Texas school board hears from critics of social studies changes

[Jkid]

Source: Washington Post

The Texas State Board of Education made final revisions to its social studies standards on Thursday, changes that likely mean students will spend less time studying the separation of church and state and more time studying alternatives to Social Security and Medicare.

The board has been meeting in Austin this week to review the standards, which many historians, liberal activists and politicians on both sides of the aisle have condemned as giving a conservative twist to history. The 15-member board will vote Friday on the entire set of standards.

Most of Thursday's changes were less drastic than those made earlier this year. Those included deemphasizing Thomas Jefferson, requiring students to study Jefferson Davis's inaugural address alongside Abraham Lincoln's, and saying that Sen. Joseph McCarthy was justified in his 1950s search for Communist infiltration in American society.

But some of the latest revisions were still hard-fought.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/20/AR2010052005084.html

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Texas Religious Conservatives: Twisting American History for their benefit.

[Blandocyte]

1. The brownshirting of America

moves forward another step.

[Stuart G]

2. K and R.....twisting history...absurd... nt

[handmade34]

3. question??

shouldn't we (and everyone fighting against this travesty) contact publishers directly and push for boycotts of the published books... as I have posted before, a good history teacher goes way beyond the textbook and uses original source material and other readings.

Standardized textbooks are so 20th century!!

[roody]

4. +1

[LuckyLib]

5. No problem. Don't order the textbooks. Really good teachers will

see them for what they are -- right wing propaganda -- and refuse to use them. Then communicate to their peers, the school district, AND the local press why they refuse to allow such claptrap into their classroom.

[Jkid]

8. Another problem

Will there be alternatives to the textbooks?

[callous taoboy]

12. Or, good teachers could use them to point out what propaganda looks like.

[redqueen]

9. CA has more students, and gets their own versions.

http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_15098236

I don't know why other states which can't get their own versions couldn't just opt for the CA version.

[brooklynite]

10. Problem is apparently that California isn't ordering books because of the budget squabble...

...so as far as "up to date" books go, Texas is the only major driver.

What should happen, since it's very unlikely that Texas is goinhg to reconsider, is to build a coalition of States with enough combined buying power to be influential, and have them agree on a common set of educational standards.

[redqueen]

11. Either that or wait to order new books.

Regardless, they're not forced to order substandard versions, so...

[Downwinder]

6. "more time studying alternatives to Social Security and Medicare."

Finally going to start teaching assisted suicide?

[and-justice-for-all]

7. Revolting and dishonest...typical work of the pukes..nt

[Adsos Letter]

13. From the comments section following the article

jmdziuban1 wrote:
"Its comforting to know that students in foreign countries will know more about American history than schoolchildren in Texas."
5/21/2010 12:00:41 PM

[Adsos Letter]

14. This is Don McLeroy's historiographical approach to textbooks:

“I don’t care what the educational political lobby and their allies on the left say,” he declared at one point. “Evolution is hooey.” This bled into a rant about American history. “The secular humanists may argue that we are a secular nation,” McLeroy said, jabbing his finger in the air for emphasis. “But we are a Christian nation founded on Christian principles. The way I evaluate history textbooks is first I see how they cover Christianity and Israel. Then I see how they treat Ronald Reagan—he needs to get credit for saving the world from communism and for the good economy over the last twenty years because he lowered taxes.”

LINK to original article; the whole article is well worth reading, and an eye-opener to those (like me) who were unaware of the processes and forces involved in all of this:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2010/1001.blake.html