This is sort of insane. As Texas develops new curriculum standards for social studies textbooks, a couple of specially picked "experts" to advise them during the process are trying to omit civil rights leaders who they believe are "given too much attention":
"To have César Chávez listed next to Ben Franklin" - as in the current standards - "is ludicrous," wrote evangelical minister Peter Marshall, one of six experts advising the state as it develops new curriculum standards for social studies classes and textbooks. David Barton, president of Aledo-based WallBuilders, said in his review that Chávez, a Hispanic labor leader, "lacks the stature, impact and overall contributions of so many others."Marshall also questioned whether Thurgood Marshall, who argued the landmark case that resulted in school desegregation and was the first black U.S. Supreme Court justice, should be presented to Texas students as an important historical figure. He wrote that the late justice is "not a strong enough example" of such a figure. (Emphasis mine)
And of course they couldn't leave out feminist figure Anne Hutchinson. Marshall contended in his report, "She was certainly not a significant colonial leader, and didn't accomplish anything except getting herself exiled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for making trouble." When he says "making trouble," he means, you know, advocating for equality, religious freedom and other kinds of meddling those broads tend to do.
How does one become qualified to be an "expert" in making decisions about Texas education curricula anyway? Be a Christian minister or the former chairman of the Texas Republican party. Those are some expert historians you've got there!
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Do you want to know what makes this even worse? Because Texas is so large, and buys books as a state, the textbook publishers will give in to whatever their requirements are... and make ALL their textbooks fit those requirements. The only thing that might save other states' textbooks is the fact that California also buys as a state, so there may very well be two sets of books out there- the Texas version and the California version.
I'm currently studying to be a teacher (Okay, my program started at the end of June, so I haven't been doing this very long) and at least in our program we've spent time already discussing the problem of textbooks and of leaving things out. Problem is, we're one very liberal college in the Pacific Northwest. And the program I'm in is new and experimental (it's giving everyone an ESOL certification as well as their grade level/subject certification). But, the people who can fight this most effectively if it passes are teachers. Teachers who choose to teach items that aren't in the textbook.
My Masters thesis was about Texas history textbooks for 7th graders and how they presented Texas/Mexico history, Mexicans in Texas, and Mexican-Americans. There was a high point of inclusion in the early 80s, but by 1999, when I did my study, it was all downhill. Not surprised by this at all!
It gets worse. We have a sitting governor that openly panders to the religious right. It took lots of hard work to keep the former SBOE chair from getting reappointed after the big row on creationism last year. Perry considered appointing Cynthia Dunbar, a board member that has criticized the public school system as a tool of perversion because God wants us all home schooled, and written a column about how then-candidate Obama is a secret Muslim terrorist, to the chairperson spot.
The SBOE is only about scoring meaningless political points to these people. They need to be removed from office.
Yep, Texas education system is pretty messed up and it's unfortunately how we kind of decide the Texas books for the rest of the country. It's depressing. But there is cause for hope: I'm teaching in a program in Fort Worth this summer for middle schoolers from low income schools and our two social studies classes for them are on immigration and civil rights. We focus on diverse and overlooked leaders, gender and race issues and our teaching staff is extremely diverse from all over the country. So even if they aren't always getting it in public school at least some non-profits are trying to take up the the slack for some of the students.
Wow. As someone who suffered through the TX Public School System's avoidance of sex education and evolution, I am appalled that now we can't even talk about Thurgood Marshall. Are these people serious?? Really??? We barely spend any time on people who are not white males or anything not US or Eurocentric. This is insane.
Also, check out this quote:
"Barton, a former vice chairman of the Texas Republican Party, said that because the U.S. is a republic rather than a democracy, the proper adjective for identifying U.S. values and processes should be "republican" rather than "democratic." That means social studies books should discuss "republican" values in the U.S."
LOGIC FAIL!
