I’ve been reading a lot over the past several months about all the reactionary Right-wingers appointed by Gov. Perry in Texas to the State Board of Education (ten of the fifteen now being fine, upstanding, Texas Republicans). Texas is currently going through a review of its social studies curriculum, and the Right has been gleefully proposing and pushing through all sorts of proposed changes — downplaying slavery (except for its abolishment); touting “causes and key organizations and individuals” of the “conservative resurgence” in the 80s-90s (NRA, Phyllis Schafly, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority); confirming that Joe McCarthy was right about all those commies infiltrating the government; teaching how to differentiate between legal and illegal immigration. Other discussions have involved how to involve more discussion of America’s Christian past (at the expense of talking about Washington and Lincoln), and whether folks like Thurgood Marshall or Cesar Chavez ought to be mentioned. As yet undecided are the extent to which “confrontational” civil rights leaders will be discussed, and how the civil rights movement has led to unrealistic expectation of “equal outcomes” (and how advances in civil rights are all because of the Republican Party and whites). Oh, and whether it’s more proper to refer to America as a “republican” rather than “democratic” polity. So I was more than a bit surprised to receive an email from the Liberty Council (“Restoring the Culture by Advancing Religious Freedom, the Sanctity of Human Life and the Family”), warning me about all the Horrid Awful Liberal Agenda being advanced against the American Way of Life and Our Children’s Very Souls.
TSBOE will soon finalize the language that textbook publishers use to align their textbooks to current standards. As Texas is a leader in textbooks, most other states purchase the same educational materials. The textbook controversy in Texas affects every American because, to have a bright future, we must know our past. America has a rich past founded on Judeo-Christian values and to forget them, or worse, to distort them, will doom our future. Those who want to reshape America begin by rewriting our past. We repeat the mistakes of the past when we are ignorant of them.
Yes, those who want to reshape America begin by rewriting our past. As the preceding examples demonstrate, there’s a lot of rewriting going on. But the Liberty Council has apparently been reading from a different text. For them, it’s all about the Liberulzzzzz!
Some of the suggestions that have come forward at various times include:
- Removing references to Daniel Boone, General George Patton, Nathan Hale, Columbus Day, and Christmas.
- Including the cultural impact of hip hop music, ACLU lawyer Clarence Darrow, and the Hindu holiday of Diwali.
- Replacing the term “American” with “Global Citizen”– stating that students need to be shaped “for responsible citizenship in a global society” without any mention of citizenship in American society.
- Replacing expansionism and free enterprise with imperialism and capitalism.
Huhguhwuh? Never mind that the board, as constituted, is definitely stacked toward (and support of) a conservative historical agenda — changing/rewriting the current curriculum to something more to their liking. While I have no doubt that there are folks on the Left who have proposed “Replacing expansionism and free enterprise with imperialism and capitalism,” the chance that the Board of Ed would okay that is somewhere between Slim and None. Interestingly, there was some actual discussion about hip-hop (you know … that colored music)
The most passionate debate of Friday’s session heated up when the board looked at hip-hop’s effects on American culture. Don McLeroy, a board member from College Station, asked to remove hip-hop and insert country music in its place from a proposed set of examples of cultural movements. He said the musical style should not be included in social studies curriculum alongside Tin Pan Alley, the Harlem Renaissance, the Beat Generation, rock ‘n’ roll and the Chicano Mural Movement. But Lawrence Allen, who represents Fort Bend and Harris counties on the board, disagreed. He argued that hip-hop is a key form of communication for the black community and that its impact on American culture deserved to be an option for classroom study. The brief boardroom quibble was settled by Patricia Hardy, who represents Fort Worth and other communities in North Texas. Hardy said she dislikes that class of music and that it has a negative effect on society. But, she added, students still need to study it. “When we don’t discuss things — positive or negative — we don’t know. To pretend it’s not there is crazy,” she said. “These people are multimillionaires, and believe me, there are not enough black people to buy that. There are white people buying this. It has had a profound effect.” The amendment to remove hip-hop was defeated, and country music was included in the curriculum under a separate measure.
So (a) we get country music as a sop for those who think hip-hop is un-American, and (b) we get hip-hop because, you know, it’s so popular that even whites are listening to it. As for the whole “Christmas” thing — apparently there was a proposal at one point that, as part of social studies, sixth graders (who are learning about world culture) be taught about a major holiday from each of five major world religions. As part of that, Christmas was dropped — in favor of retaining Easter. Which, Evil Secularlization aside, is actually a more important Christian holiday; after all, the point is not that Jesus was born, but that he rose from the dead, right? The previous curriculum had kids being taught (or, in curriculum-speak, being able to explain) Christmas, Easter, Ramadan (Islam), Yom Kippur, and Rosh Hashanah. Christmas as dropped, as is Rosh Hashanah, but Diwali — a key holiday of the third largest religion in the world, Hinduism, is added. The Right of course, pitches a fit about this —
“America is not equally divided among these five religions,” Barton wrote. Mentioning Christmas and Rosh Hashanah “does not promote either Christianity or Judaism; rather, it simply acknowledges with accuracy the religious culture of America as it actually exists that these holidays have been awarded their place in the culture by the people themselves.”
Except, of course, the curriculum is not about religion in American culture, but about world religions. There is, in fact, a whole world out there, and a lot of them aren’t Christian or Jewish. (Indeed, Judaism is a tiny religion in the world stage; if the curriculum were truly balanced, we’d have Buddhism, Sikhism, and both Chinese and African traditional religions coming up first.) Actually, this whole cloud-cuckoo land of “the Left is trying to rewrite history in Texas this year” gets better. The above text about Awful Changes is from the Liberty Council’s website. To the Faithful, their email has a parallel but much simpler and inflammatory message:
Right now, the Texas public school system is embroiled in a major battle over efforts to re-write our history and remove references to our Judeo-Christian heritage from their textbooks. The Texas State Board of Education will soon finalize the language that publishers use to align their textbooks to current “acceptable standards.” Many of the suggestions that are coming forward are shocking:
+Replacing the term “American” with “Global Citizen.”
+Stating that students need to be shaped “for responsible citizenship in a global society.”
+Removing all references to Daniel Boone, General George Patton, Nathan Hale, and Columbus Day.
+Replacing “expansionism and free enterprise” with “imperialism and capitalism.”
+Even stripping “Christmas Day” from all textbooks.
You’d never guess that the Board of Ed was serious majority Republican, or that the re-writing already adapted are all toward the social conservative Right. (And … George Patton?!) For those who don’t know, how Texas chooses what their textbooks should cover has a massive, disproportionate influence over the textbooks in the rest of the nation. So it’s not just the education of kids in Texas that’s being affecfted by all of this folderol, but everyone’s kids. Which is the one point where I find myself in full agreement with the Liberty Council. It’s a strange, strange world out there. And getting, sadly, stranger.