Texas State Board of Education Adopts Racist Textbook Standards

[praxis1966]

After doing a search of this forum, I'm rather surprised to find that nobody else here has picked up on this. In addition to the racism, standards recently adopted by the Texas SBE are decidedly more conservative and pro-Christian as they require newly purchased textbooks to describe the "Founding Fathers" as Christians, exonerate Joseph McCarthy, and add to the curriculum study of Jerry Falwell's 'Moral Majority.' The full text of the article excerpted below can be found here (http://www.pfaw.org/rww-in-focus/texas-textbooks-what-happened-what-it-means-and-what-we-can-do-about-it).


One goal of the board’s far-right faction was the whitewashing of Joseph McCarthy, so they required the teaching of historical material that they believe (wrongly) shows he was vindicated. The board dropped labor and civil rights leaders Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta; and took out Ted Kennedy and Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina on the U.S. Supreme Court. References to the slave trade were replaced with “triangular trade.” Right-wing advisors to the board wanted them to drop Thurgood Marshall, the historic civil rights lawyer and Supreme Court justice, but Marshall made the cut.

[Bad Grrrl Agro]

After doing a search of this forum, I'm rather surprised to find that nobody else here has picked up on this. In addition to the racism, standards recently adopted by the Texas SBE are decidedly more conservative and pro-Christian as they require newly purchased textbooks to describe the "Founding Fathers" as Christians, exonerate Joseph McCarthy, and add to the curriculum study of Jerry Falwell's 'Moral Majority.' The full text of the article excerpted below can be found here (http://www.pfaw.org/rww-in-focus/texas-textbooks-what-happened-what-it-means-and-what-we-can-do-about-it).

Hey, I was just up in Appleton (the area where Joe McCarthy came from) a couple nights ago. Oddly enough, the right wing is losing their grips on that area little by little.

[leftace53]

We have always been at war with East Asia.

:crying:

[counterblast]

The more racist changes;

-The removal of all [email protected] people.
-The removal of any mention of the illegal internment of Japanese-American citizens during WW2.
-The removal of Frederick Douglass.
-The removal of the words "slavery" and "slave trade".
-An added "History Today" section with a paragraph long subsection about 9/11, that explicitly mentions 9/11 as having been carried out by Muslims. Ironically, this is the only mention of any non-Christian religion in the entire book.

[black magick hustla]

i saw a documentary about this. basically the people who approve what can be in textbook are bored conservative soccer moms, sailsmem, dumb christian lawyers, and the like. no wonder why texas people sometimes are bigger cretins than everybody else

[Robocommie]

And the American education system sinks ever more into the mire.

[ChrisK]

i saw a documentary about this. basically the people who approve what can be in textbook are bored conservative soccer moms, sailsmem, dumb christian lawyers, and the like. no wonder why texas people sometimes are bigger cretins than everybody else

What is the name of the documentary? I'd like to see it.

[proudcomrade]

I wouldn't be surprised if they are also similarly chipping away at the curriculum in less-obvious parts of the country, too. I doubt that this Texas incident and the Georgia case (Christian "creationism" inserted into science books in public high schools) are the only ones. I'm willing to bet that there are counties in New York, Illinois, S. Dakota or where-ever, where stuff like this is happening under the people's noses, too.

I am not sure which moral wrong I find more outrageous about this Texas case: the racism, or the deliberate feeding of disinformation to children. Horrifying.

[Pretty Flaco]

I remembering having to specifically do projects in elementary school on the Japanese internment camps.
And now brainwashed texan kids will never learn... :(

[ckaihatsu]

I remembering having to specifically do projects in elementary school on the Japanese internment camps.
And now brainwashed texan kids will never learn... :(


Maybe young Texans should also not-learn that the Alamo ever happened, so that they'll think that the land is still in the hands of Mexico...(!)

[ckaihatsu]

What is the name of the documentary? I'd like to see it.


I can't speak to this one in particular, but along similar lines go see 'Jesus Camp'. Chilling.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Well it's not just Texas. As "Lies my Teacher Told Me" explained, textbook publishers use states like Texas to base all their textbooks on - its a large state and politically conservative, so it's easier to use them as the model and sell those books everywhere than make one book for the rest of the country and a separate book just for Texas.

