CORPUS CHRISTI — Thomas Jefferson, writer of the Declaration of Independence, barely made it into the curriculum approved by the State Board of Education on Friday. However, the conservative majority on the board, which has again shown why it is an embarrassment to the state, had no problem including Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederates States, defender of slavery, as a figure whom Texas students must study.
The board has been creating mischief in Texas public education for years as its conservative faction has grown in power. But the social studies curriculum muscled through last week over the objections of the minority including Mary Helen Berlanga, D-Corpus Christi, may have been the high-water mark of the conservative’s push to remake what Texas school kids learn to fit their own vision of what America has been about. In their view, history taught in the classroom should reflect that the nation is a “Christian land governed by Christian principles,” board member Cynthia Dunbar, R-Richmond, said.
History isn’t quite so tidy, no matter how much the conservatives might want. The conservatives’ social studies curriculum would deny Texas schoolchildren the much more complex view that the Founders, who weren’t particularly religious, could both value the place of religion in society and yet place a wall between church and state. That view paints a nation where personal faith is allowed to flourish but which government does not dictate. But the conservative majority has a dim view of that kind of history; that’s why Jefferson isn’t a conservative favorite.
The skewed vision of the conservative majority permeates the curriculum adopted by the board. They have made the Texas public school curriculum perhaps the only academic document where the long-discredited reputation of 1950s Red scare monger Joe McCarthy is resurrected. Because of the majority, Texas public school students will study conservative figures and movements such as Phyllis Schlafly, the Moral Majority, the National Rifle Association and right-wing polemicists Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity without any requirements that include leading lights on the liberal side. ..........(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.caller.com/news/2010/may/26/time-protect-education-its-state-board/
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