Texas, what are you doing?

Posted on March 12th, 2010 by ecthompson md

The Board of Education in Texas has long been a place were conservatives beat their conservative agenda into the heads of our youth. Now, this is taking ideology too far. This is simply wrong.

From TP:

The Texas Board of Education has been meeting this week to revise its social studies curriculum. During the past three days, “the board’s far-right faction wielded their power to shape lessons on the civil rights movement, the U.S. free enterprise system and hundreds of other topics”:

– To avoid exposing students to “transvestites, transsexuals and who knows what else,” the Board struck the curriculum’s reference to “sex and gender as social constructs.”

– The Board removed Thomas Jefferson from the Texas curriculum, “replacing him with religious right icon John Calvin.”

– The Board refused to require that “students learn that the Constitution prevents the U.S. government from promoting one religion over all others.”

– The Board struck the word “democratic” from the description of the U.S. government, instead terming it a “constitutional republic.”

As the nation’s second-largest textbook market, Texas has enormous leverage over publishers, who often “craft their standard textbooks based on the specs of the biggest buyers.” Indeed, as The Washington Monthly has reported, “when it comes to textbooks, what happens in Texas rarely stays in Texas.”

Tags: Education // 3 Comments »

  • TCB

    ECT states that the Conservatives on the Texas States Board of education “is taking ideology too far” and “simply wrong.”

    The examples don’t support the assertion:

    – To avoid exposing students to “transvestites, transsexuals and who knows what else,” the Board struck the curriculum’s reference to “sex and gender as social constructs.”

    Teaching that “sex and gender arew social constructs” would be pushing an ideology. In this case the Board was limiting the promotion of an ideology .

    – The Board removed Thomas Jefferson from the Texas curriculum, “replacing him with religious right icon John Calvin.”

    TP has a tendency to misrepresent the facts. Here’s the issue as presented on TP’s source, Blogging the Social Studies Debate. Which you have linked to.

    Here’s the amendment Dunbar changed: “explain the impact of Enlightenment ideas from John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Thomas Jefferson on political revolutions from 1750 to the present.” Here’s Dunbar’s replacement standard, which passed: “explain the impact of the writings of John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and Sir William Blackstone.” Not only does Dunbar’s amendment completely change the thrust of the standard. It also appalling drops one of the most influential political philosophers in American history — Thomas Jefferson.

    First, Jefferson is not removed from the social study curriculum. He is not dropped from American history. Second, I think that the change is sound given that the idea is to look at first principles which led to changes in Europe and the United States. I think that the initial statement was poorly written and neglected several important thinkers. Calvinism was certainly a motivating influence on groups like the Pilgrims.

  • TCB

    – The Board refused to require that “students learn that the Constitution prevents the U.S. government from promoting one religion over all others.”

    Here’s the amendment that was voted down:

    “[E]xamine the reasons the Founding Fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion over all others.” Knight points out that students should understand that the Founders believed religious freedom was so important that they insisted on separation of church and state.-9***

    I do agree that this amendment was poorly written. At the time of the Constitution, states were premitted to have state churches and even collect taxes for a Church.

    The writer also contradicts himself because he or she previously noted:
    “Board member Pat Hardy notes that elsewhere the standards already require students to study each of the freedoms and rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.”

    – The Board struck the word “democratic” from the description of the U.S. government, instead terming it a “constitutional republic.”

    I totally don’t get TP’s objection here. We have a representative government, not a direct democracy. Constitutional republic is a much more accurate description of our government than democratic.

  • ecthompson

    It appears that Steven Schafersman has been live blogging from the board of education meeting.

    He writes:

    t doesn't take long for the State Board's religious right reactionaries to begin attacking good standards that they object to for ideological reasons. Cynthia Dunbar goes after the Enlightenment principles upon which the Founding Fathers based their political philosophy and helped them create the Constitution and government of the United States. She moves to strike “John Locke's Two Treatises of Government” in the World History standard that asks students to learn the impact of political and legal ideas on contemporary political systems. This debilitating motion passes without justification or objection. Dunbar obviously wants to remove Enlightenment sources of modern political philosophy. Then she proposes an even worse amendment. She moves to strike the phrase “explain the impact of Enlightenment ideas” and change this to “explain the impact of the writings” and add the names Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin to the list of Enlightenment legal and political scholars (Locke, Hobbes, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Blackstone) whose writings students must study.

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