The State Board of Education begins hearing testimony, before a tentative vote this week on new social studies curriculum standards that will serve as the framework in Texas classrooms. But, as usual in votes before the conservative-led board, the wide-reaching guidelines are full of potential ideological flashpoints.
Early quibbles over how much prominence to give civil rights leaders such as Cesar Chavez and Thurgood Marshall, and the inclusion of Christmas seem to have been smoothed over in the draft now being considered. But board members are crafting dozens of amendments to be raised for consideration before the tentative vote, expected Thursday. The 15-member board won't adopt final standards until March.
The curriculum it chooses will be the guideposts for teaching history and social studies to some 4.8 million K-12 students for 10 years. The standards will be used to develop state tests and by textbook publishers who develop material for the nation based on Texas, one of the largest markets.
Texas, being one of the largest textbook printing states, sets the trends for the nationwide textbook market. A textbook that caters to the whims of fundies in Texas will probably be forced on the rest of our children at some point. I mean, hey, we could end up with a textbook like this.
Also, Undernews had a great write-up that goes into greater detail about the effect that educational decisions in Texas have on the rest of the nation.
3 comments:
On a slightly unrelated note, I heard a caller on one of the liberal radio shows -- maybe Thom Hartmann, can't remember--that back during the Reagan years they basically standardized all of the public school text books by having just ONE school text book publisher in Texas approve all of the text books in the country. And it's still that way today. The implication being, it was a right wing wackadoodle who had the say-so over what kids in Oregon or Florida or New Jersey learned.
Any idea if that is true? I really have no clue about school text books.
No clue about this, but it doesn't seem likely. I plan to write more in depth about the textbook issue in one of my upcoming entries, and I'll look into your question and try to dig up something. I recently read a Tennessee history book for the 5th-7th grades that was published in 1930. What until you see the excerpts I'll provide from that book. If this is what conservatives have in mind for us to return to, I literally fear for our youth.
Hopefully I'll write it all up this weekend.
The upcoming post will also tie in really nicely with an entry I've been wanted to write about political correctness. Specifically, what people really want to return to when they bemoan tolerance, diversity.
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