History should be something we learn from, but if the Texas School Board gets its way learning will be replaced by indoctrination.
The board is to vote on a sweeping purge of alleged liberal bias in Texas school textbooks in favour of what Dunbar says really matters: a belief in America as a nation chosen by God as a beacon to the world, and free enterprise as the cornerstone of liberty and democracy.
“We are fighting for our children’s education and our nation’s future,” Dunbar said. “In Texas we have certain statutory obligations to promote patriotism and to promote the free enterprise system. There seems to have been a move away from a patriotic ideology. There seems to be a denial that this was a nation founded under God. We had to go back and make some corrections.” [emphasis mine]
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the phrases I’ve highlighted strike me as more appropriate for a philosophy or religious study course rather than a history course. Promote patriotism? Promote free enterprise? Patriotic ideology? America is a nation chosen by God? Nation founded under God? These statements have nothing to do with history and everything to do with a conservative political agenda.
Why don’t conservatives just come out and speak the truth? They want a Theocracy, not a Democracy. They want mandatory patriotism, a place where no criticism of God’s chosen nation will be tolerated. Imagine raising your children this way? Bet you end up with a lot of spoiled brats who end up believing it’s their God-given right to have whatever they want.
And what Texas is taking out is just as disturbing as the ideology they are putting in.
Several changes include sidelining Thomas Jefferson, who favoured separation of church and state, while introducing a new focus on the “significant contributions” of pro-slavery Confederate leaders during the civil war.
The new curriculum asserts that “the right to keep and bear arms” is an important element of a democratic society. Study of Sir Isaac Newton is dropped in favour of examining scientific advances through military technology.
There is also a suggestion that the anti-communist witch-hunt by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s may have been justified.
The education board has dropped references to the slave trade in favour of calling it the more innocuous “Atlantic triangular trade”, and recasts the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as driven by Islamic fundamentalism.
WTF? Hmmm… how do you take people out of the slave trade? Why, you simply call it the Atlantic triangular trade. See how easy that is? And who needs to learn about Thomas Jefferson or Sir Isaac Newton when they can learn about the “significant contributions” of pro-slavery Confederate leaders during the civil war and scientific advances through military technology? Gravity is so passé.
It gets better…
Conservatives have been accused of an assault on the history of civil rights. One curriculum amendment describes the civil rights movement as creating “unrealistic expectations of equal outcomes” among minorities. Another seeks to place Martin Luther King and the violent Black Panther movement as opposite sides of the same coin.
“We had a big discussion around that,” said Knight, a former teacher. “It was an attempt to taint the civil rights movement. They did the same by almost equating George Wallace [the segregationist governor of Alabama in the mid-1960s] with the civil rights movement and the things Martin Luther King Jr was trying to accomplish, as if Wallace was standing up for white civil rights. That’s how slick they are.
White civil rights. This phrase sums up what is going on in Texas (and other states, like Arizona). It’s about Real Americans – which is code for: Conservative, White Christians.
Meanwhile, those embracing this ideology might just want to pull their children out of science and history classes – there really is no future for them in those fields.