Texas conservative assault on textbooks

by David Safier

The story in Sunday's NY Times Magazine, How Christian Were the Founders?, has nationwide import. Basically, a very powerful conservative cabal on Texas' state school board dictates what will be included in textbooks which will be bought by the state. And since Texas is such a huge consumer, as the state's textbooks go, so go the nation's textbooks.

(ASIDE: Arizona is in the southwest, but its political and economic emphasis is more "south" than "west." Education is no exception. Listen to the dialogue. When people here talk about educational models, it's almost always Texas and Florida. Both formerly Bush-run states, I might add.)

Here's an example of the textbook curriculum writing process:

McLeroy moved that Margaret Sanger, the birth-control pioneer, be included because she “and her followers promoted eugenics,” that language be inserted about Ronald Reagan’s “leadership in restoring national confidence” following Jimmy Carter’s presidency and that students be instructed to “describe the causes and key organizations and individuals of the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association.” The injection of partisan politics into education went so far that at one point another Republican board member burst out in seemingly embarrassed exasperation, “Guys, you’re rewriting history now!”

McLeroy is the past chair of the state board and is still its most vocal member.

He also identifies himself as a young-earth creationist who believes that the earth was created in six days, as the book of Genesis has it, less than 10,000 years ago. He went on to explain how his Christian perspective both governs his work on the state board and guides him in the current effort to adjust American-history textbooks to highlight the role of Christianity. 

. . . “There are two basic facts about man,” he said. “He was created in the image of God, and he is fallen. You can’t appreciate the founding of our country without realizing that the founders understood that."

The board pushed for the Mayflower compact to be included in textbooks because it

describes the Pilgrims’ journey as being "for the Glory of God and advancement of the Christian Faith” and thus instills the idea that America was founded as a project for the spread of Christianity. In a book she wrote two years ago, Cynthia Dunbar, a board member, could not have been more explicit about this being the reason for the Mayflower Compact’s inclusion in textbooks; she quoted the document and then said, “This is undeniably our past, and it clearly delineates us as a nation intended to be emphatically Christian.”

Barton isn't overly fond of public schools, to say the least, though she's a state board member. In another book, she wrote about

“the inappropriateness of a state-created, taxpayer-supported school system” and likens sending children to public school to “throwing them into the enemy’s flames, even as the children of Israel threw their children to Moloch.” (Her own children were either home-schooled or educated in private Christian schools.)

One of nonacademic experts who makes suggestions to the board is David Barton.

David Barton, is the nationally known leader of WallBuilders, which describes itself as dedicated to “presenting America’s forgotten history and heroes, with an emphasis on our moral, religious and constitutional heritage.” Barton has written and lectured on the First Amendment and against separation of church and state. He is a controversial figure who has argued that the U.S. income tax and the capital-gains tax should be abolished because they violate Scripture (for the Bible says, in Barton’s reading, “the more profit you make the more you are rewarded”) and who pushes a Christianity-first rhetoric.

Those are just a few highlights lowlights from an important but very depressing article.

In an unrelated article in the Texas Tribune, we see some of the fruits of Texas education.

Nearly a third of Texans believe humans and dinosaurs roamed the earth at the same time, and more than half disagree with the theory that humans developed from earlier species of animals, according to the University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll.

[snip]

Most of the Texans in the survey — 51 percent — disagree with the statement, "human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals."

The article ends with a line from comedian Lewis Black where "he said that a significant proportion of the American people think that the 'The Flintstones' is a documentary."

I've been posting about the Floridation of Arizona Education lately. Honestly, the Texas-ification on our national agenda, educational and otherwise, is far more worrisome.