Texas's New CurriculumFollow

History, as it is, is just not good enough for Texas!

Whenever I read about things Texas does in the national news, it's always pretty embarrassing. Texas has just approved a new curriculum that gives a more conservative slant to education, and pretty much tries to destroy the notion that America is a secular country. Choice quotes:





So much for Jefferson being a founding father. Can't quote him anymore Varus, you liberal pig!

You mean reading the dollar menu isn't good enough?

Awww, but here's the essence of Gbaji to make you smile :)

Texas really makes some of the stupid things going on in the rest of the south seem almost normal.

This just points out how easy it is for the crazies to take over state school boards. Guess they know if they mess with evolution they will be tossed out so they seem to have left that alone.

Well if those lazy Tejanos had been there, we might have!

Even for you, this is just stupid.

Edited, Mar 12th 2010 10:49pm by Turin

Did you just dignify that statement?

I'm pretty sure that liberals and conservatives are not likely to agree as to whether or not these changes represent putting too much conservative viewpoint into an existing balanced system, or putting back conservative viewpoints into a system that had been unbalanced previously.

For example, the phrase "separation of church and state" has been so misused as to no longer even remotely resemble what Jefferson was actually talking about, and (as is correctly pointed out by the Conservative) doesn't appear in the Constitution. I'm also curious why anyone would have to actually spend time refuting the idea of the "secular nature of the American Revolution", much less be criticized for doing so when needed. Have you read the Declaration of Independence lately? We can debate the specific faiths of the Founding Fathers, but to argue that their Revolution called upon primarily secular notions is absurd. They were wise enough to put protections against religious abuses in the Constitutions, but also wise enough to recognize the value of religious belief itself. Funny that we've lost that somewhere along the way...


The issues at hand are not the black and white, biased vs fairminded situation the NY Times seems to imply. A lot of the specific curriculum areas they addressed have been so mistreated over the last few decades that even just inserting a rational examination of the facts will tend to appear to be a massive step to the Right. What is wrong with teaching about the violence of the civil rights movement along with the non-violent aspects? This is "history" right? Not just "history we like".

What is wrong with examining unintended consequences of social issues like sexual and drug experimentation? I'm not even sure why that's being objected to. If the fear is that policies involving abstinence and stronger anti-drug legislation might follow from such things, isn't it equally problematic to not have them? I'm sure a balance could perhaps be found, but automatically labeling anyone trying to nudge things one direction as an extremist doesn't really help things.


The real anger here is that the Left has controlled school curriculum and textbooks for decades and don't want to lose that useful indoctrination tool. Let's not pretend that they haven't abused that power along the way...

I have no problem with teaching a historically accurate account of the Civil Rights movement. But somehow I doubt that when teaching about the violent agenda of the Black Panthers, the curriculum will also include the fact that the violence of the aforementioned agenda was at least partially a fictitious construct of our own government. Or are you naive enough to believe the kiddies will ALSO be informed that the FBI was actually the organization that distributed the Black Panther Coloring Book?

[burns]Excellent![/burns]

/wiggle fingers


Seriously though, that bit's kind of an interesting turn of phrase in the article as well. It's not that Jefferson isn't taught, but that he's not included in a "list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century". Wow. That sounds bad, right? Um... But exactly how many things did Jefferson write before the decision to revolt against the British Crown was made. He's famous for the Declaration of Independence (which was well, a declaration of the decision, so it could not have been the writing that "inspired" revolt), and a host of papers written *after* the revolution, but did he really do much to "inspire" it? I would put folks like Paine far far ahead of Jefferson there. You know. If we're actually going to teach accurate history that is...


And let's face it. Even the principles in the Declaration were essentially lifted from Locke. He got a lot of criticism for it at the time, too. If we're to credit the ideas in the Declaration, shouldn't we credit the actual source of the ideas rather than the guy who just wrote about them in a specific context? Credit should obviously be given for framing those words at the time and to all who signed it. They were putting their necks out there, quite literally. But if we're to study the ideas, we should look at the philosophers who came up with them, shouldn't we? I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that's what that particular bit was about.


I also happen to disagree that Jefferson himself is "disliked" by Conservatives (although I obviously can't speak for that specific group of them). I have a feeling this is pure projection by the author of the article. People disagree with how some of Jefferson's words have been interpreted, but not with the man himself. Most of the classical conservative positions in this country derive from Jefferson. Unfortunately, the party founded by him has moved so far away from those principles that they have had to actively re-invent him in order to avoid looking like hypocrites whenever they label themselves the "party of Jefferson". It is that re-invention (of Jefferson and of history) which Conservatives oppose. And if that means that occasionally some of the more ridiculous re-inventions have to be challenged and corrected, than that's a good thing.

Um, you DO realize that more countries than our own underwent revolutions in the late 18th and 19th centuries, correct? And that those revolutions were largely inspired by example of the American Revolution, and Jefferson's writing of the Declaration of Independence.

So to NOT teach that Jefferson is one of the "figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th and 19th centuries," is essentially to teach an incorrect version of world history for that period.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I'm not sitting through the better part of an hour of FoxNews videos. Aside from that, not a single one of the written articles you linked demonstrates schools teaching anything that is actually mathematically, scientifically or historically INCORRECT in support of a political agenda.

Whether or not you agree with the teaching technique or content of the curriculum is irrelevant. You have yet to demonstrate that schools have been teaching incorrect information in support of a leftist agenda, much less that their having allegedly done so justifies the right pushing a curriculum that is actually factually incorrect in support of their own agenda.