History teaching standards tilt to right for Texas high schoolers

[jmowreader]

According to:

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/011610dntexsboe.42e6e16.html

these are proper historical people and organizations to teach Texas high school students:

Phyllis Schlafly and the Eagle Forum
the National Rifle Association
the Moral Majority
the Heritage Foundation

These, OTOH, are NOT proper historical people and organizations to teach them:

Hillary Rodham Clinton
Sonia Sotomayor
Thurgood Marshall (this name was returned to the list on appeal, as was that of Cesar Chavez)
the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund

They wanted to remove hip-hop music from a list of "significant cultural movements" and replace it with country music, but that was killed. A curriculum-writing team wanted to remove Christmas from a list of important religious holidays for a world culture course, but the Texas Board of Education made them put it back in--this was the correct decision, as there's no question Christmas is an important religious holiday. (I think the people who took that holiday off the list were the same people who told the Denver school system they couldn't commemorate Martin Luther King's birthday by feeding the kids MLK's favorite meal.)

Oh, and here's the best one: The social conservatives, led by board member Don McLeroy, got an amendment approved that will require a "more positive" portrayal of Joseph McCarthy. Yeah. I'm STILL trying to figure this shit out. Most sane historians are in agreement there is nothing positive about Joseph McCarthy. Unless they get Ann Coulter to write the chapter about Senator McCarthy, I can't imagine how a more positive portrayal can be presented with a straight face.

The real problem here isn't some teabagger wanting to set back the cause of Texas education by 100 years...it's Texas' position in the educational food chain. Texas requires its schools to buy only books on a state-approved list. Because Texas buys so many, no textbook publisher will dare to issue a book that won't meet muster in Texas--making Texas the de facto national approval agency for American schoolbooks. If Don McLeroy thinks Texas children need to be taught McCarthy was a great guy, then by damn every kid in America is going to learn he was a great guy, facts be damned.

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Yeah, gotta do something. Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn were soooo misunderstood.

:sarcasm:

[The Midway Rebel]

2. This is not surprising.

Public education is a great bastion of conservatism. That ol' school marm stereotype of American education has never fully faded away. There are lots of ol' school marms still at work teaching and writing curriculum.

[Bucky]

3. I teach history in Texas

Fortunately teaching today involves more than "read the chapter and answer the questions, kids." Texas education standards also involve bringing more primary sources and source analysis into the classroom experience. Use of the approved textbook involves less than 20% of the learning experience in my very typical classroom and I never assign a reading without making sure that the reading selection itself is accurate and balanced (two separate criteria, by the way).

And don't worry about ol' Tailgunner Joe getting treated like a crusading hero in Texas schools. Even my Republican colleagues don't jump off that cliff. In the conservatives' war on reality, we still hold the high ground.