Biblical values and Confederates promoted in Texas textbook revisions

The Telegraph ^ | 5/21/2010 | Tom Leonard

[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

[Hop A Long Cassidy]

>>>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.

I hope they are just taking out the liberal “white man bad” and “males bad” rhetoric that has infused into all the social studies material—particularly the book selections for English classes.

[RipSawyer]

“This is good.”
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You are found guilty of bombastic understatement! If someone actually starts teaching real history again it is not just good, it is FANTASTIC! Oh, how I would love to see a reversal of the dumbing down process that has brought us to the current ridiculous situation. The most important subjects that can be taught in K-12 are English and History first and foremost.

[BiggieLittle]

I totally agree with you. It’s not about “your the evil white devil” on teaching a sense of shame. It’s about “ we made these mistakes in the past, let’s learn about them in our history classes so we don’t make the same mistakes in the future”. Rewriting history is fine for leftists. They never learn.