From the Houston Chronicle comes this story of China's new history books:
Where's Mao? In China's new history book, Marxism is out
When high school students in Shanghai crack their history textbooks this fall they may be in for a surprise.
The new standard world history text drops wars, dynasties and communist revolutions in favor of colorful tutorials on economics, technology, social customs and globalization.
Socialism has been reduced to a single, short chapter in the senior high school history course. Chinese communism before the economic reform that began in 1979 is covered in a sentence. The text mentions Mao Zedong only once - in a chapter on etiquette.
Nearly overnight the country's most prosperous schools have shelved the Marxist template that had dominated standard history texts since the 1950s.
The changes passed high-level scrutiny, the authors say, and are part of a broader effort to promote a more stable, less violent view of Chinese history that serves today's economic and political goals.
And more:
J.P. Morgan, Bill Gates, the New York Stock Exchange, the space shuttle and Japan's bullet train are all highlighted. There is a lesson on how neckties became fashionable.
The French and Bolshevik revolutions, once seen as turning points in world history, now get far less attention. Mao, the Long March, colonial oppression of China and the Rape of Nanjing are taught only in a compressed history curriculum in junior high.
"Our traditional version of history was focused on ideology and national identity," said Zhu Xueqin, a historian at Shanghai University.
"The new history is less ideological, and that suits the political goals of today."
How sweet -- the only political movement responsible for directly murdering over one hundred million people and which had zero compunction about editing history (see the photos below of Nikolai Yezhov and Joseph Stalin where Leon Trotsky gets the boot) now finds itself on the business end of the editors brush...
And you just have to love a political theory about the betterment of the working class that was formulated by someone who never held a real job in his life with the exception of editing a radical newspaper for one year from 1842 to 1843. Marx studied law but never practiced. Sponged off of his wife's parents and Engels.
