Thread: History teaching standards tilt to right for Texas high scho

History teaching standards tilt to right for Texas high schoolers

08:57 AM CST on Saturday, January 16, 2010
By TERRENCE STUTZ / The Dallas Morning News
tstutz@dallasnews.com

AUSTIN – Texas high school students will have to learn about leading conservative groups from the 1980s and 1990s – but not about liberal or minority-rights groups – under U.S. history standards tentatively adopted by a politically divided State Board of Education on Friday.

The Republican majority on the board also gave a thumbs down to requiring history teachers and textbooks to provide coverage on the late Sen. Edward Kennedy and new Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, as well as leading Hispanic civil-rights groups such as LULAC and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund.

Led by the board's social-conservative bloc, Republicans left Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton and former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the nation's first black justice, on the list of important figures that will have to be covered in history classes.

But they also added, on a 7-6 vote, Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly, the National Rifle Association, Moral Majority and the Heritage Foundation to the list of persons and groups that students will learn about.

Board member Don McLeroy, R-College Station, offered the amendment requiring coverage of "key organizations and individuals of the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s." McLeroy said he offered the proposal because the history standards were already "rife with leftist political periods and events – the populists, the progressives, the New Deal and the Great Society."

Those were among the long list of changes to proposed social studies standards for Texas schools that were considered over several hours Thursday and Friday.

Late Friday afternoon, after finding themselves unable to work through a long list of amendments, board members unanimously agreed to suspend debate on the standards until March, when they will take up other social studies subjects such as government and geography. In addition, several additional amendments to the U.S. history standards were left pending.

Curriculum standards adopted by the board will remain in place for the next decade, dictating what is taught in government, history and other social studies classes in all elementary and secondary schools. The standards also will be used to write textbooks and develop state tests for students.

Social conservatives lost some key battles Friday as other Republicans and Democrats joined to kill a few of their proposals. One of those turned back would have eliminated hip-hop music from history standards dealing with U.S. culture and replaced it with country music.

McLeroy and other social conservatives said hip-hop was inappropriate for history classes, and one member suggested it encourages anti-social behavior. Board member Mavis Knight, D-Dallas, however, retorted that hip-hop has "impacted our society whether we like it or not. So since it's there, we may as well talk about the positive aspects of it."

In the end, the proposal was killed on a 7-7 vote and hip-hop stayed in, along with rock 'n' roll, Tin Pan Alley, the Beat Generation and the Chicano Mural Movement as "significant examples" of cultural movements in the U.S.

McLeroy was successful with another of his noteworthy amendments: to include documents that supported Cold War-era Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his contention that the U.S. government was infiltrated with Communists in the 1950s.

CONTENTIOUS TOPICS The outcome of some of the proposed social studies standards for Texas schools that generated debate:


Labor leader César Chávez and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall: Experts appointed by socially conservative board members recommended that both names be stricken from the standards, but the board opted to leave them in.

Christmas: A curriculum-writing team dropped Christmas from a list of important religious holidays in a world cultures course, but the board ordered Christmas put back in.

Conservative groups: The board voted to require that U.S. history students learn about leading conservative individuals and groups from the 1980s and '90s, but not about liberal groups.

Religion in U.S. history: Social conservatives sought to require that students learn about "religious revivals" as among the major events leading up to the American Revolution. That was narrowly rejected.

McCarthyism: Social conservatives pushed through an amendment that will require a more positive portrayal of Joseph McCarthy and his accusations that the U.S. government in the 1950s was infiltrated by Communists. McCarthy's tactics have been discredited by most historians.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent ... e6e16.html

Goodness, the history lessons certainly have changed since I was in high school. Every year we would start with the colonial period and the founding of the country, and really never got beyond that until my senior year, when we finally got to WWI!
In college, it was Western Civ, with the most boring textbook, and tests were designed so that one had to know if it was January or February of a certain year when such-and-such happened. I still believe it was just a ploy to get kids flunked out of college so they would be able to fight in Nam.
That was politics in college, but now we are seeing politics from kindergarten on. It is disgusting as these are the techniques used by Islamofascists and many to indoctrinate to a way of thinking. Hitler did that as well.

Web Posted: 01/15/2010 11:32 CST

Democrats protest proposed school standards

By Gary Scharrer - Express-News

AUSTIN — Conservative rallying points like the Heritage Foundation, Moral Majority and National Rifle Association made it into a preliminary set of new curriculum standards for Texas public school students, but an effort to include other groups in the political arena — like ones that fight discrimination — failed Friday, causing some to question the effect of the partisan balance on the State Board of Education.

After two days of wrestling over what to teach lower grades, the board postponed a first-round vote until March because it could not finish a review of proposed social studies standards for high school students. The March vote will produce curriculum standards for a public hearing in May, when final action is expected.