On the use of the terms "republican" vs. "democratic" (in the lower-case, non-partisan sense): The distinction is actually very useful. One potential way of structuring a US History survey course would be to examine the tensions between republican forces-- those elements of society concerned with regulating the demands of "the people" by reducing their direct political involvement-- and democratic ones-- those advocating direct rule of "the people" (not to mention those who came to reject the structure bequeathed by the Constitution altogether, like the anarchists and socialists). That could launch an interesting discussion about power, exclusion, privilege, progress, values, and what exactly we mean when we talk about this government being one of the people, for the people, and by the people. I'm thinking of examining what, say, Gouverneur Morris thought the Constitution meant versus, say, impoverished New Jersey Revolutionary War veterans who established citizen's tribunals to defend debtors from their wealthy creditors believed. We could teach kids to think critically about the differences between the vision of Samuel Gompers versus that of wealthy industrialists versus that of the IWW.
But, alas, I don't think this is the kind of thing Barton was intending.
I had to laugh when I read that. Have you ever seen a more naked attempt to politicize education? Why not just print anyone who's a Democrat will get an F and go to hell?
I find it interesting that you experienced a lack of sex education in your Texas public school, whereas my elementary, middle, and high schools all had sex education programs that were not abstinence-only. However, I live in Austin, which is fairly progressive as compared with the rest of Texas (all resident governing authorities aside).
As an Language Arts teacher, I have the opportunity to avoid using the textbook if it is lacking (which I have done for the first 3 years of my career). What I have noticed, however, is that many of the Social Studies teachers that I know don't have very many primary documents to draw on to substitute or supplement the textbook. Another irritating factor is that in my state, many of the Social Studies teachers are often coaches, so they don't have the time to create additional curriculum to counter all of this crap.
We just adopted new textbooks for our Language Arts program. The ones we were using were from the same year that I graduated high school. Sadly if there is misinformation in a textbook, it will be taught for way too long.
oh, those silly goddamned evangelists have nothing to worry about. Many Americans teenagers I hang out with (yes, I'm 26, so sue me), have never heard of revolutionary icons like Cesar Chavez or Nelson Mandela. No shit.
So, who, exactly, do they see as appropriate and strong enough leaders? Racist leaders like David Duke or Robert Forrest? Or do they prefer to glorify the middling/questionable accomplishments of mediocre white men, say George W. Bush or, idk, John Tyler?
You ask yourself the same thing after watching the documentary _This Film is Not Yet Rated_: How the hell do two or three pastors/priests get to sit on the film ratings board as some sort of "honorary" members? What expertise do they have whatsoever in media or communications or social psychology or sociology to have even gotten there in the first place? I'll have to go with zero. Which then makes a person wonder how the hell the churches in this country still have so much power and pull that they get special privileges to pass judgment on everything from film and education to, apparently, history.
I wonder how much Mr. Marshall will emphasize the good white men's slave ownership, or raping of black women, or protests against allowing women to attend universities or even to vote.
Fucking baffling. My history professors would balk. These are the kinds of misconceptions and ignorances and hero-worship - and the (incorrect) historical concept that history is made/moved only by certain great individuals - pushed by religious wingnuts with political motivations that instructors in higher ed, community colleges and universities, have to waste so much time redressing and filling in for their incoming students.
Anyone interested in this topic should read "Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong."
It discusses the shortcomings of textbooks and textbook adoption in various states, including how pandering to certain states results in whitewashed (often literally, as there are many events, people, and places concerning Native American and African American people and their interactions with Europeans/European Americans that are either omitted or dismissed by major textbooks) lifeless history being taught to disinterested students.
This book serves as a fascinating history in and of itself - big chapters on Native American and African American history, Helen Keller's radical socialism, Woodrow Wilson's racism, and more.
