It will send
shivers up and down your spine. It will give
your children recurring nightmares. It’s
the mother of all horror stories. And it
will be appearing soon in a classroom near you...especially if your kids go to
school in Texas.
The Texas State
Board of Education (SBOE) and its ultra-conservative majority approved significant changes to the state’s social studies and
history textbooks. Texas is the
second largest textbook buying state, and because of its clout with textbook
publishers, the content of textbooks in other states is likely to be affected. Thus, the Texas SBOE is in a position to shape how political events and figures will be taught to some 4.8 million schoolchildren
not only in Texas, but even in other states, for the next decade.
The tone for the
controversial board meeting at which the votes to change history took place was set by the
invocation from Republican board member Cynthia Dunbar. “I believe no one can read the history of our
country without realizing that the Good Book and the spirit of the savior have
from the beginning been our guiding geniuses,” she said. “Whether we look to the first charter of Virginia
or the charter of New England ... the same objective is present: a Christian
land governed by Christian principles.”
Reading that conjures
up an Eighties Valley Girl expression that perfectly describes my personal reaction
to Ms. Dunbar’s invocation: “Oh-my-god...gag me with
a spoon.”
Leveraging their
10 to 5 Republican majority on the SBOE, the Texas conservatives on the board are
essentially rewriting history. Never
mind the fact that what they are doing is “historically inaccurate.” They, bless their partisan little hearts, just want to avoid what they think is a
current liberal bias.
In one example of the new, conservative slant, the board decided to water down the rationale
for the separation of church and state by pointing out that those specific words were not in the Constitution. They are going to require that students compare and
contrast the judicial language with the wording in the First Amendment.
Thomas Jefferson was voted off of the
island
The board also agreed
to replace Thomas Jefferson as an example of an influential political
philosopher in a world history class. Why would conservative Texans want to demote one of the Founding Fathers? Could it be that it was because he had
his own version of the bible known as the “Jefferson
Bible”? Jefferson’s bible focused on the teachings and lessons of Jesus and dismissed the supernatural aspects of Christianity, including Jesus’ divinity, the virgin birth, angels, and even the resurrection. I mean really, what kind of role model would Jefferson be to the impressionable Christian youth of Texas?
Oh, by the way, according to the SBOE, the United Nations organization is behind an international conspiracy to undermine U.S.
sovereignty. Damn those ferriners, especially the ones from other countries.
The conservative
block on the SBOE voted to strengthened requirements on teaching the
Judeo-Christian influences of the nation’s Founding Fathers. I wonder if the conservative members of the SBOE realize that many of the Founding Fathers, like the now shunned Jefferson, were
actually Deists and not Christians. But let us not allow such trivial distinctions get in the way of distorting history, shall we?
Further, according to the SBOE, the U.S. government must be
referred to as a “constitutional republic,” rather than “democratic.” See, it’s a republic, as in Republican, not a democracy, as in Democrat. That will put
those damn Democrats in their place.
The board
also amended or watered down the teaching of the civil rights movement and slavery. Instead, students will focus on learning the “key organizations
and individuals of the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s,
including Phyllis Schafly, the Contract with America, the Heritage
Foundation,
the Moral Majority, and the National Rifle Association.”
Seriously, the NRA? Well, of course, it IS Texas and all red, white, and blue-blooded Texans carry rifles in the gun racks mounted on the rear window of their pick-up trucks.
As I said in
my last blog posting, this action by the Texas SBOE demonstrates yet again that the inmates are, indeed, running the asylum.
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