Texas rolls back liberal anti-American bias from textbooks
Story here on Eagle Forum.
Excerpt:
By a 10-to-5 margin, the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) just told liberals to stop “messing” with social studies textbooks.
For years, liberals have imposed their revisionist history on our nation’s public school students, expunging important facts and historic figures while loading the textbooks with liberal propaganda, distortions and cliches. It’s easy to get a quick lesson in the virulent leftwing bias by checking the index and noting how textbooks treat President Ronald Reagan and Senator Joseph McCarthy.
When parents object to leftwing inclusions and omissions, claiming they should have something to say about what their own children are being taught and how their taxpayers’ money is spent, they are usually vilified as “book burners” and belittled as uneducated primitives who should allow the “experts” to decide. The self-identified “experts” are alumni of liberal teachers colleges and/or members of a leftwing teachers union.
In most states, the liberal education establishment enjoys total control over the state’s board of education, department of education, and curriculum committees. Texas is different; the Texas State Board of Education is elected, and the people (even including parents!) have a voice.
Texas is uniquely important in textbook content because the state of Texas is the largest single purchaser of textbooks. Publishers can hardly afford to print different versions for other states, so Texas curriculum standards have nationwide influence.
So what are some of the changes? Are they positive?
The review of social studies curriculum (covering U.S. Government, American History, World History and Economics) comes up every ten years, and 2010 is one of those years. The unelected education “experts” proposed their history revisions such as eliminating Independence Day, Christopher Columbus, Thomas Edison, Daniel Boone and Neil Armstrong, and replacing Christmas with Diwali.
After a public outcry, the SBOE responded with common-sense improvements. Thomas Edison, the world’s greatest inventor, will be again included in the narrative of American History.
[...]The SBOE specified that teaching about the Bill of Rights should include a reference to the right to keep and bear arms. Some school curricula pretend the Second Amendment doesn’t exist.
[...]Texas curriculum standards will henceforth accurately describe the U.S. government as a “constitutional republic” rather than as a democracy. The secularists tried to remove reference to the religious basis for the founding of America, but that was voted down.
[...]Discussions of economics will not be limited to the theories of Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, and Adam Smith. Textbooks must also include Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek, two champions of free-market theory.
History textbooks will now be required to cover the “unintended consequences” of Great Society legislation, affirmative action, and Title IX legislation.
This is the only article I found that had actual details of the changes. The rest were just left-wing posturing and vague accusations. But that’s the left-wing media, I guess.
I still haven’t given up on my dream of living in Texas, and this is just one more reason why. I could actually send my (future) kids to public schools in Texas!
winteryknight.wordpress.com |
