Go, Texas, Go!

     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.

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. Revised standard suggesting witch-hunts by Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950’s were justified.

4. 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!