Seriously? Texas Board of Education rewriting history.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.html

I'm pretty speechless about this one. Especially the part about Thomas Jefferson's writings being removed. The man clearly had enough of an impact on this country to be honored on both the nickel and $2 bill, but I guess that means nothing to these board members. And even for local Texas history, they are trying to downplay the importance of Hispanics.

Gah.

So lets solve the problem once and for all and get rid of the public schools.

Hardly surprising. About 3 years ago, when a friend was studying at a teacher's college in Buffalo (because the ones in Ontario are so full they take a long time to get in to), one of her text books actually included a "fact" stating that some 50% of "blacks" were "retarded." I'm not sure I even know where to begin with what's wrong with that statement.

The solution is actually easier- e-textbooks. Don't give students big expensive textbooks anymore. Give them access to e-textbooks. This means liberal states can have textbooks with actual history and conservative states can miseducate their children with revisionist history as much as they want.

The federal government should make it mandatory to include critical thinking and logic in the curriculum. Then it doesn't matter what textbooks the kids are given.

My friend Adam had this to say about the whole thing.

American wingnuts have taken their best shot at ruining our country's future, so now they're going after the past. I totally saw something like this coming, but even as jaded as I am, I never saw them going after Thomas frickin' Jefferson. Every time I think I've set my expectations low enough, they find a way to go lower and lower. At this point, the only hope for America is for the old fucks who vote for these jackasses to die off and be replaced by a more reality-based electorate. Which is almost enough for me to get behind some deep cuts to Medicare. Eggs, omelette, etc.

Oh, speaking of the nickel and the $2 bill, now the Republicans want to replace U.S. Grant with Ronald Reagan on the $50. Grant wasn't our best President, but I'd say he was miles ahead of Jackson when you look at the totality of their domestic and foreign records.

The Times article was pointing out how "technological advances" is allowing textbook makers to make books tailored to each marker easier, and how Texas doesn't have the same influence on the textbooks of America like they used to. I suppose in time the ebook method will allow even easier changes at a city or school level as well.

The sad part of this whole story is that the ringleader of our glorious textbook committee was voted out in the Republican primary. He's already a lame duck, but he'll be occupying that seat until a replacement is voted in November.

The Republican primary voters (who, as a group, are notably right of center) have rejected their own right-wing textbook historical revisionist!

Since I live in Texas, and my daughter is starting public kindergarden this fall, I'm very sensitive to this sort of thing. My expectation is that textbooks aren't all that influential any more in a world where kids can punch anything they want into Google and find their way to all sorts of resources. If my daughter could digest and understand the Wikipedia article on the separation of church and state, I'd be pretty happy.

If anything, I'm less concerned about historical revisionism in the social sciences and humanities and more concerned about the whole controversy over evolution. If my own education is a guide to what can happen, here's what worries me for the future. In 9th grade, I took "honors biology". So far as I can remember, we spent an awful lot of time memorizing the names of all the parts of things. We dissected a frog and had to give names to all the parts. There was the *briefest* discussion of evolution, but that's it. My conclusion, at the time, was that biology was stupid, and that's because it never explained anything. Just documented what was there.

Had I been taught that evolution is *the* thread that holds everything together, and you can explain everything in biology by how it may have evolved into its current shape and function, well that may well have changed everything for me.

That's really what concerns me about every aspect of curriculum revisionism. I'm less concerned that my daughter will be taught propaganda that's completely disconnected from the truth, but rather that her teachers will shy away from controversial topics that are essential to understanding how things work.

Some of the stuff, at least on the surface, is reasonable. Friedman and Hayek have had a very strong influence on modern economics, regardless of whether that influence was positive or negative. The Black Panthers and other black nationalist groups were also significant in the civil rights movement.

There's stuff skewed by politics:



While that's true, a far greater percentage of Japanese-Americans were "interned" than Italian- or German-Americans. I won't say it was motivated by racism, but it was certainly helped by it. It's far easier to identify a Japanese-American on sight than a German-American. Of course, the relatively low numbers of Japanese-Americans were easier to segregate than the vast numbers of German- and Italian-Americans. Also, most of the Germans and Italians that were interned were not US citizens, while that was not true of the Japanese population. That said, there were Japanese that had been living in the US for decades that were prevented by law from becoming US citizens because of their place of origin.

Then there's other stuff that has no basis beyond politics:



So his argument is that you need to promote a political party in classroom texts? Are there also vote counts divided by parties on other important legislative efforts?

Anyway, I'm going on too long. It's ridiculous that politics is playing this great a role in determining history. There always has been and always will be a bias in teaching history, but this is the first time I can think of an open push for it.

I know exactly what you mean. I'll never forget my eighth grade teacher, because, amazingly, he was the first teacher in my entire life who actually bothered to tell us what the scientific method was. Up until then, although the details of science fascinated me, I never really knew what "Science" truly meant.

Dang... I think you might have put a finger on why I never got interested in biology, either. I remember doing the frog dissection, too, and, while it was fun and enjoyable, the rote memorization of all the names for everything put me off taking any more biology.

Agreed. The primary school curriculum for Biology seems universally limited to "memorize the names of these things and processes".

Well, in a sense, in the days before gene sequencing was cheap, that's all it did do. The famous Rutherford quote is "All science is either physics or stamp-collecting"; biology only really matured from stamp-collecting into physics during the 1990s.

Peter

Even in 1985, when I was taking that class, I think that a high school biology class could well have been taught in an evolution-first fashion, and it would have been a far more interesting class.

Lies Across America by James W. Loewen

Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong

Looks like this is going to turn into a bigger political battle now.

http://www.statesman.com/news/texas-poli...sue-458863.html

It makes sense for the education board issue to get sucked into the governor's race. I'm not clear how much actual power the governor has to influence the board, but it's quite clear that it's an excellent punching bag for the Democrats.

These knuckleheads are at it again:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/23/education/23texas.html

Give them an inch, they'll take a yard.

This says it all...

Thankfully,

Another quote from the local Austin paper:

The state has been having some funding problems for schools, and the political theater there isn't helping. We went from Rick Perry rejecting Federal Race to the Top money to now Rick Perry being listed as one of the petitioners on a lawsuit (pdf link) to secure Federal education aid. (More info on the story here). The main issue here seems to be due to an amendment added to ensure Texas actually uses the federal money on schools. In the past federal education stimulus money ended up being spent elsewhere.

As I recall the Texas state legislature is a considered part time body. The executive branch taking up the slack.