Texas Social Studies Curriculum: Out With Civil Rights Leaders, in With McCarthyism!

[marmar]

via AlterNet's PEEK:



Texas Social Studies Curriculum: Out With Civil Rights Leaders, in With McCarthyism!

Posted by Amanda Terkel, Think Progress at 4:25 PM on January 19, 2010.

And pro-McCarthy documents are just one addition. Other must-know-names: The Heritage Foundation and the Moral Majority.



For months, the Texas State Board of Education has been hearing from “experts” about the direction of the state’s social studies curriculum and textbook standards. The advice to the 15-member board — which is composed of 10 Republicans — has included more references to Christianity, fewer mentions of civil rights leaders, George Wasington, and Abraham Lincoln.

On Thursday and Friday last week, the State Board of Education took up these recommendations in a lengthy, heated debate. Some highlights of what the Republican-leaning board ended up deciding, and the debates that went on:

— On a 7-6 vote, the board decided to add “causes and key organizations and individuals of the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schafly, the Contract with America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority, and the National Rifle Association” to the curriculum.

– The Republican majority voted against requiring Texas textbooks and teachers to cover the Democratic late senator Edward Kennedy, the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and leading Hispanic civil rights groups such as LULAC and MALDEF. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Thurgood Marshall, the country’s first African-American Supreme Court justice, will be taught.

– Republican Don McLeroy lost a battle to “remove hip-hop and insert country music in its place from a proposed set of examples of cultural movements.” Republican Patricia Hardy said that while she disliked hip hop music, pretending it wasn’t around was “crazy.” “These people are multimillionaires, and believe me, there are not enough black people to buy that,” she said. “There are white people buying this. It has had a profound effect.” Country music was added as a separate measure.

– “McLeroy was successful with another of his noteworthy amendments: to include documents that supported Cold War-era Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his contention that the U.S. government was infiltrated with Communists in the 1950s.”

– “Republican board member Cynthia Dunbar unsuccessfully tried to strike the names of Scopes monkey trial attorney Clarence Darrow and Pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey from the standards. Asked by another member about her opposition to Garvey, Dunbar explained, according to the Texas Tribune: “My concern is that he was born in Jamaica and was deported.”

– The board “included a requirement for students in U.S. history classes to differentiate between legal and illegal immigration.”

Unable to reach to reach complete agreement last week, the board unanimously decided to “suspend debate on the standards until March, when they will take up other social studies subjects such as government and geography.” A final decision won’t be reached until May. McLeroy, who has been the driving force of some of the most conservative amendments, said that he plans on proposing more controversial standards, such as an evaluation of the U.S. civil rights movement and the “increased participation of minorities in the political process and unrealistic expectations for equal outcomes,” in addition to the “adversarial approach taken by many civil rights groups.”

This debate is important not only because it will dictate how the state’s 4.7 million schoolchildren are taught social studies, but also because Texas “is one of the nation’s biggest buyers of textbooks.” Publishers are often “reluctant to produce different versions of the same material,” and therefore create books in line with Texas’ standards. “Publishers will do whatever it takes to get on the Texas list,” one industry executive told the Washington Monthly.


http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/145274/texas_social_studies_curriculum%3A_out_with_civil_rights_leaders%2C_in_with_mccarthyism!/

[Neurotica]

1. Thanks to the Texas Freedom Network for fighting this craziness

I'm in the process of reading some of their live blogs from the debates. Take a look:

http://tfninsider.org/2010/01/15/live-blogging-the-social-studies-debate-iii/#more-5302

Here's another example from the TFN blog:

"11:25 – McLeroy wants students to learn about “Reagan’s leadership in restoring national confidence,” with Reaganomics and his foreign policy (“Peace Through Strength”) as required examples. Will students learn about the massive budget deficits that Reaganomics saddled the country with? You know the answer to that."

[LWolf]

3. I hope they continue to fight down to the wire.

Public education has been a top priority for conservative political efforts since the Reagan era. I wish Democrats would recognize that and make protecting and defending it a priority.

[rwheeler31]

2. No school district has to buy these books.

Get on the curriculum committee, develop alternatives.

[seabeyond]

4. i keep hearing what some magical group in texas is doing with our kids education, but

i am not seeing any of it implemented.

my kids get a balanced education and have neutral teachers, regardless of political or religious bent. ALL the years kids have been going to school

not that anyone on the board wants to hear it

[cali]

5. Insane. Meanwhile at my local high school they use Zinn's "Peoples History"

as a text.

[tanyev]

6. Well, I do agree that people should know the names of organizations and individuals

responsible for the "conservative resurgence". But probably not for the same reason the TSBOE thinks they should.

[sinkingfeeling]

7. Ben Sargent understands where this is going ....

[marmar]

8. That's hilarious !!!

:spray: