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Sunday, February 14, 2010

How Christian were the Founders?


The injection of partisan politics into education went so far that at one point another Republican board member burst out in seemingly embarrassed exasperation, “Guys, you’re rewriting history now!”

Note:
This is a lengthy article published in today's New York Times, well worth the read. For the complete article, click on this link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14texbooks-t.html?ref=magazine

Update, Monday, Feb. 15 – The link to the county elections office was down temporarily today . . . we are now informed it's back up.

Several seats on the Texas State Board of Education are up for election, including the District 5 seat that represents Hays County on the Board.
Two Republican candidates and four Democrats are squaring off in their respective primaries March 2. You can see the sample ballots at the Hays County Elections Office web site here.
The Texas League of Women Voters has a down-loadable pdf voters guide on their web site http://www.lwvtexas.org/ with short bios of the candidates and their positions. Look for it near the top of the page: 2010 Primary Election Voters Guide. You have to scroll down to get to the District 5 State Board of Education candidates.

By Russell Shorto
Published February 11, 2010


LAST MONTH, A WEEK
before the Senate seat of the liberal icon Edward M. Kennedy fell into Republican hands, his legacy suffered another blow that was perhaps just as damaging, if less noticed. It happened during what has become an annual spectacle in the culture wars.

Over two days, more than a hundred people — Christians, Jews, housewives, naval officers, professors; people outfitted in everything from business suits to military fatigues to turbans to baseball caps — streamed through the halls of the William B. Travis Building in Austin, Tex., waiting for a chance to stand before the semicircle of 15 high-backed chairs whose occupants made up the Texas State Board of Education. Each petitioner had three minutes to say his or her piece.
A rally outside of the Texas State Board of Education
hearings on textbooks in Austin, Tex., on Jan. 13, 2010.
Larry Kolvoord/Austin American-Statesman
“Please keep César Chávez” was the message of an elderly Hispanic man with a floppy gray mustache.

“Sikhism is the fifth-largest religion in the world and should be included in the curriculum,” a woman declared.


Following the appeals from the public, the members of what is the most influential state board of education in the country, and one of the most politically conservative, submitted their own proposed changes to the new social-studies curriculum guidelines, whose adoption was the subject of all the attention — guidelines that will affect students around the country, from
kindergarten to 12th grade, for the next 10 years. Gail Lowe — who publishes a twice-a-week newspaper when she is not grappling with divisive education issues — is the official chairwoman, but the meeting was dominated by another member. Don McLeroy, a small, vigorous man with a shiny pate and bristling mustache, proposed amendment after amendment on social issues to the document that teams of professional educators had drawn up over 12 months, in what would have to be described as a single-handed display of arch-conservative political strong-arming.

McLeroy moved that Margaret Sanger, the birth-control pioneer, be included because she “and her followers promoted eugenics,” that language be inserted about Ronald Reagan’s “leadership in restoring national confidence” following Jimmy Carter’s presidency and that students be instructed to “describe the causes and key organizations and individuals of the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association.” The injection of partisan politics into education went so far that at one point another Republican board member burst out in seemingly embarrassed exasperation, “Guys, you’re rewriting history now!” Nevertheless, most of McLeroy’s proposed amendments passed by a show of hands.

Finally, the board considered an amendment to require students to evaluate the contributions of significant Americans. The names proposed included Thurgood Marshall, Billy Graham, Newt Gingrich, William F. Buckley Jr., Hillary Rodham Clinton and Edward Kennedy. All passed muster except Kennedy, who was voted down. This is how history is made — or rather, how the hue and cry of the present and near past gets lodged into the long-term cultural memory or else is allowed to quietly fade into an inaudible whisper.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Home School your children. Period!

Ralph said...

Texas is becoming the Utah of the South when it comes to education. With these folks determining public school textbooks, caring parents need to support the voucher system so we can better afford to send our children to private schools that are not only intelligent Christian based but also Montessori and other well designed curriculum -- educational philosophies that want to teach our children critical thinking, problem solving, foreign languages, truthful and relevant history, civics, community service, and global business skills. Education based on nationalism and historical revisionism is more dangerous than ever for a already weakening democracy.

Sorry people, but when parents get more upset over Obama talking to their kids about working hard in school than the growing problem of alcohol being served all around their children's schools during school hours, Texas parents have lost their way.

The ominous textbook judgments happening at the state education policy level are the scary realizations of a book written back in 2003 or so called "The American Taliban."

In Texas conservatives are the ones who can stop this pedagogue nonsense. Don't sacrifice your child's education just so you can justify your political and cultural biases. The future is not yours, it belongs to your children. Wake up before it is too late. Treat your children with respect for their own ability to think and decide for themselves.

Even God knows that Cesar Chavez and his movement is a hundred times more important to American history than Newt Gingrich and the Contract for America. This sad decision is a perfect example of incredibly poor education.

The Truth will at least set your children free.

Jeff Murrah said...

The headline of the article should have read "Whose version of history will prevail?". Rather than make history or deal with the reasons for certain ideals and values to prevail over time, some textbook critics find it easier to revise history in order to have their world view prevail. Having written a history of Texas, I am familiar with the many challenges it presents. Someone always gets offended at some inclusion or deletion of various details.

When I grew tired of the hogwash and political correct versions of Texas history while homeschooling my sons, I decided that I could write a better history myself, which I did. It includes all the TEKS required mentions and eventually received the Presidio La Bahia Award.It is available through Amazon or Lulu (http://www.lulu.com/jeff99).

Texas has a long tradition of holding textbooks under scrutiny beginning with Mel and Norma Gabler who exposed many errors and lies in textbooks. Since the choices Texas makes influence the nation, we need to be sure that those choices are wise, presenting an accurate and truthful view of historic events.

Ralph said...

Mr. Murrah,

I think I agree with what you seem to be saying. Yet the problem lies in your phrase "many errors and lies in textbooks."

The current Texas Education Board are making judgments about what is an error and what is a lie. They do this by making fallacious values determinations the likes of Newt Gingrich and the failed policies of the Contract With America as a more important historical event than the Cesar Chavez movement in California. This is pure nonsense. And are the Texas versions of the American history books going to tell the truth about the moral right's Gingrich being ousted because he had an affair?

Will the Texas history books also be honest about the murderous and genocidal attitudes within the "Manifest Destiny" aggression? Or will it only make Texas annexation look like some glorious response to Mexican tyranny?

Also, your statement "Someone always gets offended at some inclusion or deletion of various details" should be pondered closely. It is about both inclusion/deletion and the interpretation of history that is relevant here. I don't think you are saying this but excluding Edward Kennedy in favor of Newt Gingrich is another historical abortion. It is propaganda, plain and simple.

But then again, since most Americans don't even have a passport and have never traveled outside the United States, how can we expect them to know the depth of our own domestic censorship and nationalistic historical revisionism.

It is because of our nation's very poor K-12 public education exemplified by the Texas Education Board that we are slowly descending into a failed second world state.

Anonymous said...

Oh great! Our very own Taliban. Vote 'em out, I say. Send them packing to Afghanistan and Pakistan where they'll fit in nicely. Vote in some level headed folks not interested in communist-style indoctrination. Start with voting for Rebecca Bell-Metereau of Hays County (TSU English professor) http://www.voterebecca.com/ in the democrats primary March 2.

Atheist Conservative said...

I really don’t have a dog in this fight except for the truth. I don’t care who they include in history books as long as it was a real person that lived on this earth. To exclude someone because you didn’t like them is silly and dangerous. Cesar Chavez and Newt Gingrich both need to be included as they were part of our country’s history, for different reasons. Noah, Abraham, Jesus and Moses should not be included except as mythical figures that have never been proven to live on this earth. Hitler, Stalin and LBJ were bad people but should be included because they lived.

Jeff Murrah, I look forward to reading your book; I do hope you explained that the “battle of San Jacinto” was little more than a twenty-minute massacre and that Davy Crockett did not die fighting at the Alamo, but surrendered and was executed.