"Lies My Teacher Told Me" also put this in perspective because it goes through how history in schoolbooks changes based on the social situation at the time. So, for example, John Brown was a hero in books made during reconstruction, then became a deranged villain and terrorist in books in the 1920s (when the new KKK emerged). He became a hero again during the civil rights era because of the New Left. Since then his image has retreated into a more gray area. I was taught in high school that "he had crazy eyes like Manson" and that he thought God told him to be Moses. "Lies" points out that while black abolitionists who used apocalyptic language and said they had seen visions telling them that their cause was just, are not shown in history books as "crazy", a white abolitionist who used the same language is shown as "insane" - the implication: anyone who has solidarity with other groups in society when they don't have to, must be crazy.

Also it's not just the US: the BBC was just playing a story about how school history books are changed and they talked about how Stalin got rid of "all that class-war history stuff" that was put into the books after the Revolution and promoted a history that glorified Russian national heroes and history:lol:.

[incogweedo]

Although i do not think the textbooks are straight-up "racist", it is bullshit that they are trying glorify Christianity and make their textbooks more conservative.

they're also trying to keep the entire state ignorant that slavery has ever existed lol.


here's TYT on this:
youtube (dot) com/watch?v=DJM6UsGM8Sk


and all this time i thought the world was getting smarter... and coming out of the religious bullshit, but Texas thinks it's a good idea to reverse the progress that the human race has made. It's just a matter of time before this infect's the states around it.

[praxis1966]

Well it's not just Texas. As "Lies my Teacher Told Me" explained, textbook publishers use states like Texas to base all their textbooks on - its a large state and politically conservative, so it's easier to use them as the model and sell those books everywhere than make one book for the rest of the country and a separate book just for Texas.

The good news in this case is that the state I currently live in, California, pretty much the day after the Texas standards were approved a bill was introduced in the California legislature to ban any textbook approved by the state of Texas from being used in California schools. What this means is that textbook publishers will be forced to come up with a second model.

Unfortunately, I think most of the South will adopt the Texas-modeled books, leading to further obfuscation in American children's understanding of history. That in turn leads to further polarization, politically speaking, as I'm of the mind that smoothing over things like slavery can only lead to antipathy towards minorities in the white working class community. It then snowballs further into increased regionalist prejudice, and on and on and on...


Although i do not think the textbooks are straight-up "racist"...

Let me ask you this, if you're not a racist, why would you want to make slavery sound less pernicious?

[Veg_Athei_Socialist]

I wouldn't be surprised if they are also similarly chipping away at the curriculum in less-obvious parts of the country, too. I doubt that this Texas incident and the Georgia case (Christian "creationism" inserted into science books in public high schools) are the only ones. I'm willing to bet that there are counties in New York, Illinois, S. Dakota or where-ever, where stuff like this is happening under the people's noses, too.

I am not sure which moral wrong I find more outrageous about this Texas case: the racism, or the deliberate feeding of disinformation to children. Horrifying.
Both are extremely outrageous.

[incogweedo]

Let me ask you this, if you're not a racist, why would you want to make slavery sound less pernicious?

well im not racist at all.
i just meant, it doesn't just hardcore say "we would be living in piece if it wasn't for these got damn negros, GOD BLESS AMERICA, WHITE BLOOD IS PURE!!!!!!1", as i see allot of racist people think.

i simply meant that they are slowly trying to persuade the minds of the future generations to come with their overly concervative textbooks, that's all.

but your right, the textbooks are racist, just not flat out in-your-face racist. :thumbup1:

[praxis1966]

well im not racist at all.
i just meant, it doesn't just hardcore say "we would be living in piece if it wasn't for these got damn negros, GOD BLESS AMERICA, WHITE BLOOD IS PURE!!!!!!1", as i see allot of racist people think.

i simply meant that they are slowly trying to persuade the minds of the future generations to come with their overly concervative textbooks, that's all.

but your right, the textbooks are racist, just not flat out in-your-face racist. :thumbup1:

Well I wasn't trying to insinuate that you were a racist, just that racism could be the only possible motivation for making those kinds of changes. Sorry if it came across that way.

