Israel Centeno reviews Double Lives by Stephen Koch, which looks back at Willi Müzenberg and the Innocents’ Clubs of the early 20th century. Such groups of naïve left intellectual sympathizers of “good despots”, Centeno argues, still abound today.
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While researching my article on the Burmese refugee community in Pittsburgh, I heard time and again that the refugees struggle with adapting to the American education system. They are used to a pedagogy based almost entirely on rote memorization. This is to ensure that the students won’t develop the kind of critical thinking skills that would enable to them to criticize the government or organize opposition. The government also strictly controls what information is available to students, leading to a skewed perspective on history and politics.
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