Texas School Board Rewrites History.

[Denmo]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/ed...html?th&emc=th

“We are adding balance,” said Dr. Don McLeroy, the leader of the conservative faction on the board, after the vote. “History has already been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left.”

Efforts by Hispanic board members to include more Latino figures as role models for the state’s large Hispanic population were consistently defeated, prompting one member, Mary Helen Berlanga, to storm out of a meeting late Thursday night, saying, “They can just pretend this is a white America and Hispanics don’t exist.”

Dr. McLeroy, a dentist by training, pushed through a change to the teaching of the civil rights movement to ensure that students study the violent philosophy of the Black Panthers in addition to the nonviolent approach of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He also made sure that textbooks would mention the votes in Congress on civil rights legislation, which Republicans supported.

“Republicans need a little credit for that,” he said. “I think it’s going to surprise some students.”

Other changes seem aimed at tamping down criticism of the right. Conservatives passed one amendment, for instance, requiring that the history of McCarthyism include “how the later release of the Venona papers confirmed suspicions of communist infiltration in U.S. government.” The Venona papers were transcripts of some 3,000 communications between the Soviet Union and its agents in the United States.

In economics, the revisions add Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek, two champions of free-market economic theory, among the usual list of economists to be studied, like Adam Smith, Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes. They also replaced the word “capitalism” throughout their texts with the “free-enterprise system.”

“Let’s face it, capitalism does have a negative connotation,” said one conservative member, Terri Leo. “You know, ‘capitalist pig!’ ”

Congrats, Texas.

[Sampson]

Re: Texas School Board Rewrites History.

Congrats, Texas.

Did they add anything that was untrue?

They really should've left it as capitalism though, and actually tried to explain the word's true meaning. Most people have no idea what it means (for example: Micheal Moore).

[The Toecutter]

Re: Texas School Board Rewrites History.

Those in my neighborhood who have graduated from high school weren't taught anything beyond basic algebra; a more advanced course wasn't even offered. In Texas schools, creationism seems to be at least as commonly taught in biology classes as the theory of evolution, the former having no scientific basis or a way to analyze it with the scientific method whatsoever.

[The_Real_Crunk]

Re: Texas School Board Rewrites History.

I wish I could find the link to that big article talking about how different history textbooks are around the world about the same events. Like how in one country a certain war might be taught favoring a certain country and group displaying them fighting for a noble cause, and then another country has them displayed as violet dictators and all kinds of things like that.

History is written by the victors, or at least whoever is in charge at the time~

[Valkysas]

Re: Texas School Board Rewrites History.

Did they add anything that was untrue?

Tell me what you think:

Cynthia Dunbar, a lawyer from Richmond who is a strict constitutionalist and thinks the nation was founded on Christian beliefs, managed to cut Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century, replacing him with St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone. (Jefferson is not well liked among conservatives on the board because he coined the term “separation between church and state.”)

Mavis B. Knight, a Democrat from Dallas, introduced an amendment requiring that students study the reasons “the founding fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring the government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion above all others.”
It was defeated on a party-line vote.
After the vote, Ms. Knight said, “The social conservatives have perverted accurate history to fulfill their own agenda.”

[orius]

Re: Texas School Board Rewrites History.

It's always a good thing when the pendulum swings in the opposite direction. The best way to deal with liberal revisionist history is having the conservatives do the exact same thing, apparently.