Anyway, I find this kind of racism much more dangerous than they kind you're talking about because it only encourages ignorance of the ongoing cultural significance of things like slavery and Jim Crow and how that lead to modern day de facto segregation and the like. It's a way of basically telling the kind of people who say things like 'Slavery was so long ago, why does it matter?' (which I have heard only just recently) to say things like 'Slavery was so long ago and it wasn't that bad to begin with, so why does it matter?' It's fuckin' lunacy if you ask me.

[Ocean Seal]

I was hoping that they wouldn't pass this... But now the conservatives have gone too far. Something must be done in Texas, some kind of just propaganda campaign should be organized.

[¿Que?]

I was hoping that they wouldn't pass this... But now the conservatives have gone too far. Something must be done in Texas, some kind of just propaganda campaign should be organized.
I live in Texas. What do you suggest?

[#FF0000]

Although i do not think the textbooks are straight-up "racist", it is bullshit that they are trying glorify Christianity and make their textbooks more conservative.

Yeah it is straight up racist. Racism nowadays isn't dressed up in white hoods with people throwing around slurs openly. It's more subtle, and in ways, more dangerous, because people will make the same mistake in thinking that it's not in-your-face racism, and thus, is less dangerous.

[Klaatu]

I would like to know the exact reason why these textbooks are being modified with such a bias. Are they pro-Christian? If so, they should abhor racism and not try to sweeten up history to make things like slavery less abominable. Are they anti-Socialist? If so, then they do not realize that Jesus and his followers were extreme left-wingers (by today's standards.) In fact, if you take the Bible itself, and remove every page of liberal and leftist ideals, you would have almost only the book binding itself remaining! ;)

[nip]

It's stuff like this that makes me want Texas to secede from America and i have family there.

[Jazzhands]

It's stuff like this that makes me want Texas to secede from America and i have family there.

I agree. Why exactly did we fight the civil war again? Did we NEED the South? keep your slaves and your fried chicken, just get the fuck out of my country. half the size, double the quality. :cool:

sorry. anyway, this has been going on for a really long time now and this is only the latest. In 7th grade, I was told Ronald Reagan knocked down the Berlin Wall and that caused the collapse of the USSR and nothing else happened. what I had to point out was how the Berlin Wall was not even IN Russia, and they were planning on knocking it down anyway! They mentioned NOTHING about Gorbachev, the revolutions of 1989 or anything that the rational world would mention as being EXTREMELY GODDAMN IMPORTANT to the story. :mad:

[Klaatu]

It's stuff like this that makes me want Texas to secede from America and i have family there.

Me too. My sister had moved there in the 1970s. She used to be quite the leftist (or at least centrist. ) Now, after living there for 35 years,
she is quite the right-wing nut job. Shows of how environment can influence one's opinions...

[Lost In Translation]

I have a cousin in Texas who's just started school a year ago. He went back home after school one day and told the my grandmother that men shouldn't kiss other men, and that only men and women should kiss. Contrast this with my sister's education at around the same time up here in Canada. She was learning that there are "families with two moms or two dads, and that girls can like girls and boys can like boys". Some might say that they're both cases of indoctrination from an early age, but frankly, I find the latter option much more palatable. Only those who are not taught acceptance will turn to violence, and if that doesn't go against what Christians believe, I don't know what does.

You know, sooner or later the BoE will declare that pi and e should be rounded to 3, because it's close enough to the real thing and it's a religiously symbolic number.

[IllicitPopsicle]

This is why I'm stoked to have graduated.

[Tablo]

Luckily I have had a few history teachers who flat out told us our text books suck and just selectively pulled things from it. They even taught a lot of things that weren't in the text. While text books are getting worse we do still have some rational teachers in this country who can still give children a decent education.

[mlgb]

I agree. Why exactly did we fight the civil war again? Did we NEED the South? keep your slaves and your fried chicken, just get the fuck out of my country. half the size, double the quality. :cool:


fuck that noise

[Optiow]

The more racist changes;

-The removal of all [email protected] people.
-The removal of any mention of the illegal internment of Japanese-American citizens during WW2.
-The removal of Frederick Douglass.
-The removal of the words "slavery" and "slave trade".
-An added "History Today" section with a paragraph long subsection about 9/11, that explicitly mentions 9/11 as having been carried out by Muslims. Ironically, this is the only mention of any non-Christian religion in the entire book.
Jesus, and they say they are the land of the free.

