Narrow-minded views let down students and the country

Given that Washington is capital of the world's most powerful country, with a Constitution committed to freedom of speech, you'd think our region's schools wouldn't let themselves be intimidated by a whiff of controversy over how to teach kids about international events.

You'd be wrong. A Northern Virginia middle school canceled part of a mock debate about Afghanistan planned for January after just two families objected that they didn't want their eighth-graders to present the Taliban's views -- even in what is clearly to be a simulation.

The annual United Nations exercise is a popular event at Swanson Middle School in Arlington, and the overwhelming majority of parents of the 248 students involved had no problem with it. The 12-page description of the assignment makes plain that it was designed to stimulate students to think critically, write persuasively and deepen their understanding of world affairs.

Many misguided critics see it differently. Since the school made its decision public Monday, it has received hate mail from across the country making the ludicrous accusation that it was trying to indoctrinate students with the Taliban's extremist positions. Some unknown but substantial part of the nation seems unable to grasp the idea that the educational system should teach young people to analyze differing, conflicting perspectives.

"Basically, they said we should be ashamed of ourselves," Arlington schools spokeswoman Linda Erdos said. "It's people making quick assumptions."

Such narrow-mindedness is self-defeating for a country engaged in two wars in societies profoundly different from ours and halfway across the globe. The Pentagon and CIA spend a lot of time studying what motivates enemies such as the Taliban in order to defeat them. We shouldn't balk at encouraging our young people to do the same.

"If you have any hope of getting your point of view across, you have to understand the language and ideas of where your adversaries come from," said Andrew White, 51, parent of a seventh-grader at Swanson. He spoke to Principal Chrystal Forrester about the dispute.

America's "whole counterinsurgency strategy is based on understanding the people that you're dealing with," said White, who participated in model U.N. conferences in the 1970s while attending Arlington's H-B Woodlawn High School.

"In my day, the smartest kids jumped at the chance to represent [communist] monsters who imprisoned tens of millions of people. They did it because it was an intellectual challenge," he said.

There's one argument in the opponents' favor. At age 13 or 14, not all the students might be intellectually mature enough to participate in a role-playing exercise that requires some to present arguments with which they deeply disagree. I spoke to several experts about that, who said kids are definitely ready for such simulated debates in high school, but in the eighth grade it depends on the development of the student and the presentation by the teachers.

Everything I know about the Swanson incident suggests the children would have handled it fine. The world geography course that co-sponsors the project with the English department counts as a high school level class on transcripts. Swanson students are generally brightand academically oriented, and after high school many end up at top colleges.

Parents who complained said they didn't want their children defending a group's oppression of others, but the debate was about the battle to control Afghanistan rather than trying to justify Taliban human rights violations. Parents also were worried that research would mean trolling the Internet for extremist Web sites, but the teachers could have suggested sources, and parents have to monitor their kids' computer use anyway.