[FONT=georgia, bookman old style, palatino linotype, book antiqua, palatino, trebuchet ms, helvetica, garamond, sans-serif, arial, verdana, avante garde, century gothic, comic sans ms, times, times new roman, serif]History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there. ~George Santayana[/FONT]
There's a tendency to look at look at the actions of the conservative bloc on the Texas State Board of Eduction and shrug, "Well, that's those crazy Texans down there" or just kind of ignore it as an isolated incident that "can't happen here."
Mistake.
One board member said the new textbooks were to counter history books
"rife with leftist political periods and events — the populists, the progressives, the New Deal and the Great Society."
I don't care so much if Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five get glossed over in favor of Tammy Wynette. That's small potatoes in comparison to some of the other nips and tucks:
- A more positive portrayal of Cold War anticommunism. Disgraced anticommunist crusader Joseph McCarthy, the Wisconsin senator censured by the Senate for his aggressive targeting of individual citizens and their civil liberties on the basis of their purported ties to the Communist Party, comes in for partial rehabilitation. The board recommends that textbooks refer to documents published since McCarthy’s death and the fall of the Soviet bloc that appear to show expansive Soviet designs to undermine the U.S. government.
- Language that qualifies the legacy of 1960s liberalism. Great Society programs such as Title IX—which provides for equal gender access to educational resources—and affirmative action, intended to remedy historic workplace discrimination against African-Americans, are said to have created adverse “unintended consequences” in the curriculum’s preferred language.
- Thomas Jefferson no longer included among writers influencing the nation’s intellectual origins. Jefferson, a deist who helped pioneer the legal theory of the separation of church and state, is not a model founder in the board’s judgment. Among the intellectual forerunners to be highlighted in Jefferson’s place: medieval Catholic philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas, Puritan theologian John Calvin and conservative British law scholar William Blackstone. Heavy emphasis is also to be placed on the founding fathers having been guided by strict Christian beliefs.
- Excision of recent third-party presidential candidates Ralph Nader (from the left) and Ross Perot (from the centrist Reform Party).Confederate President Jefferson Davis accompanying a speech by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. Meanwhile, the recommendations include an entry listing Confederate General Stonewall Jackson as a role model for effective leadership, and a statement from from Confederate President Jefferson Davis accompanying a speech by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln.
What type of accurate, honest or even realistic American history can be told when Thomas Jefferson is expunged from it?
Conservatives on the board apparently disliked Jefferson for coining the phrase "separation of church and state."
Politically-slanted revisionism whether it's from the Right or from the Left is heavy-handed and antithetical to education. Propaganda is propaganda, no matter who's telling it or for whatever reason they do it.
[FONT=georgia, bookman old style, palatino linotype, book antiqua, palatino, trebuchet ms, helvetica, garamond, sans-serif, arial, verdana, avante garde, century gothic, comic sans ms, times, times new roman, serif]There is nothing more dangerous than history used as a defense, or history used for preaching; history used as a tool is no longer history. ~Marcel Trudel[/FONT]
