Posted on 05/22/2010 12:22:41 AM PDT by bruinbirdman
American students will learn more about the virtues of free enterprise, Biblical values and the Confederacy's cause, and less about slavery and civil rights in a controversial new curriculum being pushed through by the Texas school board.
Members of the state's board of education put the finishing touches on Friday to a new history and social studies curriculum for the state's 4.8 million state school students.
The proposed programme, which will affect other parts of the US due to Texas's large share of the school textbook market, has prompted months of fierce argument and protests outside the board's headquarters in Austin.
Conservatives, who constitute a two-thirds majority on the 15-strong board, which is composed of non-education specialists, say the new curriculum will be more positive about America, particularly the South, and its history.
Once every 10 years, the board edits hundreds of pages of educational guidelines known as the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills.
Conservative members claim that a liberal bias had crept into the curriculum under previous Democrat-controlled boards.
Yesterday, the board approved a proposal to make students consider the political views of Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president, alongside those of Abraham Lincoln. Board members said it should be made clear the American Civil War was fought principally over states' rights rather than slavery - though the group did drop a plan to refer to the slave trade as the "Atlantic triangular trade".
Other changes water down criticism of Senator Joe McCarthy's anti-communist witchhunt in the 1950s and portray the UN's funding for international humanitarian relief and environmental initiatives as threats to individual freedom and US sovereignty.
Students will be required to study conservative organisations and movements such as the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association.
Ronald Reagan has been added to a list of "great Americans", while
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
This is good.
Since when does relating historical facts constitute being “promoted”?
Sorry, Telegraph; you’re coming across as a propoganda organ for communitsts.
You mean like what I was taught in school all those years ago. What’s wrong with that? The liberals had their turn and look how weak our educational system is. Something needs to happen.
“Conservative members claim that a liberal bias had crept into the curriculum under previous Democrat-controlled boards.”
Krept?
More like kicked the door down and ran off screaming into the night waking all the neighbors up.
There’s been no creaping about it.
There’s been no creaping about it.
It really has crept. Like the frog in the beaker. But I see your point.
Yes, but they brought it up to date.
"Ronald Reagan has been added to a list of 'great Americans', . . ."
yitbos
Deo Vindice
I heard a snippet last night in which a critic commented that the Founders should not be treated as super humans. By comparison to the current idiots who run our government they must seem so.
Thank God they’re downplaying slavery. Maybe they could just refer to it as unpaid internships. Yea, that’s the ticket. It’ll make us feel better about ourselves.
Oh, please.
Are you aware Texas schoolchildren don't learn about the politics of the Civil War era, but about the evils of slavery?
Are you aware Texas schoolchildren don't learn about the economics of the Civil War era, but about the evils of slavery?
Are you aware Texas schoolchildren don't learn about the fact there were also black slave-owners in the Civil War era, but about the evils of slavery?
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I won't bother wasting anymore bandwidth with more examples, but the fact is Texas schoolchildren could name just about every person that was ever involved with the Underground Railroad, but they can't tell you who ran against Lincoln in the election.
The 'education system' in most states in the same..... It's all about the evils of slavery. This is the very foundation of the minority entitlement and white guilt mentalities.
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We can either let the liberalization of our children continue, or we can start teaching both sides of a controversy in order to STOP teaching them what to think.....
and START teaching them HOW to think.
Finally, some truth will be returning to our children’s textbooks. I hope all the propaganda will be eliminated. We have people still alive who have lived quite a lot of history and KNOW it has been perverted in textbooks which have been dominated and written by leftists with a socialist agenda or worse. At least two generations have suffered from “mal” education because of it. Thank you, Texas!
I’m not sure what “Confederate values” are. Their values (religious concepts) were the same as those in the North. I can only speculate that they are trying to explain the concept of states rights, which was the issue, not slavery. Slavery was only seized on by Lincoln to provide a moral context. Note that Lincoln did not free the slaves in territories that did not succeed.
I was glad to hear they’ve dumped Henry Cisneros from the history books. I wondered if the old curriculum mentioned his mistress, and his lying to the FBI, his indictment on 18 counts of Conspiracy, his sweet plea deal, and his pardon by President Clinton.
>Slavery was only seized on by Lincoln to provide a moral context.
You are certainly right about that. The “great emancipator” in his own words...
“I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races – that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.”
- Abraham Lincoln, 16th US President
Fourth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Charleston, Illinois, September 18, 1858
(The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume III, pp. 145-146.)
Q:What percent of the native born Texan defenders of the Alamo were Hispanic?
A: 100% but you won’t read it in Texas textbooks.
Lincoln was the Great Emancipator. The failings of his Emancipation Proclamation were addressed in the 13th Amendment for which he expended great effort and political capital to get enacted.
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