education sector over the last two decades. Specifically, it analyses such phenomena as corruption and politicization of Russian universities through the concept of “loyalty as rent”.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is a synthesis of conceptual work and case study, developing and applying the concept of “loyalty as rent” to the case of Russian higher education. Rapidly developing segments of the Russian economy are known for sprawling informal economic relations. In such segments, illicit revenues may exceed legal income and political influence is considered an economic resource.FindingsInformal approval of corrupt activities in colleges and universities in exchange for loyalty and compliance with the current political regime is commonplace in modern Russia. Political indoctrination of universities is advanced by the ruling political regime in Russia through informal means, while academic meritocracy is no longer honored. The ruling regime uses corruption in the universities to derive its rent not in money but in loyalty to the regime.Originality/valueThis paper argues that the widespread corruption in Russian universities may be used by the state in order to gain much needed political support of faculty and students.

The term “political activity” can be interpreted in a myriad of different ways, but in this paper, it is taken to mean involvement in a variety of campaigns around issues affecting the way we live and the sort of society we want to live in. At a time when support for the main political parties has never been weaker, it is essential that teachers aim to combat cynicism and apathy among their young students by encouraging them to take an interest in all manner of social and political causes. It is, of course, true that teachers who do this are open to the charge of indoctrination, but this should not deter them from bringing relevant political issues into the curriculum. It is argued that this can best be done through such subjects as English, history, geography and religious education, rather than through a distinct and separate articulation of citizenship.

The development of Veterinary Medicine in the Soviet Occupation Zone in Germany and the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) is sketched in highlights. After the collectivization of agriculture (1960) a centralistically controlled national veterinary system was established. It was suited to the requirements of the industrially organized animal production. The successive classification of socialistic veterinary administration was associated with the following matters: the extension of veterinary subject matters, a vertical division of work with the aid of newly created technical veterinary professions, and a penetration of the profession with political guidelines. As the professional level of the veterinary system in the GDR was relatively high the reflection in retrospective needs to be evaluated in a differentiated way considering the textual and social conditions. In spite of centralism and indoctrination the veterinary system remained professionally autonomous with islands of political independence, which sustained the identity of this profession. The latter formed the base for self renewal of the East German veterinary system at the end of the socialistic area 1989/1990.

Makronisos, the small, uninhabited island off the Attica coast, was the location of the most notorious concentration camp set up by the Greek government during the Civil War (1946-1949). It was a place of brutality, torture, and death, but its distinctive feature was its role as an indoctrination center for many thousands of political dissidents (mostly left-wing soldiers and citizens, but also ethnic and religious minorities) who, after they were "re-educated" in the national dogmas, were sent to fight against their ex-comrades. Classical antiquity was one of the main ideological foundations of this "experiment," the audience for which was the whole of Greece and the international community. In the island, still known as "The New Parthenon," the "redeemed" inmates were encouraged to build replicas of classical monuments, and the regime's discourse emphasized the perceived incompatibility of the inmates' "destiny" (as descendants of ancient Greeks) with left-wing ideologies. Paradoxically, many of the counter-discourses of the Makronisos inmates and their supporters also subscribed to the essentialist discourse of continuity and ancestral glory. This paper situates this phenomenon within the broader context of the role of antiquity in modern Greek society; it also examines the topological construction of Makronisos as a heterotopia where the panopticism of classical antiquity (the watchful eye of History and Destiny) merged surveillance with spectacle.

1. Introduction: National Health, International Interests Ka-che Yip and Liping Bu 2. Transition to Decolonization: the Search for a Health Policy in Postwar Hong Kong, 1945-1985 Ka-che Yip 3. The Patriotic Health Movement and China's Socialist Reconstruction: Fighting Disease and Transforming Society, 1950-1980 Liping Bu 4. Diseases, Peasants and Nation-Building in Rural China, 1950s: Social Conformity, Institutional Strengthening, and Political Indoctrination Xiaoping Fang 5. Learning from the Soviet Union: Pavlovian Influence in Chinese Medicine, 1950s Gao Xi 6. Public Health and People's Health: Contrasting the Paths in Healthcare Systems of North and South Koreas, 1945-1960 Shin Dongwon 7. Impact of Government-Foundation Cooperation: Healthcare System Development in Postwar Japan Kazumi Noguchi 8. Medicine, Philanthropy, and Nationhood: Tensions of Different Visions in India Shirish N Kavadi 9. The Campaign against the Big Four Endemic Diseases and Indonesia's Engagement with the WHO during the Cold War 1950s Vivek Neelakantan 10. A Promise of Desire: On the Politics of Healthcare and Moral Discourse in Thailand, 1950-2010 Davisakd Puaksom

