http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_ts1253
The nations public school curriculum may be in for a Texas-sized overhaul, if the Lone Star states influential recommendations for changes to social studies, economics and history textbooks are fully ratified later this spring. Last Friday, in a 10-to-5 vote split right down party lines, the Texas State Board of Education approved some controversial right-leaning alterations to what most students in the stateand by extension, in much of the rest of the countrywill be studying as received historical and social-scientific wisdom. After a public comment period, the board will vote on final recommendations in May.
Don McElroy, who leads the boards powerful seven-member social conservative bloc, explained that the measure is a way of “adding balance” in the classroom, since “academia is skewed too far to the left.” And the board’s critics have labeled the move an attempt by political “extremists” to “promote their ideology.”
The revised standards have far-reaching implications because Texas is a huge market leader in the school-textbook industry. The enormous print run for Texas textbooks leaves most districts in other states adopting the same course materials, so that the Texas School Board effectively spells out requirements for 80 percent of the nations textbook market. That means, for instance, that schools in left-leaning states like Oregon and Vermont could soon be teaching from textbooks that are short on references to Ted Kennedy but long on references to conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly.
Here are some of the other signal shifts that the Texas Board endorsed last Friday:
**A greater emphasis on the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s. **This means not only increased favorable mentions of Schlafly, the founder of the antifeminist Eagle Forum, but also more discussion of the Moral Majority, the Heritage Foundation, the National Rifle Association and Newt Gingrich’s Contract With America.
A reduced scope for Latino history and culture. A proposal to expand such material in recognition of Texas rapidly growing Hispanic population was defeated in last weeks meetingsprovoking one board member, Mary Helen Berlanga, to storm out in protest. “They can just pretend this is a white America and Hispanics dont exist,” she said of her conservative colleagues on the board. “They are rewriting history, not only of Texas but of the United States and the world.”
Changes in specific terminology. Terms that the boards conservative majority felt were ideologically loaded are being retired. Hence, imperialism as a characterization of Americas modern rise to world power is giving way to expansionism, and capitalism is being dropped in economic material, in favor of the more positive expression free market. (The new recommendations stress the need for favorable depictions of Americas economic superiority across the board.)
A more positive portrayal of Cold War anticommunism. Disgraced anticommunist crusader Joseph McCarthy, the Wisconsin senator censured by the Senate for his aggressive targeting of individual citizens and their civil liberties on the basis of their purported ties to the Communist Party, comes in for partial rehabilitation. The board recommends that textbooks refer to documents published since McCarthys death and the fall of the Soviet bloc that appear to show expansive Soviet designs to undermine the U.S. government.
Language that qualifies the legacy of 1960s liberalism. Great Society programs such as Title IXwhich provides for equal gender access to educational resourcesand affirmative action, intended to remedy historic workplace discrimination against African-Americans, are said to have created adverse unintended consequences in the curriculums preferred language.
Thomas Jefferson no longer included among writers influencing the nations intellectual origins. Jefferson, a deist who helped pioneer the legal theory of the separation of church and state, is not a model founder in the boards judgment. Among the intellectual forerunners to be highlighted in Jeffersons place: medieval Catholic philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas, Puritan theologian John Calvin and conservative British law scholar William Blackstone. Heavy emphasis is also to be placed on the founding fathers having been guided by strict Christian beliefs.
Excision of recent third-party presidential candidates Ralph Nader (from the left) and Ross Perot (from the centrist Reform Party). Meanwhile, the recommendations include an entry listing Confederate General Stonewall Jackson as a role model for effective leadership, and a statement from Confederate President Jefferson Davis accompanying a speech by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln.
A recommendation to include country and western music among the nations important cultural movements. The popular black genre of hip-hop is being dropped from the same list.
None of these proposals has met with final ratification from the boardthat vote will come in May, after a prolonged period of public comment on the recommendations. Still, the conservatives clearly feel like the bulk of their work is done; after the 120-page draft was finalized last Friday, Republican board member Terri Leo declared that it was “world class” and “exceptional.”
Brett Michael Dykes is a national affairs writer for Yahoo! News
Texas never ceases to amaze! lol @ dropping Latinos and hip hop from text books. FUCK YEAH, WHITE PEOPLE! Somehow none of this comes as a surprise to me.
odin
March 17, 2010, 12:04am
3
THIS is what texas is all about? holy shit im moving there
Well that made my day a little less good
yeah… i got to love their reasoning as well as their rationalization.
in the article i read this in initially had the 7 more clique-ish conservatives on the board quoted saying “liberal academics wont like this but who cares”
ugh… how is it that facts hold 0 sway over the right wing?
Note to self, don’t have kids.
Damn… What’s next, history books telling me that Larry the Cable Guy was the first president… fuck that.
no doubt, like the text books used now all over the US aren’t biased or push an agenda
difference is this is an agenda you don’t agree with
yeah, damn reality and it’s liberal agenda! and damn facts and their liberal agenda too!
Grog
March 17, 2010, 12:17am
10
rsigley:
no doubt, like the text books used now all over the US aren’t biased or push an agenda
difference is this is an agenda you don’t agree with
You mean to tell me that people have different opinions on what they want other people to know?
shut up yankee clowns get a life
rsigley:
no doubt, like the text books used now all over the US aren’t biased or push an agenda
difference is this is an agenda you don’t agree with
Current agenda: Pro-America bias with slight conservative leaning.
Future agenda: Huge Pro-America bias with large conservative leaning.
I’ll take the one that is more factually accurate, please.
imo.
rsigley:
no doubt, like the text books used now all over the US aren’t biased or push an agenda
difference is this is an agenda you don’t agree with
lol way to imply texbooks aren’t already conservatively biased aahahahhahahahhahah
yep christopher columbus was a great man and he didn’t come here and rape and pillage. he saved the indians from their horrible lives
the north were all in the right with the civil war, they did it to free the black man even though the working conditions for the immigrants in the north were worse than the blacks in the south - it wasn’t over money and power. nothing to do with the south voting down tariffs on importing goods which hurt the north since people were importing and not buying american. i’m sure this isn’t responsible for a sense of entitlement black people have from white people.
revolutionary war was about taxation without representation not that the US borrowed tons of money from britain and didn’t feel like paying it back
FDR was a hero, he didn’t prolong the depression with his policies. Big government saved the day!! What was the depression during Hardings administration that was worse than the Great Depression and was solved in 2 years due to lack of government intervention and cutting spending. Everyone knows FDR is the best because we learned it in school!
Face it, they’re not going to teach you the real things in school so who cares what they teach.
How the FUCK are you gonna try to flip the script on Thomas Jefferson? No I mean seriously! I can see them hating on black and latinos and all that would be considered left, but how the hell did the idea to change up the perception on Thomas Jefferson come around at ‘the round table disccussion’? Am I missing something here!?
Sonichuman:
How the FUCK are you gonna try to flip the script on Thomas Jefferson? No I mean seriously! I can see them hating on black and latinos and all that would be considered left, but how the hell did the idea to change up the perception on Thomas Jefferson come around at ‘the round table disccussion’? Am I missing something here!?
prolly has something to do with the fact that he was in fact a diest and they have been pushing this “we were founded as a christian nation” bullshit.
Both sides have an agenda and teaching kids is not #1 or even on the list at all.
odin
March 17, 2010, 12:43am
18
seriously though, texas is to america as the middle east is to the world
Yeah what he said, we should all be Mets fans instead
Glad to see the conservatism of America festering the academia of our country even further.