When I was in HS my English teacher was reading Lies My Teacher Told Me and would read it sometimes. It was a big eye opener and it made me really sad that this is how it is. Whats wrong with just telling the truth even if it might not make the country look SOOO GREAT all the time. Its pathetic to give someone a half assed education that even when they graduate they still have to go out and learn lots of things over again since they learned it wrong and biased to begin with.
I was just going to mention this book. This BS has been going on for years, and yep, as someone noted above, it affects the entire country, not just TX.
Yeah, let's just say there's a reason I insisted on going to college out of state. Also, shit like this happens:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6334924.html
It's such a damn shame, because Texas really can be a cool place. Then people do things like this.
tell me about it. to steal from a pin my mom owned. "i dont have a problem with texas, it's the fan club i cant stand."
According to your article, the Texas Board needed to decide "how" it was going to teach evolution. How about teaching it the way you'd teach any other scientific theory? Why we let the religious have a voice in anything having to do with public education is beyond me. We don't get to make them teach evolution in their parochial schools. They don't even have to follow the same standards or pass the same tests as public school kids. They decide on what their requirements are. So why can't they mind their own business?
I was listening to the Thom Hartmann show today and he said that the bigger problem is the fact that we do not enforce the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. If we did, then companies would not be able to consolidate like mad and we'd have lots of textbook companies instead of about 4. So school boards could choose books that were more honest instead of books that are Religious Right-approved. One of the purposes of the Act was to prevent companies from getting so large that they had an undue influence on legislators and so have the country by the throat. It's never a good thing to eliminate choice.
last year the city of dallas wanted to rename a section of road and put it to survey and the people overwelling picked cesar chavez.
and then suddenly, oh wait, that's not the name "we" wanted and then they scrambled to find some other section of road to name.
http://cbs11tv.com/local/Cesar.Chavez.Boulevard.2.744577.html
a year later, it's still not resolved.
http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2009/06/cesar_chavez_lives_or_looks_li.php
A friend of mine wrote a lot of the stories on this subject for Al Dia, The Dallas Morning News' Spanish-Language publication, which were then translated to English for the DMN.
I expected horrible comments on the story online, of course (typical Dallas), but I was really surprised at how many attacks he received to his work email. He got emails asking him whose social security number he had stolen to work for the DMN. It was TRULY awful. I was really upset about it, but he just laughed it off.
*headdesk*
None of those three people were ever in any of my history textbooks, and I took AP history and was in "honors" social studies in middle school.
THURGOOD FUCKING MARSHALL wasn't in your textbook? How on earth did they discuss Brown v The Board of Education without even mentioning him? *headdesk*
My AP history class (1991-1992) and its textbook were pretty flawed, but I do recall a picture of Thurgood Marshall on one of the pages.
I'm curious, is this comment pointing out the failure of your classes (or the organizations that decide the curriculum) to include these figures or is it to suggest that they aren't important because your classes didn't teach them?
I'm assuming it's because the textbooks were lacking, not her.
Rev. Marshall is a minister in Massachusetts. So much for the local control Republicans are always screeching about. I thought they didn't like east coasters coming in and telling them what's best for their children. More here: http://www.progressivefuture.org/recent_outrage/rewriting-history-in-texas-puritan-style
No offense to the Texans here, but is it any surprise with the politicization of education that Texas is among the most illiterate states? If they spent more time focused on the 3 R's and less time focused on politics...God bless Texas kids.
It depends on if by illiterate you mean "inability to read" or "inability to read English." Many studies only look at the latter, which under-represents the number of immigrants and children of immigrants who can read their own language, but not English. (Where I'm from, this is a large percentage of the adult population, and it's not exclusively the Hispanic population.)
A state like Nebraska, which is just as politicized and highly conservative, but which has less of an immigrant community, has a much higher official literacy rate than Texas.
I was listening to the Thom Hartmann show today and he said that the bigger problem is the fact that we do not enforce the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. If we did, then companies would not be able to consolidate like mad and we'd have lots of textbook companies instead of about 4. So school boards could choose books that were more honest instead of books that are Religious Right-approved. One of the purposes of the Act was to prevent companies from getting so large that they had an undue influence on legislators and so have the country by the throat. It's never a good thing to eliminate choice.
