Texas: Whitewashing Civil War history, Screwing students

[Cyrano]

New textbooks are about to screw Texas students beyond repair. And it could spread to other states.

THIS FALL, Texas schools will teach students that Moses played a bigger role in inspiring the Constitution than slavery did in starting the Civil War. The Lone Star State’s new social studies textbooks, deliberately written to play down slavery’s role in Southern history, do not threaten only Texans — they pose a danger to schoolchildren all over the country.

The Texas board of education adopted a revised social studies curriculum in 2010 after a fierce battle. When it came to social studies standards, conservatives championing causes from a focus on the biblical underpinnings of our legal system to a whitewashed picture of race in the United States won out. The guidelines for teaching Civil War history were particularly concerning: They teach that “sectionalism, states’ rights and slavery” — carefully ordered to stress the first two and shrug off the last — caused the conflict. Come August, the first textbooks catering to the changed curriculum will make their way to Texas classrooms.

snip

Texas is in good company when it comes to weak history standards. Many other state guidelines are vague or confusing, and allow for uneven teaching. Yet Texas is rare for the brazenly political way board members devised its curriculum.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/whitewashing-civil-war-history-for-young-minds/2015/07/06/1168226c-2415-11e5-b77f-eb13a215f593_story.html?hpid=z3

[napkinz]

1. so students will not be able to answer the question ...

[Cyrano]

2. The students won't be able to answer ANY question that

will help them get a higher education.

[jwirr]

7. Most of them will go to instate colleges that teach the same bull.

[Cyrano]

8. Oy vey

[LanternWaste]

9. Which Texas colleges would that be?

Which Texas colleges would that be?

[jwirr]

10. Didn't say it would be a Texas college - the damned books are going to be used in schools all over

the place. But I went to a private college in Nebraska were profs taught what they wanted to teach.

[LanternWaste]

12. Which colleges will be whitewashing the antebellum era?

Which colleges will be whitewashing the antebellum south and post-war era?

[jwirr]

13. How should I know. The college I went to was a "Christian" college and as I said the profs were

teaching anything they wanted to teach.

[Orrex]

3. Funny how Conservatives will howl about a federally-established curriculum...

But they're 100% fine with the nation's schoolbooks being almost exclusively written by a single, agenda-driven group of companies.

[Igel]

16. They're not.

It's something that once believed is hard to unbelieve. It was briefly mostly true, but that was maybe 7, 8 years ago. Before that Calif. and TX vied for influence, just because of their size. In 2008/09, California decided not to buy books, and so TX was left. But the other states still had some influence. Since then there are three players: TX, Calif., and Common Core.

And you'd be surprised at how many companies offer samples of textbooks. Just for physics I reviewed perhaps a dozen sets of "instructional materials." Some are on dead tree. Some are online. Many are hybrid. (Which in Texas is stupid, because the rules are such that the text of the printed textbook cannot change until the next textbook adoption. No such requirement for online textbooks. If the online materials include the textbook, then they're frozen in lockstep with the textbook.)

Take TX science textbooks. They were rewritten lightly to satisfy some particular points of the Texas standards. The primary re-write was to remove all reference to common core, since that's a no-no in Texas. If you compare the TX and non-TX versions, you find one big difference: The TX textbooks have Texas standards cited, the rest have Common Core. Otherwise, pretty much word for word. In a few places there's something TX adds. I couldn't find any place where Pearson, Houghton-Mifflin, or any other publisher took pains to delete information.

Thiongs like "here are three things, written to stress the first two" are just inane. Where that emphasis comes from is unknown--it's not in the text, it's in the minds of the Texas Freedom Network writers. Moreover, any textbook that simply includes those three pass the requirements. As an aside, I'd point out that in some circumstances, the last of the sequences is the most important: In the standard trope "faith, hope, and love" the crucial one is "love," the one that TFN argues must inevitably be de-emphasized. Oops.

Been on the district review committee for science. I know how it works in Texas. The TFN is the same organization that managed to spread info about the science textbooks that was just outrageously (1) obsolete, (2) biased, (3) inaccurate, (4) entirely in keeping with their opinions. There are four traits--timely, unbiased, accurate, and impartial--carefully put in that order to de-emphasize all of them.

[Orrex]

17. Whoa!

That's some excellent information, and encouraging!

Of course, textbooks still suck (the ones I've seen look like dumbed-down PowerPoint presentations) but I'm glad to hear that Texas isn't running the show, at least.

[Fred Sanders]

4. Religious Christian extremists display textbook hypocrisy.

(Pun intended)

[Cyrano]

5. And that hypocrisy is going to screw

every kid that gets a "Texas education." It could screw them for life.

[LanternWaste]

6. An accurate example of why I believe the whole "the confederate flag is my heritage" thing is empty

An accurate example of why I believe the whole "the confederate flag is my heritage" thing is empty rhetoric used to cover up deeper issues no one would admit to. And now we have the state systemically doing the same... again.

[Archae]

11. These people are infatuated with the Hollywood version of Moses.

The Charlton Heston "Ten Commandments" one.

Not this one:

Numbers

31:15 And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive?
31:16 Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the LORD.
31:17 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.
31:18 But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.

[Cyrano]

14. Neither version of "The Ten Suggestions" belongs in

any publicly/government funded school. The First Amendment to the Constitution makes that pretty clear:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

[Cali_Democrat]

15. Is it any wonder why so many white folks in the South think the Confederate flag/Civil War

is not about slavery?

These folks are brainwashed from an early age.

Ignorance.