We study the causal effect of school curricula on students’ stated beliefs and attitudes. We exploit a major textbook reform in China that was rolled out between 2004 and 2010 with the explicit intention of shaping youths’ ideology. To measure its effect, we present evidence from a novel survey we conducted among 2000 students at Peking University. The sharp, staggered introduction of the new curriculum across provinces allows us to identify the effects of the new educational content in a generalized difference in differences framework. We examine government documents articulating desired consequences of the reform, and identify changes in textbook content and college entrance exams that reflect the government’s aims. These changes were often effective: study under the new curriculum is robustly associated with changed views on political participation and democracy in China, increased trust in government officials, and a more skeptical view of free markets.

We study the causal effect of school curricula on students’ political attitudes, exploiting a major textbook reform in China between 2004 and 2010. The sharp, staggered introduction of the new curriculum across provinces allows us to identify its causal effects. We examine government documents articulating desired consequences of the reform and identify changes in textbooks reflecting these aims. A survey we conducted reveals that the reform was often successful in shaping attitudes, while evidence on behavior is mixed. Studying the new curriculum led to more positive views of China’s governance, changed views on democracy, and increased skepticism toward free markets.

This book is about the past and its falsification, historians and the Soviet ideological Matrix. It aims to unveil the formation and existence of Soviet-era Lithuanian historiography, to show how it was affected by mechanisms that created it, and to discuss what kinds of behavioural models different scholars choose in front of the dilemma: to tell the truth or to lie? The answering of these questions determined the structure of the book, which consists of a prologue, five parts and an epilogue. The book will be useful for those interested in the politics of Soviet history and the evolution of the historiography of that time, the processes of the indoctrination of Soviet society, the relationship between the intellectuals and the authorities of the Soviet period.

This book is about the past and its falsification, historians and the Soviet ideological Matrix. It aims to unveil the formation and existence of Soviet-era Lithuanian historiography, to show how it was affected by mechanisms that created it, and to discuss what kinds of behavioural models different scholars choose in front of the dilemma: to tell the truth or to lie? The answering of these questions determined the structure of the book, which consists of a prologue, five parts and an epilogue. The book will be useful for those interested in the politics of Soviet history and the evolution of the historiography of that time, the processes of the indoctrination of Soviet society, the relationship between the intellectuals and the authorities of the Soviet period.

This book is about the past and its falsification, historians and the Soviet ideological Matrix. It aims to unveil the formation and existence of Soviet-era Lithuanian historiography, to show how it was affected by mechanisms that created it, and to discuss what kinds of behavioural models different scholars choose in front of the dilemma: to tell the truth or to lie? The answering of these questions determined the structure of the book, which consists of a prologue, five parts and an epilogue. The book will be useful for those interested in the politics of Soviet history and the evolution of the historiography of that time, the processes of the indoctrination of Soviet society, the relationship between the intellectuals and the authorities of the Soviet period.

This book is about the past and its falsification, historians and the Soviet ideological Matrix. It aims to unveil the formation and existence of Soviet-era Lithuanian historiography, to show how it was affected by mechanisms that created it, and to discuss what kinds of behavioural models different scholars choose in front of the dilemma: to tell the truth or to lie? The answering of these questions determined the structure of the book, which consists of a prologue, five parts and an epilogue. The book will be useful for those interested in the politics of Soviet history and the evolution of the historiography of that time, the processes of the indoctrination of Soviet society, the relationship between the intellectuals and the authorities of the Soviet period.

