According to my son's school, yes.

Apparently they showed the classic pilot epsiode of the show in class as an example of early television's reinforcement of negative stereotypes, but dang if it didn't make me mad.

For those who don't know the origin story of the Lone Ranger, he and his brother are at the head of a unit of Texas Rangers when they are betrayed by their half-Indian scout and led into an ambush set up by the outlaw gang they are tracking. All the rangers are killed except for John Reid, who is rescued and nursed back to health by Tonto. Reid buries his brother and comrades and leaves an empty grave for himself, so that the world will think he is dead (and symbolocally burying his old personality). He cuts his domino mask from his brother's black vest, and evermore is the Lone Ranger, employing silver bullets from a secret mine as his calling card (to symbolize the purity of justice), and swearing never to kill.

Now my son's teacher, instilling the usual half-lidded post modern disregard for anything free of ulterior motives that in every previous decade has been a good example for kids, fosters the notion that Tonto is a negative stereotype of American Indians. My son didn't even think the actor Jay Silverheels WAS a real Indian (which shows how unbiased the presentation was).

When my wife and I told him Silverheels was a real Indian, he said,

"Well why did he belittle himself in that role?"

Tonto was one of the first non-negative roles for American Indians I'm aware of (if there's another, somebody can speak up). In fact, my counter argument is the teacher was perpetuating her own personal stereotype...

My son's reasoning after this lesson was that Tonto was a negative role because he spoke broken English and didn't know the area of land as well as the Ranger.

But consider the reverse. Isn't it a stereotype that a person has to speak perfect English to be intelligent? There's a certain diminutive green character in Star Wars that would probably beg to differ. And as to the land, are all Indians supposed to be intimately familiar with and mystically attached to the land? Particularly Michigan-born Potawatomies in Texas? The show actually went a long way to portray American Indians in a positive light, and it was in the series guidelines that a writer never could portray a minority in a bad way (for the 1950's this was pretty astounding). Jay Silverheels did a lot to advance his own people in his profession, forming a workshop for Native American actors that's still active to this day. Is calling him an Indian Uncle Tom a worthy endeavor?

A further "lesson" was that all the good guys wore white hats and the bad guys wore black, insinuating that white is right and black (and apparently by this looong stretch of left wing reasoning, black people) is/are bad. Uh...the simplest explanation for this is it was a show filmed in black and white and the tendency had always been to depict good vs. evil this way to make it easier for viewers at home to distinguish at a glance between the protagonists and the villains. Of course if you choose to view it as a racial insinuation, I guess you can. But, what does that say about your own personality?

Anyway, this steamed me. The teacher obviously didn't know jack/squat about the character or the show, and although my son, who has never once been willing to sit down and watch it with me (because its "old"), was forced to in a class and as a result had a poor association scrubbed into his brain by a liberal teacher (and this is the first time I've ever even referred to anybody as a liberal - I do consider myself moderately liberal in the true sense of the word, but I'm not an extremist).

Why is it fashionable nowadays to besmirch the idols of the past? Who in the present is worthy of replacing the historical and fictional heroes of yesteryear? Are Marylin Manson, George Bush (or Bill Clinton, for that matter) and Paris Hilton and South Park where kids should be looking for moral examples? I know one thing, you don't tear down the examples of the past without replacing them...and nobody's doing that. This (and I see it in my own son) only leads to an overly bitter and sarcastic world view. Isn't it better to give our kids something to look up to?

I won't go into the various ways real life heroes of the past have been spattered with mud. Even an innocuous mythology like The Lone Ranger can be targeted for character assassination in this world! In parting, I will let the Ranger speak for himself...

"Kids nowadays aren't so quick to worship heroes. The world is a lot more complicated; we don't seem to believe in absolute good and evil-white hats and black hats-anymore. It's fashionable to think of virtue and honor and bravery as naive, outmoded emotions. Deep down, I believe that people still cling to those ideals...When George W. Trendle created the Lone Ranger for the radio, he gave his writers a code of behavior that the Lone Ranger and Tonto must live by. Jay and I were heroes to millions of kids, and to avoid disappointing them, we lived by Trendle's original rules..." Clayton Moore (The Lone Ranger)

and, those Rules (The Ranger's Code)-

"I believe.....
-That to have a friend, a man must be one.
-That all men are created equal and that everyone has within himself the power to make this a better world.
-That God put the firewood there, but that every man must gather and light it himself.
-In being prepared physically, mentally, and morally to fight when necessary for that which is right.
-That a man should make the most of what equipment he has.
-That 'this government of the people, by the people, and for the people' shall live always.
-That men should live by the rule of what is best for the greatest number.
-That sooner or later...somewhere...somehow...we must settle with the world and make payment for what we have taken.
-That all things change but truth, and that truth alone, lives on forever.
-In my Creator, my country, my fellow man."

Hi-yo, Silver!