The one thing scarier than the Republican
education platform is the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE). A friend of mine brought this up one day over
coffee after she saw a new documentary called The Revisionaries. The movie
chronicles how the SBOE ends up deciding what children in grades K-12 will
learn in the state of Texas, which doesn’t sound so bad until you look at how
the process works and who is on the board.
Basically, it goes like this: the fifteen
members of the SBOE establish curriculum standards for the content areas
(science, history, etc.). Once the board has the standards in place, they are
given to textbook publishers who offer samples of their books incorporating the
agreed upon standards. If a book doesn’t meet the standards, it won’t make the
state list of approved textbooks that school districts use to make purchase
decisions.
Well, so what? The problem, according to
the Texas Freedom Network (TFN), is that “most Texans know little about the
state board or who is on it.” Texas is
the “largest buyer of textbooks in the country”, so what Texas buys, other
states buy as well. Texas controls the market and thereby controls what
students read, which gives the SBOE a lot of power. Christian Fundamentalists
have been elected in recent years to this board, and they are using this forum
to promote their moral agenda in the public schools instead of relying on the
expertise of teachers and scholars.
Uh oh.
Let’s take a look at a few of the changes
to the social studies curriculum standards the SBOE made in 2009-2010 according
to the TFN.
- Adoption of a new standard for high
school American government that suggests the separation of church and
state is not a key principle of the Constitution, but rather, in the view
of the SBOE, “a myth.” The board rejected a proposed standard requiring
students to examine how the Founders protected religious freedom by
barring government from favoring any one religion over others.
- A new standard that downplays the
central role that slavery played in causing the Civil War. According to
one supporter, this puts slavery in a “positive light” since it shows how
American spirit overcomes evil.
- Revised standard suggesting
witch-hunts by Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities
Committee in the 1950’s were justified.
- Removing the concept of
“responsibility for the common good”, which one board member criticized as
too communistic.
This is what educational malpractice looks
like. Here’s another example of SBOE reasoning:
Oscar Romero, an archbishop in El Salvador
in the 70’s, spoke out against poverty and social injustice. Death squads
killed him in 1980. He was a Latin
American role model who stood up against oppression, and the SBOE objected to
his inclusion in the curriculum standards. Why? Because he was not as well
known as Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi, and therefore, shouldn’t be
included with these men. Shouldn’t we teach children that ordinary people do
accomplish extraordinary things? That integrity matters, not fame? Doesn’t
Texas have a significant Latino population that’s growing? Shouldn’t we honor
and include role models that reflect diversity?
Apparently not, especially if the far
right doesn’t like it. Students in Texas won’t hear about Oscar Romero. He has
disappeared. The adoption of these standards dictate what students learn in
social studies over the next decade.
Don McLeroy is a dentist and former member
and chair of the SBOE. He is the focus of the documentary film, and I watched a
couple of excerpts of his reasoning at meetings of the board. He identifies himself as a Christian
Fundamentalist and believes that
“someone needs to stand up to experts.”
I guess scholars and teachers aren’t qualified to develop curriculum,
but he is? Okay.
Part of McLeroy’s education agenda is to
minimize what students learn regarding the role of women and minorities in
social studies. He said, “ The majority
vote gave minorities civil rights. Women
didn’t earn the right to vote, because they couldn’t vote. Men passed it for
the women.” This brand of insanity
completely negates the Women’s Suffrage movement and the fact people gave their
lives for Civil Rights. Children shouldn’t know about this because history is
all about the white guys? Wow. How will we teach about the importance of
justice and protest if we give our power away to the views of one group? We will and are raising a nation of people
who will placidly go along with whatever the majority tells them to think.
And even though McLeroy agrees that the
fossil record is evidence of evolution, other patterns cannot be explained by
evolution, like the sudden emergence of other groups in the fossil record and
that some groups remain the same. This information should be added to the
curriculum standards, he argues, “so that we’re honest with students.” I’m guessing Mr. McLeroy hasn’t read Jonathan
Weiner’s Pulitzer Prize Winning book, The
Beak of the Finch. This book documents the work of Peter and Rosemary Grant
and their years of research on the Galapagos Islands. Their data not only
supports the research of Charles Darwin, but demonstrates how they were able to
observe and record evolution actually happening. Luckily, the “phony
weaknesses” of McLeroy’s arguments did not appear in the science curriculum
standards in 2011.
If we educate so narrowly, children will
not grow up to think and follow their own life path. They will perpetuate fear,
lies, hate, and myth. While this in itself is frightening, there is hope,
especially with the Texas Freedom Network, who is working hard to thwart this
twisted agenda. Go, Texas, go!