Those in positions of authority have a special duty to exercise their prerogatives in a neutral and unbiased manner. To do otherwise is to abuse one's position and the trust inherent in it. As teachers and scholars we exercise a fair amount of authority and recognize an endless array of potential biases that we are charged with attempting to avoid. How good are we at doing so? One of the ways we combat bias in our profession is with open interaction. We discuss issues, analytical tools, methods, sources of information, and the problem of bias itself. International Studies Perspectives would like to facilitate this discussion. A rather serious charge of bias was leveled publicly against a recently published work. The issue has been discussed at some length in the Chronicle of Higher Education and Lingua Franca. In the pieces that follow the charge is fully rendered and a defense is mounted. We take no position on merits of the charge or the defense. Our desire instead is to highlight the problem of bias and bring it to the profession in an open manner. Both authors speak to the problem. We invite you to do so as well with two kinds of responses. First, we welcome comments on the specifics of this case. We will review and publish those that deal primarily with this interaction as an issue of bias and as it implicates the profession. Second, we would especially welcome articles about other forms or instances of bias. As we see it, bias can infect us as teachers, colleagues, and public intellectuals. We briefly outline our concerns below, and invite you to submit articles that speak to any or all of the issues. In the classroom we must present to our students, both undergraduate and graduate, as neutral a set of facts and analytical tools as is possible. Our undergraduates depend upon us for information with which they might successfully confront the world. If we provide them with information that skews the nature of the debate, we practice indoctrination and not education. Our graduate students depend upon us for professional training and socialization. We do them no favors by providing faulty tools in either regard. This is not to suggest that we have the unflagging ability to be bias-free. We do not. But failure to be impossibly bias-free does not relieve us of the charge to be honest about the bias that we fear may be inherent in our methods or our sources. Our colleagues demand an honest appraisal of our research. In “science” the ability to replicate findings is important. Though rarely do we threaten or pursue replication, we are inherently held to the same standard. Our colleagues should be able to receive sound responses if they inquire as to our assumptions, our pursuit of certain kinds of questions or arguments, our sources of evidence, and our choice of methods. We fail as professionals when we fail to recognize our methodological biases, our disciplinary blinders, our over-fascination with certain times or places, with the status quo (or with change), with dominant powers (or their challengers), and with the provision of an overly favorable orientation toward any of a number of possible groups—professional, racial, ethnic, religious, gender, or national. When we forward conclusions for all to read we also become vulnerable. Might public arguments or further research or even policies based on the conclusions we present be considered sound? Or are we misleading? Do we mislead knowingly or unknowingly? Might that fault be traced to good-faith assumptions or to personal political or pecuniary interests? How have we sought to guard against this? The problem of bias is difficult to contend with and perhaps inherent in what we do. But it ought not be ignored just because we know it is pernicious. Indeed that is all the more reason to pursue open discussion, and to pursue that discussion on the pages of our own journals. Responses by: Robert A. Denemark, Social Science as Propaganda? International Relationsand the Question of Political Bias, p.417 Robert S. Synder, Farewell to “Old Thinking”: A Reply to Gibbs, p.427

With the first volume of Capital completed, Marx returns to political activity in the 1860s. As a leading member of the International Working Men’s Association, he prepares the education policy adopted at its 1866 congress. Marx’s plan for the public school combines mental and physical instruction with a polytechnical training designed to promote the all-round work skills needed not only for full personal development but also for coping with a changing world of production. At later meetings of the IWMA General Council we see Marx in political debate, defending his education policies and spelling them out in greater detail. A major problem area for him is the role of the state in education. Aware of the danger of political indoctrination, Marx wants the state to fund and support public education, but without becoming ‘the educator of the people’. With that in mind, he recommends a localised school system that follows the North American model.

This article analyzes the internal as well as the external factors that have contributed to civilian control of the Iranian military in the last decade. The internal factors include the indoctrination of the military with Islamic ideology and internal division among various segments of the armed forces. The external factors, however, encompass the emergence of premilitary groups the Iran-Iraq war and the Russian influence within the Iranian military. In conclusion, the article analyzes the effectiveness of these factors in the 1990s, pointing to the various changes that are contributing to the erosion of these civilian control factors in recent years.

