Slate has a somewhat adulatory article on Che Guevara. Instead of "He was wrong; but he was great" the subhead should be "He was wrong; and he was a butcher, morons!"
I've just come off reading "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" which was recommended by the new teaching program, and uninhibitedly Marxist view of teaching and its revolutionary goals. Paolo Friere, the author, even writing in the 70's, engages in a mythicizing hero-worship of Guevara and Fidel Castro. The book's central pedagogical idea--that teachers should avoid treating students like empty banks into which they deposit information--is a worthwhile idea. But the rest of it is interested in the same kind of doe-eyed Marxist class-obliteration that seems to only remain within academia, as it quickly withers anywhere else. If any student of mine claims they are a member of the "oppressed", they'll soon be wishing for a bite from the sword of justice.
