Since Sept. 11, the resurgence of patriotism, and the on-again-off-again looming war with Iraq, there has been some debate on the manner in which current events and history are taught in our schools and universities. The complexities of this issue, especially as it relates to the question of patriotism, was well examined in Marion S. Levine's Parenting column on 9/27/02.

The difficulty with teaching about current events and history (and by consequence, their half-siblings, sociology, political science, and economics), is that we don't teach them as a phenomenon. We teach them through the eyes of moral crusade, epic drama, folktale, myth, or ideological propaganda rather than as a phenomenon. That's why conservatives want cheer leading sessions that extol the good guys and demonize the bad guys and liberals want to create non-judgmental score cards that list slights and grievances. Both sides exude, however, a profound intellectual dishonesty. If there are good guys and bad guys, then it's unlikely that any one side, given human complexity, weakness and imperfection, would have a monopoly on vice or virtue. If, on the other hand, life is a laundry list of grievances, then it follows that some grievances would be wholly justified and others unjustified, given that human beings have a vast capacity for both rational and irrational beliefs and behaviors.

To give an example, if I may. The American Civil War is seen as either a crusade against slavery and for the preservation of the Union (in the North) or for state's rights and resistance to the militarism of invading Yankees (in the South). We seldom look upon the Civil War as part and parcel of larger historical processes. In the last half of the 19th century, the German and Italian states unified, the Canadas confederated, the Meji usurped the power of the local shogonate and created a centralized Japan, the kingdoms of Austria and Hungary merged, Czarist Russia expanded its power across the Eurasian hinterland and European powers consolidated most of the globe into a few colonial empires. Cities like London, Paris, and New York absorbed some of their surrounding villages and towns and obtained the prefix "Greater" into their names. The cottage industry gave way to the big companies and vast fortunes of powerful industrialists. All of these events were the result of 19th Century urban growth, industrialization, improvements in global communications and transportation, and the rise of wealth based upon investments and trade rather than land ownership. None of these events occurred without conflicting interests and violent reactions. The Civil War, thus, did not simply occur in 19th century America. It was what the 19th Century was all about all over the world. Not an event inasmuch as a phenomenon.

History as a phenomenon rather than simply the who, what, where, and when helps us to ask why and to anticipate contemporary events. The backlash against modernization that began in Japan in the early 1900s led not to a retrograde but to the traditionalists incorporating the tools of modernization. Thus militarists who rejected the Meji era's political and social reforms and sought a return of Japanese society to its traditional pre-modern belief systems and governance, nevertheless waged war against the U.S. in the Pacific with the state-of-the-art in air and naval technology.

Throughout the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, an akin situation had taken place in the Middle East. On the surface, industrialization, global trade, and urban growth have transformed places like Iran, Iraq, and Egypt into modern countries. The cities of those countries, enjoy the benefits of modern communications, medicine, and consumer products that would have been unimaginable in 1950. But beneath the surface, an increasingly militant reaction to these sweeping changes was afoot and it's a militancy that rejects the modern world but nonetheless employs its weapons and technology.

We could no more have foreseen an event as specific as the Japanese attack on 12/7/41 than foreseen the Islamic terrorist attack of 9/11/01. But had our public office holders and diplomats been trained to observe history as a phenomenon rather than as a list of dates and events, they might have seen that modernization is such a disrupting force that it oftentimes sires its own antithesis. They might have adopted policies designed to assist overseas governments in their endeavor to usurp, redirect, and dilute the power of potentially dangerous movements within their borders rather than policies that simply react once the harm is done.