Why do authoritarian governments engage in propaganda when citizens often know that their governments are propagandizing and therefore resist, ignore, or disparage the messages? While propaganda is traditionally understood as a means to indoctrinate the masses with pro-regime values and attitudes, i.e., it “brainwashes” people, I propose a theory that propaganda is often not used for indoctrination, but rather to signal the government’s strength in maintaining social control and political order, i.e., it intimidates citizens. I use unique survey data from China to test the argument. Consistent with the theoretical prediction, Chinese college students with more exposure to state propaganda in the form of ideological and political education do not have a more positive view of China’s government and political system, but they are more likely to believe that the regime is strong in maintaining political order and social stability, and less willing to participate in political dissent. Additional evidences consistent with the theory are also briefly discussed.

The Libyan media system has been one of the most restricted and government-tied systems in the Arab world. The wave of liberalization during the 2000s — however limited it was in other Arab countries — has almost completely skipped Libya. Despite the perceived need to professionalize media production and pluralize public discourses, exemplified by the great popularity of Al Jazeera among Libyan audiences, the Libyan regime under Mu’ammar al-Qadhafi1 stuck to its broadcasting policies of education and political indoctrination. Until 2007, there has only been one Libyan TV channel, serving the national as well as international audiences. However, in 2007, one of Qadhafi’s sons, Saif al-Islam, was permitted to launch a new satellite channel, Al Libiya (The Libyan) followed by Al Shababiya (The Youth), which surprised some observers because they also aired critical reports and contested taboos.

The article is opened with definitions of terms utilized throughout the article. Terrorism is defined as the threat or employment of violence against noncombatant targets for political, religious, or ideological purposes by sub-national groups and/or clandestine individuals who are willing to justify all means to achieve their goals. Terrorist conduct is designed to attract attention to the terrorist’s cause and to spread fear and anxiety among wide circles of the targeted population. Subsequently I analyse how terrorists use the Internet, and what can be done to counter their activities. The Internet is used to disseminate information, for propaganda, indoctrination, networking, psychological warfare, socialization, motivation, fund raising, spreading tactics, recruitment, planning activities and coordination. As the Internet became a major arena for modern terrorists, we need to devise appropriate methods to forestall their activities and establish security.

Management theorists have developed a language which, they claim, can be used to evaluate many diverse practices, including practices in health care. This language embodies conceptualizations of practice and an approach to evaluation which treat the concept of quality as foundational and which have links with free market ideology. Despite an extensive literature which attempts to apply this language to various areas of life, its fundamental conceptual assumptions remain largely unexamined. Without adequate philosophical arguments in support of these assumptions, the value of this language and the validity of the approach to practice that it embodies are unproven. Its imposition in the absence of such arguments therefore represents a form of intellectual imperialism. To understand and develop adequate responses to this situation, it is necessary to look at the broad political picture which affects the nature of debates in specific areas of practice, such as the health service, and to question the dominant paradigm governing practical debate in contemporary society.