Board members are elected officials and four are fighting off political challenges in their own parties. The postponement will mean controversial votes on the standards covering history, government, geography and economics will occur after the March primaries.

So far, conservative groups are generally pleased with the early look at the new standards that will influence a decade of school textbooks for more than 4.7 million Texas public school children.

"The reality is history has not changed. The religious heritage of our country has not changed," said Jonathan Saenz of the Texas Free Market Foundation. "Major victories were corrections that the State Board of Education made to huge mistakes that the (expert) writing teams made."

The board restored Christmas as an example of a significant religious celebration, overturning a much-criticized expert recommendation, and explorer Christopher Columbus is slated for more mention than businesswoman Mary Kay Ash.

"Our side was concerned," Saenz said.

But board member Mary Helen Berlanga, D-Corpus Christi, was not happy after colleagues rejected her amendment that would have exposed students to the historic significance of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, League of United Latin American Citizens, GI Forum and Raza Unida.

"They obviously had the votes, so even if I protested, it wasn't going to do much good," Berlanga said later. "It is very obvious that they were carrying forward a political agenda."

Republicans dominate the board, 10-5.

That's sour grapes, countered David Bradley, R-Beaumont, a leader of the board's seven social conservative members.

"If Ms. Berlanga, whose only criteria is skin color, had the votes, she would name us ‘the Hispanic Education Agency,'." Bradley said.

Berlanga also failed to get U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor listed as an example of someone with significant historical accomplishment and achievement. Republican members offered the late Supreme Justice Benjamin Cardozo, who was of Portuguese descent.

"That didn't satisfy her agenda," Bradley said. "She rejected him. The other guy was not a liberal Hispanic. He's Portuguese. That wasn't brown enough."

Hispanic children now make up the majority of students in the public school early elementary grades and soon will become the majority of the entire K-12 enrollment. White children make up 34 percent of the public school enrollment.

Social studies experts last year recommended that high school students evaluate the contributions and significance of political and social leaders such as Andrew Carnegie, Billy Graham, Barry Goldwater, Hector P. Garcia, and Thurgood Marshall among others.

Don McLeroy, R-Bryan, wanted to add: Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Oveta Culp Hobby, Newt Gingrich, William Buckley, Hillary Clinton and Clair Booth Luce to the list. The addition of such Republican conservatives as Kirkpatrick, Gingrich, Buckley and Luce influenced Democratic members to push for the inclusion of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy. The board voted down Kennedy and also an effort to include the entire Kennedy family.

But McLeroy's amendment also deadlocked, 7-7. Board chairwoman Gail Lowe, R-Lampasas, a member of the social conservative bloc, did not vote. However, she said later she plans to vote on such amendments when they resurface later this spring.

McLeroy also lost an effort to replace "hip hop" with country music on a list of significant examples of cultural movements in art, music and literature for Texas high school students to study.

The experts last year recommended such examples as Tin Pan Alley, the Harlem Renaissance, the Beat Generation, Rock and Roll, the Chicano mural movement and hip hop.

McLeroy tried to replace hip hop with country music, arguing with other social conservatives that hip- hop and related "gangsta rap" uses foul language and often denigrates women.

"The words are degrading," Terri Leo, R-Spring, said. "We don't have to use words that students cannot use in school."

Lawrence Allen Jr., D-Houston, said hip-hop is a major form of communication in the black community and should remain an option for teachers to use.

"What do think hip-hop is? Maybe you are deleting something that you know nothing about?" he suggested to his colleagues.

McLeroy's country music-for-hip-hop amendment failed, 7-7, but could survive later along with many amendments that failed on tie votes when Lowe casts a vote.

The Texas Freedom Network, an Austin-based group that monitors the State Board of Education in support of religious and civil liberties, complained about "blatant politicization of social studies curriculum."

"When partisan politicians take a wrecking ball to the work of teachers and scholars, you get a document that looks more like a party platform than a social studies curriculum," said Kathy Miller, president of the group. "The video archive of this week's meeting would be a great primer for parents and lawmakers on how politics is undermining the education of Texas schoolchildren."

Miller's group, in particular, objected to the board:

• Approving an amendment suggesting that 1950s McCarthyism had been justified.

• Adopting a standard that specifically promotes the views of conservative icons, groups or concepts – included by name were Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract with America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association -- while ignoring liberal politics and political figures.

• Removing a specific requirement that students learn about the efforts of women and ethnic minorities to gain equal rights, replacing it with vague language about "various groups."

Board member Ken Mercer, R-San Antonio, who faces a tough GOP primary election, said he was pleased with the panel's preliminary action. The board struck out language promoting "global citizenship" and restored the Liberty Bell as an icon for students to study, along with several patriotic holidays.

"So, I'm happy," Mercer said.

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/Dems_p ... dards.html

Related:
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