Great historical figures hold that position largely due to the legacy that is built around them. Plenty of people involved in important events are little known to us today because they didn't achieve that legendary status for any number of reasons. History is written by those who hold the power so of course textbooks and the general cultural history are going to favor white men.
Adding more minority historical figures into textbooks is a small attempt to give figures who played important historical roles (but may not have the same legacy) a place in history in the minds of those who learn about them. The irony is that the reason these people believe that minority leaders don't stand next to the GREAT WHITE MEN OF HISTORYTM is because they grew up learning the same white-washed history they're promoting. Of course Chavez doesn't make a blip on the radar of important historical figures to a man who didn't grow up in a culture acknowledging his significance. But instead of recognizing that they learned an incomplete history (and really, it can never be complete), they are going to make children suffer the same.
whoa. i just did a search on this "wallbuilders" group.
in the about us section:
WallBuilders is an organization dedicated to presenting America's forgotten history and heroes, with an emphasis on the moral, religious, and constitutional foundation on which America was built – a foundation which, in recent years, has been seriously attacked and undermined. In accord with what was so accurately stated by George Washington, we believe that "the propitious [favorable] smiles of heaven can never be expected on a nation which disregards the eternal rules of order and right which heaven itself has ordained."
jebus friggin christ. makes me glad im my kids will be getting a private, classical education - even if it puts us in the poor house. time to see what kinda crap's going on in my local public school, though. barton's comment on chavez is even more repugnant in my case as my district pulls from a high latino and migrant worker population. so much so that class size can be cut in half, depending on the season.
*toddler at keyboard so hopefully that all makes sense*
and on a lighter note, did anyone here watch the US tv show jericho? the new US government essentially pulls the same history book stunt.
damn i miss that show.
this is absurd. Politics have no place in education. And it is possible to teach a history class without the textbook. I took three years of history at my high school and none of my teachers used to textbook. We took notes, read books, watched historically accurate movies, and had insightful discussions on the impact that the event has had on the modern day world. Not once did we use a textbook and I not only know but remember my history classes much better than my friends who went to different high schools. Actually very few of my classes taught using a textbook, language arts being the exception. I think that I graduated understanding the material better, not just having to read the information, answer the question sections for homework, and at the end of a unit take a quiz. Teaching without the textbook is a much better idea, first because then the teachers get to decide what to cover, not the state who wants to shove idiot ideas down students throats
How well-off was your school district? Schools sometimes can't afford those awesome non-textbook books. There's definitively a class issue here too (and I'm usually one of the last to call class into issue). If you don't have a school willing to pay, a teacher who wants to do that needs to try getting a class set out of their own pocket, or copy book segments (often still out of their own pocket), or try to get a grant, which can be hard to get.
Also, administrations all interfere to differing degrees. Often you can get around it, but sometimes you have to use those copies, because they won't LET you use other books.
And one more point: Some states test on Social Studies (thankfully not mine), and some of those tests are required for graduation, so teachers HAVE to do some amount of teaching to the test, which equals less freedom on the curriculum.
Basically, teachers can do their best to change the system from within, but we also need to try and change the system from without.
This doesn't suprise me at all. I will begin my first year teaching this fall in a low-income Houston 5th grade. I'm starting to learn just what I've gotten myself into in Texas...
I appreciate that the feministing community seems excited to help.
Most of those "leaders" are big fish in small ponds, there are legitimate leaders of color like Gandhi who led all of India, the American leaders of color are mostly progressive irritants for change, noble but not earth moving.
I would probably nominate Fredrick Jones as the American person of color who has had the most direct positive impact on my life, he invented refrigerated trucks, I am sure someone can come up with someone who has had a larger real effect on peoples lives.