When Israel was in Egyptland, Let my people go. Oppressed so hard they could not stand, Let my people go. Go down, Moses Tell old Pharaoh, Let my people go. Despite Ralph Ellison's proclamation that Richard Wright "found the facile answers of Marxism before he learned to use literature as a means for discovering the forms of American Negro humanity,"(1) Richard Wright could not help but "discover" the various forms of his own African-American heritage. As Ellison has also said, quoting Heraclitus, "geography is fate."(2) While the first volume of Wright's autobiography, Black Boy, does claim "the strange absence of real kindness in Negroes" and the "cultural barrenness of black life,"(3) it also catalogues many of the joys and strengths of that same "black life": the Thomas Wolfe-like lists of beautiful sights, sounds, smells, and sensations of Southern black rural life; the lyrical catalogues of black folk beliefs that, like Zora Neale Hurston, he recognized as being vital to African-American survival in the racially hostile South; the indomitable will that Wright inherited from his mother; and, perhaps most importantly for Wright as an artist, his imaginative quest through literature for insight into his own lived experience.(4) It is important to remember that Wright's "geographic destiny" also included a thorough indoctrination into the black South's religiosity, a fact also documented in Black Boy, but often overlooked. His initiation into the symbology of biblical stories and the power of verbally constructed images as taught to him in the black church formed a vital part of his literary apprenticeship. And while Wright did not embrace the black church, as an African American from the violently Jim Crow state of Mississippi, he certainly did recognize the vital role the church played as a bulwark against the tide of white racism in the lives of Southern blacks; he recognized that African-American religiosity provided psychic health for blacks by assuring them that they would not always be oppressed in the "Egyptland" of the Jim Crow South; and, moreover, he came to recognize the radical potential of the black church and its ability to equip Southern blacks with an indigenous belief system for hastening and contributing to their own liberation.(5) The political, revolutionary lessons Wright learned during his affiliation with the American Communist Party (CPUSA) in Chicago allowed him to recognize the revolutionary potential within the Bible lessons he learned from the black church. The lessons from these seemingly conflicting sources entered into what he once called the "community medium of exchange"(6) of his imagination and were transmuted into the fictive works of Uncle Tom's Children. Each of the collection's stories demonstrates either the tragic consequences of life without a church committed to revolutionary politics, or the victorious results of a Christian praxis driven by a Marxist demand for social justice. As Abdul JanMohamed has noted, the cohesion of Uncle Tom's Children derives from its incremental repetition of themes,(7) with Wright's concerns progressing outward from individual survival toward community solidarity and eventual political activism. Wright revised the collection for its subsequent 1940 publication by adding an introductory essay, "The Ethics of Living Jim Crow," and a fifth and concluding story, "Bright and Morning Star," which make this outward expansion even more explicit. Wright explained his decision to revise the collection in "How `Bigger' Was Born," the introduction to his next work, Native Son. He says, "I had written a book of short stories which was published under the title of Uncle Tom's Cabin [in 1938]. When the reviews of that book began to appear, I realized that I had made an awfully naive mistake. I found that I had written a book which even bankers' daughters could read and weep over and feel good about. …

Summary December 1989 meant for the Romanian academie world the break off with the communist dogmaticism and the politics of indoctrination and also the possibility of installing a critical analysis and the continuity of the true values of Romanian universities. Two inquiries conducted in 1990 and 1991 among students and Professors revealed a strong contesting pathos (persons, teaching contents and methods. The entire educational System were contested) and also a true desire to find out the critical aspects which enhances a new ideology in the higher education System. Students and a part of the faculty have discovered expressions like “academic freedom” and “academie autonomy”. They started to use concepts like “change”, “academic democracy”, “social responsibility”. New expectations concerning the behavioural offer of Professors occurred. When defining the direction of this change, authors chose the expression “toward normality”. Indices of normality could be the assumption by the university of new funct...

