Exile within: the schooling of Japanese Americans, 1942-1945.

Exile Within: The Schooling of Japanese Americans, 1942-1945.

Thomas James. Harvard University Press. $25.00

O.K., let's see a quick show of hands: How many of you remember thinking that the president is chosen by an "Electrical College?' Only a few? Maybe you were one of the wise guys in the front of the class who recognized the absurdity of an unnamed vocational school appointing our nation's chief executive.

Not much has changed. Well after breaking faith with Santa Claus, some kids still believe in the Electrical College. (I have taught such students in Vermont and Maryland.) The only difference between then and now is that in this year of constitutional fever, "Education for Democracy' has become a very big issue. A widely publicized pamphlet of this title, sponsored by the American Federation of Teachers and signed by 150 "prominent Americans' (the statement's phrase), reminds us, yet again, that the majority of American high schoolers can't identify Brown v. Board of Education, Winston Churchill, or Joseph Stalin, let alone describe the electoral process.

Don't fall into the trap of assuming that there was ever a time when kids could recite the Federalist Papers. The AFT statement points out that less than half of American college freshmen surveyed in 1943--"The patriotic era,' according to the pamphlet--could list four points in the Bill of Rights.

Thomas James reveals, however, that during the same period the students who experienced most forcefully the hateful underside of this patriotism--the 30,000 Japanese-Americans, mostly second generation "Nisei,' who attended federally administered schools at "relocation centers'-- had a more subtle, emotional understanding of our democracy than "free' kids.

Examine, as James does in his short but provocative book on their education, the graduation speeches--typically the most banal and bombastic of American rituals--that they delivered within their parched, barbed-wire prisons. "We stand for tolerance,' opined one student, "for we know the injustice and bitterness that can arise where there is bigotry and intolerance.' Another speaker offered a sophisticated, honest critique of American history that is still largely absent from our classrooms and textbooks: "America makes mistakes, great mistakes,' the speaker said, listing the nation's crimes against the Indians, Negroes, and, with unusual empathy, against German-Americans during the previous World War. "Her history is full of errors, but with each mistake she has learned.' Studying quite literally in the shadows of guard towers--or in classes ravaged by dust storms, which prevented conversation and sometimes even vision across the room--many "Nisei' emerged with just the sort of education the AFT, William Bennett, and the rest of us say we want our kids to have.

How they developed their democratic consciousness says something about education reform today. It certainly didn't come from their teachers, most of whom resented their "Nisei' students. (Typical was the teacher who, when a student asked why her people hadn't been allowed to prepare for deportation, snapped: "We were not prepared for Pearl Harbor, were we?') And it wasn't the progressive curriculum, including a special "Problems of Democracy' course, that made them understand freedom. It was their first-hand experience of political represssion.

Score one for the AFT's wise recommendation that schools devote more attention to other nations, "both democratic and nondemocratic.' But nowhere does the statement call for public service outside of school that would force our kids to challenge their assumptions about government and society in the emotional way the "Nisei' had to examine their own. Our kids would know a whole lot more about America's grandeur and weaknesses if they had to work in day-care centers, hospitals, prisons, parks. They would have to ask themselves: Why is that person in jail? Why is that person a drug addict? Why can't that person find a job? Libertarians will squeal that this is servitude, not service. We can't force our kids to work in some hospital a few hours a week. Why not? We force them to sit in some classroom--and for a lot longer than that. They may never, nor should they, receive an education for democracy on par with the "Nisei's' gruesome lesson. But they could get a hell of a lot richer one than they're getting now.