The Texas Board of Education on Friday, March 12 passed new social studies curricula that will go into effect in the fall of 2011 in a 10−to−five vote with every Republican on the board in support, according to a recent article in The New York Times. The new curriculum affects public school students in fifth grade, middle school and high school, and with its emphasis on the benefits of capitalism, painting conservative political views in a better light and questioning the commitment of the Founding Fathers to a secular government, it will force the adoption of new economics and history textbooks.
The repercussions of this decision will resound far beyond the state lines, as Texas is one of the leading purchasers of textbooks, and publishers will be more likely to tailor their books to fit Texas' standards.
"The recent Texas School Board decisions about what sorts of names, dates, and places are important in US history shows the deeply political nature of history curricula," Department of Education Lecturer Steven Cohen said in an e−mail to the Daily. "It is especially important when it takes place in Texas because the size of the market for history textbooks in Texas has a major effect upon what appears in texts nationwide. While I haven't seen the whole document, it seems pretty clear that a very conservative agenda has given a rather idiosyncratic view of U.S. history."
The Board of Education has been split between a conservative bloc and a few Democrats and more moderate Republicans for years, with the sides battling over parts of the curriculum such as the intentions of the Founding Fathers and Darwin's theory of evolution. The dispute has been more heated recently, with over 100 amendments to the 120−page curriculum standards impacting social studies curricula for elementary through high school passed since January.
"I don't know the whole election process for the committees, but as a liberal Texan, I'm pretty against [the changes] because I don't think that they really reflect the entire population, as most of the major cities vote Democratic," freshman and Texas native Conor Wilson said. "I went to a Texas Young Democrats convention five years ago, and they brought up this issue, and it seems like there is still this ‘Old Guard' government that doesn't respond well to how things are in fact changing."
Sophomore Nisha Mohamed, also from Texas, said that the recent move of the Board of Education is not out of place in her home state. "This isn't an uncommon thing," she said. "A lot of really conservative movements occur in Texas public high schools. I might not support it, but I feel a majority of students and their parents support these kinds of things."
According to The New York Times, seven of the board members are in the conservative bloc, but on important votes such as the March changes, one or more of the other three Republicans vote with them. No actual experts in the relevant social sciences fields were consulted by the board.
"It's really dumbing everything down," Wilson said. "The issue is that you have people who aren't experts in a field deciding how the curriculum should be taught, and so it just boils down to a patriotic bulls−−t version of history. And it downplays marginal groups like blacks and women."
"Even as a conservative, [I think that] to this degree it's a little ridiculous. The reason why they already report on the history that they do now is because that's what actually happened," senior Braulio Rivas said. "What really upset me is that it wasn't actual professionals that were brought in to consult. Instead, it was a group of people who wanted to push their own agenda. While some of them claimed to be experts, they didn't consider how this would affect the learning of children."
The head of the board's conservative bloc, Dr. Don McLeroy, was quoted in the New York Times as saying, "We are adding balance … History has already been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left." The conservative board members claim that they are trying to fix this liberal bias by small changes that question concepts like the separation of church and state and the secular nature of the Revolutionary War.
In addition, they added sections on "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 Assocation" to the curriculum, The New York Times wrote. Additions included sections about the violent Black Panther movement and how Republicans voted in support of civil rights legislation in Congress.
"I read the Times articles and then I read blogs by conservative supporters who said they didn't know why it was so bad," freshman Moe Barry said. "I think it's absolutely ridiculous, because if you're setting that precedent and Texas is one of the largest textbook purchasers, it's going to really affect the nation.
"The fact is that the conservative pundits are all excited because the little kids in Texas get to read about the Contract with America, while at the same time they're completely ignoring the works of Jefferson, because he's the one that coined the phrase ‘separation of church and state,'" Barry added. "None of the people on the board were historians or had any knowledge about what they were saying; they were just conservatives who felt entitled because they were making decisions that would impact one of the largest student bodies in the country."
Thomas Jefferson was cut from a list of historical figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the 18th and 19th centuries because the conservatives on the board disliked his introduction of the idea of "separation between church and state." He was replaced by St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone in the new materials.
"I know that they were trying to promote diversity — it's interesting because they're ensuring that students are being taught the violent side of the Civil Rights Movement, such as the Black Panthers, and the implications of things like Title IX and the Civil Rights Act, but at the same time, anything they're trying to say about how it's for the better of the nation is untrue," Barry said. "They're just trying to put out their conservative notions to the rest of the country."
"Cutting out figures because they're slightly democratic hinders people's understanding of the United States," Rivas said. "Once again, the reason why they've been studied for so long is because their ideals are the ones that have succeeded."
The changes will be finalized in a vote in May. The proposed changes are currently viewable on the Texas Education Agency Web site. Carter Rogers contributed reporting for this article.
