Don’t Know Much About History
Stories like this make me angry. Is our goal really to become the dumbest country on the planet? Perhaps we should rethink the Texas secession thing… especially given their influence over the textbook market.
The Texas Board of Education, which recently approved new science standards that made room for creationist critiques of evolution, is revising the state’s social studies curriculum. In early recommendations from outside experts appointed by the board, a divide has opened over how central religious theology should be to the teaching of history.
Three reviewers, appointed by social conservatives, have recommended revamping the K-12 curriculum to emphasize the roles of the Bible, the Christian faith and the civic virtue of religion in the study of American history. Two of them want to remove or de-emphasize references to several historical figures who have become liberal icons, such as César Chávez and Thurgood Marshall.
Christianists like to whine about the war against their faith, but if they keep shoving this nonsense down everyone’s throat they might find themselves creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. I have always been a live and let live sort of person, but this sort of indoctrination of our school children is where I draw the line.
And look at who’s on the committee and what they think (and I use the word think loosely):
The three reviewers appointed by the moderate and liberal board members are all professors of history or education at Texas universities, including Mr. de la Teja, a former state historian. The reviewers appointed by conservatives include two who run conservative Christian organizations: David Barton, founder of WallBuilders, a group that promotes America’s Christian heritage; and Rev. Marshall, who preaches that Watergate, the Vietnam War and Hurricane Katrina were God’s judgments on the nation’s sexual immorality. The third is Daniel Dreisbach, a professor of public affairs at American University.
The conservative reviewers say they believe that children must learn that America’s founding principles are biblical. For instance, they say the separation of powers set forth in the Constitution stems from a scriptural understanding of man’s fall and inherent sinfulness, or “radical depravity,” which means he can be governed only by an intricate system of checks and balances.
The curriculum, they say, should clearly present Christianity as an overall force for good — and a key reason for American exceptionalism, the notion that the country stands above and apart.
Talk about rewriting history.
Why does the Declaration of Independence state that our innate rights are “endowed by” our “creator”? Why not just say the god of the bible? Bizarre..
Why doesn’t the Constitution mentioned god or Jesus? Why doesn’t it mention the bible at all? Odd
The Federalist papers seems to mention this Magna Carta deal but no bible… that’s fucking strange, that is…
Then I read this Treaty of Tripoli… and right there in article 11 it says “As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion”… and the Senate ratified this bad boy and president Adams signed it…
I guess I am just confused about what US history is…
The Constitution mentions the Christian God in every sentence…
… the separation of powers set forth in the Constitution stems from a scriptural understanding of man’s fall and inherent sinfulness, or “radical depravity,” which means he can be governed only by an intricate system of checks and balance.
See?
You might consider some of the information here regarding the Treaty of Tripoli and the errors of the Barlow copy thereof.
The link below is from a US government study of the treaty back in the 1930s.
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/bar1796n.asp
So, RWR, the Barlow English translation MAY OR MAY NOT be prefectly acurate. Moreover, article 11, or whatever is between articles 10 and 12, may not be technically an “article”. Maybe it’s a rambling Arabic screed…
The important point here, even in this “Avalon Project” summary (whatever that is – I suspect it some conservation bullshit group at Yale Law) is that the Barlow English translation is the one ratifed by the Senate and signed by the President.
I’ll read this linked info more carfully and research this “Avalon Project” a bit but it certainly reads like a crackpot conspiracy theory at first pass. But I’ll give it go…
To argue, as RWR does, that the United States was founded as a “Christian Country” when the founders took great pains to establish it as a secular country spits in the face of history and the takes a shit on the graves of the founding fathers.
But that’s what Republicans are into, so….
First off, The Avalon Project looks legit. Basically the law library at Yale is trying to post pertinent info on the web. As far as the “controversy” surrounding article 11, it’s interesting. I had heard it before but not this detailed.
Jason point holds though, this question isn’t really germane. The US is by definition not a Christian nation.
Why are we appalled when a nation is an Islamic Republic? The fact that some dipshit in Texas “found Jesus” is irrelevant to me. Mind your own fucking business, Cletis. Leave the teachin’ to the professionals please. You can speak to the credulous morons on Sundays. Thanks.
The reason why it doesn’t say the christian god of the bible was because a lot of the framers were deists. They believed in a creator or God, but not organized religion.
And I did not argue that it was a Christian nation in the sense that term is usually used.
At the same time, it would be very hard to argue that Christianity was not at the heart of much of American culture and law at the time of the founding — and that to this day the US remains overwhelmingly a nation of Christians.
Also, most of the Framers were not Deists — and those who were at least nodded to the Christian God as the God they believed in.
Unfortunately (and I work in the field of curriculum review for history) everybody wants to into the act of politicizing the past. There is an association for the Tuskegee Airmen lobbying for federal legislation to make it law that every single American history textbook approved for use in the public schools must carry their version of the story of the Tuskegee Airmen. When I opposed this on the grounds that historians really ought to base their narratives on what they thought was important, and not on legislation, I was actually attacked by one colleague and a lobbyist as a racist.
This is the other ugly side of the coin here. Wallbuilders is a scarey site for social conservative evangelical propaganda that cherry picks out of context quotes from primary sources and convinces people they are representative. They have a whole section on how George Washington hated homosexuals (or they did; I haven’t checked lately) and that’s why we should not approve of gay marriage.
DG says, “leave the teaching to the professionals,” and that’s a good sentiment, but unfortunately it is usually the state-mandated purpose of teaching history to use history to socialize students, which is why we get all the George Washington and the cherry tree I cannot tell a lie crap, and why teachers don’t want to drop it even when they find out it never happened.
The problem with history in particular is that the professionals–historians–are generally held in such low repute because everybody thinks they can do what historians do, even though they don’t keep up on what’s happening in the field. Or, to put it another way: when it comes to historians it is almost like we were biologists and everybody else in the process was a creationist…..
And speaking as a history teacher here in Texas, I can tell you how screwed up our entire social studies curriculum is down here, from sequencing to content.
Consider this sequence:
6th — “World Cultures”
7th — Texas History
8th — US History to 1865
9th — World Geography
10th — World History (“Lucy” to Present)
11th — US History since 1865
12th — US Government & Economics
Of course, for the last several years World History teachers have had to prepare kids for the NCLB-mandated test that has not a single world history question on it, but instead consists of material from 8th grsde US history and some basic skills (map and graph reading, mostly).
And Steve misses the other problem that you get when any group of humanities/social science teachers get together — everybody has their own opinion on what is the “important content” that must be taught, and too many have sacred cows that they believe must not be given up. making curriculum development difficult. Unfortunately, standards created by state legislators &/or blue-ribbon commissions don’t do any better job of it.
I can appreciate too well that “important content” can not be agreed upon… however, for Social Studies, that means nothing agreed upon is nothing agreed to learn. Social studies is losing its priority as one of the content areas. There is no Smithsonian support and there are no “kits” for teaching social studies. In 10 years, I feel like some ivory tower is going to print a “study” on the lost learning of social studies.
Ancoralmparo
There are no Smithsonian kits for Social Studies, but there are Teaching American History grants that have been pouring millions into professional development across the nation.
RWR is correct about what happens when you sit down at the table with SS teachers; I have done curriculum audits, design, revision, or review in over 30 districts in 9 different states. The general mantra is that “you can’t tell me what to teach”