[Klaatu]

In 7th grade, I was told Ronald Reagan knocked down the Berlin Wall and that caused the collapse of the USSR and nothing else happened. what I had to point out was how the Berlin Wall was not even IN Russia, and they were planning on knocking it down anyway! They mentioned NOTHING about Gorbachev, the revolutions of 1989 or anything that the rational world would mention as being EXTREMELY GODDAMN IMPORTANT to the story. :mad:

The only thing Reagan "knocked down" was the financial stability of the United States, with all of his tax-cutting and spending increases.

[Sendo]

i saw a documentary about this. basically the people who approve what can be in textbook are bored conservative soccer moms, sailsmem, dumb christian lawyers, and the like. no wonder why texas people sometimes are bigger cretins than everybody else

As a teacher I'll say parents have no god damn place deciding curriculum like this. It's bad enough they've gone and neutered teachers and administration. And look who it favors, it favors the religious right, the soccer moms, and the busybodies, and the rich homemakers. My old high school had a big cheating scandal last year with one science course being that for 3 quarters most kids cheated on every test (i won't explain how here) and then the parents complained there otherwise good kids would suffer. So even though the teacher discovered the cheating no one backed her up and all the kids got to take re-tests on the last test (the test when she discovered the cheating). Too defensive of their kids getting the sports facilities to become super stars like Daddy couldn't be.

Kids and teachers should decide this stuff with some real autonomy. And the state/government somewhat based on democratic input, not just that of the parents, but those of society.

Hey Mom and Dad, your kid is going to be a member of society. If society is going to pick up the tab for their socialization and education, then society and the workers who do the socialization and education deserve a say.

[Sendo]

I agree. Why exactly did we fight the civil war again? Did we NEED the South? keep your slaves and your fried chicken, just get the fuck out of my country. half the size, double the quality. :cool:

sorry. anyway, this has been going on for a really long time now and this is only the latest. In 7th grade, I was told Ronald Reagan knocked down the Berlin Wall and that caused the collapse of the USSR and nothing else happened. what I had to point out was how the Berlin Wall was not even IN Russia, and they were planning on knocking it down anyway! They mentioned NOTHING about Gorbachev, the revolutions of 1989 or anything that the rational world would mention as being EXTREMELY GODDAMN IMPORTANT to the story. :mad:

Spare me the regional chauvinism. State like Texas are targeted for right-wing industry and propaganda and the GOP because they have the most exploitable labor, the most resources, and disproportionately large voices in the federal government. Of course the reactionaries will target places like Texas and Wyoming and Arizona. Texas has become so important to the right recently because if the Latinos and Chicanos who make up so much of the growing population get power, they'd lose a lot.

And stay materialist, the Civil War ended slavery and reopened tariff-free access to cheap cotton, paving the way for capitalist industrialization (but for the sake of the North). Some good and bad came of it all. (I'd be curious to know how the South would have turned out without an external enemy and growing numbers of enslaved blacks and landless whites)

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

the revolutions of 1989

Say what again?

How can anyone consider these events to be "revolutions"?

[Zapatas Guns]

Spare me the regional chauvinism. State like Texas are targeted for right-wing industry and propaganda and the GOP because they have the most exploitable labor, the most resources, and disproportionately large voices in the federal government. Of course the reactionaries will target places like Texas and Wyoming and Arizona. Texas has become so important to the right recently because if the Latinos and Chicanos who make up so much of the growing population get power, they'd lose a lot.

And stay materialist, the Civil War ended slavery and reopened tariff-free access to cheap cotton, paving the way for capitalist industrialization (but for the sake of the North). Some good and bad came of it all. (I'd be curious to know how the South would have turned out without an external enemy and growing numbers of enslaved blacks and landless whites)

Right on point. I'm from TX and I've lived here my whole life.

I can say this too though. Times are changing. Texas is shifting left as more Latinos are learning the truth.