Since the 1970s, feminist scholars have interpreted Lady Audley's Secret as censuring the horrors of women's domestic lives by treating the title character as subversive.1 The problem with these feminist readings of Braddon's novel is that, in re-envisioning Lady Audley as a sympathetic character, scholars suggest that Lady Audley' s actions are praiseworthy2 and that her primary antagonist, step-nephew Robert Audley, embodies the oppressive circumstances she resists. This kind of interpretation oversimplifies the complexity of patriarchy by assuming that the patriarchal victim cannot also commit reprehensible crimes and that the man who benefits by and defends patriarchal norms does not also suffer from them. A more complex critique of patriarchy in Lady Audley's Secret emerges through combining feminist and postcolonial theories. Lillian Nayder employs such a combination by identifying the 1 857 Indian mutiny as a backdrop for Braddon's novel.3 However, her application of postcolonial theory serves only to re-vilify Lady Audley in the wake of too enthusiastic feminist scholarship. Instead of viewing Lady Audley and Robert Audley as either good or evil, we can use postcolonial theory to see more accurately the power structures that so warp their characters.Because, as Frantz Fanon indicates, "All forms of exploitation resemble one another",4 examining a combination of discourses regarding power can greatly improve our understanding of how various forms of power operate. In Lady Audley 's Secret, Braddon uses imperialist discourse to highlight structural inequalities, particularly the oppression experienced by Lady Audley and the indoctrination of Robert Audley into the classist British patriarchy. Although this hierarchy of critiques - the use of an imperialist critique to focus on other aspects of English culture - is Eurocentric because it relegates actual imperialism to the periphery of the discussion,5 the study of this technique contributes not only to our knowledge of Braddon's particular literary moment but also to our better understanding of the interrelationship among forms of exploitation.According to Edward Said, "'imperialism' means the practice, the theory, and the attitudes of a dominating metropolitan centre ruling a distant territory". Therefore, imperialism is the philosophy that permits colonization or "the implanting of settlements on distant territory".6 Because of the practice of this philosophy over time, nations and their citizens possess "a considerable material investment" in such beliefs.7 Maintaining this investment necessitates an objectifying attitude toward colonized peoples; as Fanon writes, "since none may enslave, rob or kill his fellow-man without committing a crime, [our soldiers] lay down the principle that the native is not one of our fellow-men".8 Without imagining colonized people as objects, colonizers would experience moral difficulty in continuing to oppress them for material gain. This imperialistic attitude dehumanizes the colonizers as well as the colonized.9These theories regarding the psychology of colonization can be applied to Lady Audley's Secret because the novel itself gestures toward colonial issues. The most prominent of such gestures is the use of Australia, an English penal colony, as the unrepresented location of George Talboys' successful gold mining. As Said discusses in Culture and Imperialism, the colonized periphery does not figure as a setting in Victorian novels until after the middle of the century. Rather, "outlying territories are available for use, at will, at the novelist's discretion, usually for relatively simple purposes such as immigration, fortune, or exile".10 The periphery becomes the distant site where "restless" English characters can make their fortunes.11 Similarly, products from the colonies and other exotic places like Crimea where Britain had an economic or political role appear as details in Braddon's novel, reminding readers about the existence of the colonial periphery on which the Empire depends. …

Since 2004 Albanian academics have been making efforts to establish the best Western practices of academic writing associated with critical thinking and writing skills for university students. In this article, I will shed light upon the special challenges and peculiarities the establishment of Academic Writing discipline has encountered in Albania over the years of educational transformation in the broad framework of democratic political transition. I argue that the socio-political indoctrination of the society during five decades of communist dictatorship has delayed the cultivation of critical thinking, reading and, consequently, critical writing skills for academic and occupational opportunities. Moreover, the research will not be limited only to causal factors of delay, instead, it will pave the way to recommendations that accelerate the successful acquisition and possession of such crucial academic writing skills for Albanian university graduates and academia in general.First, I provide literature on definition of critical thinking and its improvement through writing courses; next I depict the typical political indoctrination of students during communist dictatorship tracing the legacy of mechanic reading and the huge lack of critical discourse even among the academic staffs themselves; later on I discuss the contemporary academic focus being placed upon the need of critical academic writing to prepare independent thinkers successful to face the democratic transition. Finally, and most importantly, I offer substantial suggestions and recommendations how to implement successfully the Western Academic writing tradition in the higher education curricula by taking into consideration Albania’s educational legacy.

The boundaries between academic freedom and political indoctrination have eroded in recent years, and influential figures and institutions have resisted efforts to reinforce it. This can be seen in the most recent pronouncements of the American Association of University Professors and in the academic work of influential scholars like Matthew Finkin and Robert Post. The trend is also well illustrated by the decision late last year of the Pennsylvania State University Senate Committee on Faculty Affairs to amend that university’s academic freedom policy to delete language that provided: “It is not the function of a faculty member in a democracy to indoctrinate his/her students with ready-made conclusions on controversial subjects.” The conflation of political indoctrination with academic discourse appears repeatedly in various academic controversies, especially on topics relating to Israel and the Middle East. This development is deeply problematic for several reasons. This conference paper argues that the erosion of the boundaries between academic freedom and political indoctrination entails significant risks for the doctrine and that a firmly circumscribed but vigorous conception of academic freedom can avoid these risks. Specifically, this paper argues that political indoctrination cannot be considered academic because it exhibits five characteristics that are inconsistent with the academic function: non-educativeness, controversy, extraneousness, imbalance and bias. Moreover, recent efforts to redefine these five concepts in narrow terms are inconsistent with the basic values that academic freedom is intended to support. Finally, this paper apply these concepts to the William Robinson case, demonstrating that only a robust conception of these five strands can properly illuminate the issues at stake in that case.

