Texas State Board of Education Ravages Social Studies Curriculum
Here’s what the democratically elected (although, I guess they’d prefer republicanally elected) Texas State Board of Education did to the state’s social studies curriculum:
During meetings in January and this week, the state board made numerous changes to standards proposed by teachers, scholars and other curriculum writers over the past year. Among the decisions made by the board this week:
- The board rejected a proposed standard requiring students to “examine the reasons the Founding Fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion over all others.” That means the board opposes teaching students about the most fundamental constitutional protection for religious freedom in America.
- Even as board members continued to demand that students learn about “American exceptionalism,” the board stripped Thomas Jefferson from a world history standard about the influence of Enlightenment thinkers on political revolutions from the 1700s to today. In Jefferson’s place, the board’s religious conservatives succeeded in inserting Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin. They also removed the reference to “Enlightenment ideas” in the standard, requiring that students should simply learn about the influence of the “writings” of various thinkers (including Calvin and Aquinas).
- The board removed the word “capitalism” from the standards, mandating that the term for that economic system be called “free enterprise” throughout the standards. Board members such as Terri Leo and Ken Mercer charged that “capitalism” is a negative term used by “liberal professors in academia.”
- The board removed Santa Barraza from a Grade 7 Texas history standard on Texans who have made contributions to the arts because board conservatives objected to one of her (many) paintings, which included a depiction of a woman’s exposed breasts. Some of Barraza’s works had been displayed in the Texas Governor’s Mansion during the gubernatorial administration of George W. Bush in the 1990s.
- Board members added Friedrich von Hayek to a standard in the high school economics course even though some board members acknowledged that they had no idea who the influential Austrian-born economist even was.
- In a high school government standard about ”the importance of the expression of different points of view in a democratic republic,” board conservatives added a requirement that students learn about the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms.
The board decided in November to proceed on its revision of the standards without further formal input from scholars and classroom teachers. As a result, board members cast their votes in January and this week without any guidance from classroom teachers or experts in the social sciences.
They also struck the word “democratic” from any descriptions of the American system of government because… well, because Republicans outnumber Democrats on the board by a two-to-one margin.
This just makes me sick to my stomach. I mean, can they even teach students about the Bill of Rights in Texas anymore? Because the “freedom of religion” part of the First Amendment is out completely, and the “free expression” part has to also include the Second Amendment, for some bizarre reason, not to mention the fact that Thomas Jefferson, a major proponent of having a bill of rights in the first place, is out of the curriculum entirely because he’s not Christian enough for the American Taliban members of the Texas SBOE.
And since Texas students won’t be learning about Thomas Jefferson, board members won’t have to worry about kids googling Jefferson, finding out that he was from Virginia, and then seeing a woman’s breast on our state flag, because just seeing a breast once would scandalize them for life. (By “them” I’m referring to… well, I actually don’t know if I’m referring to the students or the board members.)
Oh, and isn’t it great that these morons can just add and remove things from the curriculum without consulting teachers or experts? Even if they have no idea who a person is? This sounds like a great way to improve education in our country! And don’t even start in on the “capitalism” thing, because that just doesn’t make any sense. None whatsoever.
Ugh. If you live in Texas and plan on sending your kids to public schools, I’d get the heck out as fast as possible.
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