Those of you who know me well know that I teach in the public school system. What you may not know is that I am a union member—not because I believe the NEA is a good organization or that I believe its ridiculous political positions, but because I have no choice. My state is not a right-to-work state, so union membership is a given.

That being said, union membership brings certain small “benefits’, one of which is receipt of their NEAToday magazine. While there are occasionally useful articles in the magazine, many times I find myself flabbergasted by their outright lies and manipulations. Today was one of those days.

On page 18 of the March 2008 issue of NEAToday is a perfect example of what I call lying by design. That is, the photo placed next to a news article gives the reader one impression of who the people referred to in the article might be, while the actuality of the news story, only available via outside research, is very, very different.

A large headline in blue reads “You go, girl!” Next to the article is a photo of an “attractive” African-American girl about 15 years old smiling broadly, a school notebook open in front of her, her hand holding a pen, and a colorful plastic DNA model on the desk in front of her. Now, seeing that, wouldn’t you think that the subject of the news article would be African-American?

You would be wrong.

The content of the article reads exactly this way:

“For their work in, ahem, “FtsZ Inhibitors as Novel Chemotherapeutic Agents for Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis,” two New York girls recently won the Siemens Competition, the most coveted high school science award in the country. Meanwhile, a third girl won top individual honors, making for a clean sweep by Eve’s team. ‘Why do people think girls can’t do science?’ an MIT professor asked the New York Times. ‘Where did this crazy idea ever come from?’”

Let’s analyze this little bit of deceptive propaganda.

First, nowhere in the article are the names of the girls used. They are simply called part of “Eve’s team.” Now, I don’t know if Eve had a team. Frankly I don’t think she much cared about which team she was on after getting kicked out of the Garden, as she and Adam were pretty busy just trying to survive. All that “in the sweat of your face you shall eat bread” stuff…

So I decided to do a little bit of outside research. Plugging in the title of their research pulled up a number of different articles about the Siemens Competition and its current winners, including their names.

But what names might those be? Taneesha or Liniqua? Not on your life.

Their names are Janelle Schlossberger and Amanda Marinoff. Hardly the names of the types of females who say “You go, girl!” (While I believe that the two girls are Jewish, based on their names and photographs, that’s a whole ‘nuther issue to be addressed at another time.)

From their photograph, available here:

Girls shatter glass ceiling at science contest

one can see that they are well, geeky looking. The kind of girls who actually study, not hang with their homies and the “niggas”.

So…here’s what the NEAToday editor was attempting to do, with some success (except with people like me who have BS detectors that actually function). He was attempting to transfer the earned respect and intelligence of two girls who actually had brains and a work ethic to African-American girls who in real life might have other things on their minds than how to cure drug-resistant tuberculosis.

Just maybe.

Don’t you just hate being lied to? I’m betting 90% of the readership of the magazine will not go to the effort to figure out exactly what brand of girls actually won that prize, but will happily give themselves an inner, mental hug, and say “See, I knew black girls are smart, too!”

It pays to do your research. It may be frustrating to find out you are being lied to, but truth is essential to freedom.

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