T he acrimonious debate over multiculturalism in education has not yet begun to directly affect graduate business educators. Our undergraduate university curricula, some charge, have been and still are little more than arenas for political indoctrination that discriminate in subtle but powerful ways along lines of race, class, and gender (see Ravitch 1990, Searle 1990, Sullivan 1990, Hacker 1990, and Stanfield 1985). Political correctness has become a watchword for some, a code word for others. For multiculturalists, any expression of sentiment for the traditional curriculum, or for educational programs that teach Western cultural ideas, must be immediately exposed as ideological. For those who see Western culture and politics as heterogeneous, self-critical, and tolerably self-correcting, multiculturalist attacks are thinly veiled versions of Marxist ideology. Traditionalists argue that the politicization of education threatens to balkanize our campuses and make intercultural, interracial dialogue all but impossible. Whether or not the current multiculturalism debates are a passing fad, management educators would do well to reflect on the implications of this debate for their tasks. Indeed, multiculturalism in the university is connected to cultural phenomena. As we all know, most managers face pluralistic customer and employee populations. Customers and employees from varied cultural backgrounds create complex challenges to effective communication--particularly in today's global economy. Competitiveness often depends on an adequate understanding of cultural value differences. As Philip West has argued (1989), Pacific Rim competitors know even more about American culture than do American businesspeople. This knowledge provides considerable advantage in predicting how Americans will think and behave. Despite the growing social and political tensions facing U.S. business, we know of no empirical research focusing on the broad range of cultural knowledge management students need to respond to the social environment. E.D. Hirsch's cultural literacy project (1983, 1987) has called our attention to the serious lack of cultural knowledge among U.S. students. Hirsch and his collaborators used current general circulation newspapers, books, and magazines as their sources. They selected information items that writers did not define, because these items are assumed to be part of the common knowledge readers share with the writer. Consequently, the level of knowledge assumed by Hirsch is far less than that needed for an adequate understanding of Western culture, much less non-Western cultures. The cultural literacy project aimed to define minimal functional literacy for our current social and cultural environment and selected cultural literacy items empirically--on the basis of contemporary use. Hirsch's efforts have been aimed at primary education. Only one published report has assessed cultural literacy among professional students. In 1988, Charles King reported that a class of fourth-year medical students at the University of Kansas College of Health Sciences correctly identified only 30.7 percent of 100 basic cultural literacy items. Our study presents briefly the resuits of an expanded and more detailed version

One of the first acts of most of the new East European governments installed in 1989 was to abolish the old regime's requirement that students pass examinations in Marxism-Leninism.' In 1990, the USSR, despite the Communist Party's political monopoly, followed suit.2 Such steps have not been an exclusively European phenomenon: in Vietnam MarxismLeninism is no longer a decisive part of examinations.3 At the same time, Chinese higher education is undergoing a period of selective repoliticization, designed to overcome the disaffection of the 1989 student movement. The leaders of the Communist Party of China (CCP) are reasserting a central role for ideology in higher education. For example, in August 1989, CCP General Secretary Jiang Zemin told students at China's leading technological institute, Qinghua University, "In the future, universities and colleges should earnestly intensify their ideological and political work so that Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought can take over the educational bastion."4 University students are reportedly undergoing the most intensive political indoctrination since the fall of the Maoist Gang of Four in 1976.5 It is uncertain that the intense political indoctrination will subsist as the depoliticization of education in Communist-ruled and formerly Communist-ruled societies continues. The outcome will depend little on whether the currents flowing through Eastern European and other Communist party-states will again find resonance in the People's Republic of China (PRC), as happened in the 1980s. Rather it may be more fruitful to

