By Matt Holdridge
Via Fox News:
Everyone’s heard the advertisement that claims, “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” While that’s questionable, one thing that is not questionable is that what happens in the Texas education battle will not just stay in Texas.
What your kids learn about historical figures like Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein most likely depends on what happens in Texas in the next two days.
Texas is in the process of adopting its social studies standards, which only happens every ten years. The standards cover U.S. Government, American History, World History, and more, and they affect how students in grades K – 12 see America, its founding principles, and its heroes for the next decade.
More than that, because Texas is one of the largest consumers of textbooks in the nation, publishers use these curriculum standards for textbooks that are distributed in nearly every state in the union. Thus, what happens in Texas will impact the nation.
The Washington Examiner details a few of the proposed changes being made to history and economics textbooks in Texas. For instance:
- Question the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government
- Cover the Judeo-Christian influences of the nation’s Founding Fathers, but not highlight the philosophical rationale for the separation of church and state
- Present Republican political philosophies and figures in a more positive light, including Joe McCarthy
- Stress the superiority of American capitalism while eliminating the word “capitalism” from the text
- Refer to the United States form of government as a “constitutional republic,” rather than “democratic republic”
- Give Confederate president Jefferson Davis equal footing with Abraham Lincoln
- Cut Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century, replacing him with St. Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin (Jefferson is not well liked among conservatives on the board because he coined the term “separation between church and state”)
- Consistently defeated proposals to include more Latino figures as role models, though they failed to eliminate mention of Thurgood Marshall from the textbooks (he was the first black Supreme Court Justice and instrumental in the 1954 decision, Brown-v-Board of Education)
- Banned the children’s book “Brown Bear, Brown Bear” because they thought the author had also written a book on Marxism
The only real truth in history is that it has been interpreted since the words, “This is the Showing forth of the Inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassos…” This is why I can’t help but be uncomfortable with this news.
Even if we acknowledge that there is a “liberal bias” in history/economic education, or sympathise with the school board’s cause, is creating a statewide mandated curriculum the answer? I personally would argue no.
Isn’t it just as insidious for people who profess to be “conservative” and for limited government to use the power of the state to “indoctrinate” children into their belief structure?
There isn’t a one size fits all solution to our education problem, be it liberal, conservative, religious or secular. Education, like almost all issues, is something best dealt with within the smallest of political units, namely the family.
What are your thoughts?