The paper explores the possibility of the spread of extremism and the potential threat of cyber terrorism in the fast growing virtual world of Second Life (SL). After introducing SL, the paper looks at the 'griefing' attacks in Second Life, which may be akin to terrorism in real life. It also analyses the potential use of SL for indoctrination, recruiting, rehearsing attacks, organisation and communication by extremist groups. The paper states that social interaction that mirror real life interactions in Second Life can provide opportunities for the sharing of socio-political ideas and even an avenue for organising political activities. There also exists the potential use of SL by extremist groups for enhanced and easier communication. Rehearsing attacks is improbable while some initial planning and reconnaissance for potential terrorist attacks can be carried out. However, the threat of money laundering in SL is credible. Today, the spread of extremism on the Internet and their potential foray into the virtual world is a credible threat that all stakeholders in the international community need to be aware of.

This paper attempts an analysis of moral education in the People's Republic of China from 1949 to 1989. It reveals that moral education in China is basically the expressed thoughts of political leaders, which intrude into other branches of education. As such, it is a means of political indoctrination. Unchanging in purpose, it varies in degree and content, as political leaders and/or policies change. The conclusion reached is that, divorced from personal and everyday life, moral education in China succumbs to confusion in personal and social life, as demonstrated during the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976. Moral education is clearly for the benefit of the government rather than for the individual person.

Reading books were one of the favorite textual genres of the Franco Regime, used as a privileged vehicle for the transmission of knowledge, values and emotions. This article explores the evolution of their characteristics and contents during the late Franco dictatorship (tardofranquismo). During the first and second phases of Franco Regime, textbooks contained heavy doses of ideological indoctrination, both political and religious. The inculcation of emotions and sentiments in school texts has been demonstrated; in the early decades of the regime, the language employed in the writing of textbooks had the specific objective of manipulating and persuading as a means to control and shape the emotional structure of childhood. There is debate as to what extent and in what manner the nature of the texts (the kinds of readings and their underlying messages) were modified under the new economic policy and technocracy. The study examines ruptures and continuities that appear in reading books and in their texts, focusing on publishers and authors on the one hand – the messages and their written and iconic languages – and on the emotions that are transmitted through both routes on the other. The economic opening and political turn of the regime’s later years did lead to certain aesthetic and didactic facelifts in the manuals. However, reading books not only changed their appearance; this study brings to light the changes in socio-emotional schemes, changes that took place slowly and gradually. The projected and stimulated emotions began to be directed more at the world of the children and towards a more constructive way reading, moving away from socio-political objectives

In the contemporary liquid society of consumers, those aspects linked to security and surveillance is on the agenda of public opinion. Based on a polished style but not less deep, Bauman in his recent book, Liquid Surveillance explores not only the roots of fear as a political indoctrination mechanism, but also as a sign to unmark the selected people. Technology posed at the disposal of surveillance, more than a need, exhibits a sign to the rest of society.

Peter Steiner's convincing and meticulous analysis of Julius Fucik'sReportage brings to my mind memories that are not particularly enjoyable. For me and those of my contemporaries who shared my political convictions in the early 1950s, the Fucik cult-for he had become the object of an officially enforced cult-was highly unpleasant, if not downright disgusting. There were many anti-Nazi resistance heroes like him, people who, unlike him, had been ready to die if they could take one or two of the enemy with them. But-through no fault of Fucik's-the others, mostly nonCommunist, such as Czechoslovak fighter pilots in the Battle ofBritain or the Czech and Slovak parachutists who killed Heydrich, have been hushed up and eliminated from Czech history. Fortunately not forever. Yet the Communists treated Fucik not just like a primus inter pares, but-so it seemed to us-as the only anti-Nazi fighter worth talking about When I eventually became acquainted with his Reportage during my military service, under curious circumstances described below, the main elements of the book were quoted ad nauseam not only by politruks (officers in charge of political indoctrination) but also by kultprops (officers in charge of cultural activities). This in spite of the claim that Reportage is not a novel and ostensibly is not based on any formula.