Texas Education Board plots to rewrite history

[top gun]

Yes this is AMAZING!

The Texas Education Board that has recently tipped Uber Conservative has decided that history by the facts is to harsh and they need to dilute some of that truth so it would be more palatable.

Guess what folks there wasn't really slavery in America. It was simply transactions of the Atlantic triangular trade.

Texas Moves to Rewrite History, Says There Was No "Slave Trade"
by Tamara Winfrey Harris May 19, 2010 02:01 PM (PT) Topics: Affirmative Action, racism, The GOP

"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

History has shown that oft-repeated quote by Spanish philosopher George Santayana to be true. And so I wonder what horrors future generations will be doomed to repeat if conservatives are successful in rewriting the history taught in American classrooms. Legislators in Arizona have already deemed that contributions by people of color have no place in curricula. Now, the Texas State Board of Education — a Republican-dominated group led by evangelical Christian activist Cynthia Dunbar — is proposing changes to that state's social studies curriculum to advance a conservative agenda and "promote patriotism." At the same time, it does so by obscuring truths about slavery, the Civil Rights Movement and the Civil War, to name just a few.

"We are fighting for our children's education and our nation's future," says Dunbar. "In Texas, we have certain statutory obligations to promote patriotism and to promote the free enterprise system. There seems to have been a move away from a patriotic ideology. There seems to be a denial that this was a nation founded under God. We had to go back and make some corrections."

Among the "corrections," according to The Guardian: renaming the slave trade the "Atlantic triangular trade;" adding information about the "contributions" of pro-slavery Confederate leaders and the "unintended consequences" of affirmative action; blaming the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Muslim fundamentalism; tying Martin Luther King, Jr. to the Black Panther movement; and describing the civil rights movement as creating "unrealistic expectations of equal outcomes" among black and white Americans.

And it is not simply the history of people of color that the board seeks to neuter. Thomas Jefferson's role as a Founding Father would be diminished, on account of his belief in the separation of church and state. Meanwhile, Sen. Joseph McCarthy's infamous hearings on Communism will get sympathetic treatment.

The Texas State Board of Education is on a crusade to teach students an alternative American history — one that upholds ideas of white supremacy, manifest destiny, Christian fundamentalism and American exceptionalism. And the victims of this hijacking may be students nationwide.

 

[Pandora]

re write or revert?

First vison Founders were decent people

Second re-vision Founders were racist pigs

Third... founders were racist pigs who hated god

current attempt at revision... founders were decent people

 

[The Scotsman]

I guess the situation is worrying from the point of view that the TSB has some considerable influence with printers as to the content of text books which a lot of other states use in their school.

 

[Pandora]

I guess the situation is worrying from the point of view that the TSB has some considerable influence with printers as to the content of text books which a lot of other states use in their school.

I say keep Oprah out and Neil Armstrong in. That is one of the battles.

 

[pocketfullofshells]

re write or revert?

First vison Founders were decent people

Second re-vision Founders were racist pigs

Third... founders were racist pigs who hated god

current attempt at revision... founders were decent people

yea how can you claim they where racist? just becuse they said they should not be able to have rights, vote, and held slaves?

Don't hate Facts..deal with them

 

[Helicitor]

This is why we educated our kids at home up until middle school. They were taught critical thinking skills, and to look at all sides of an issue. The one thing I hate about all these "textbook" debates is that the focus is on what to teach kids, instead of teaching them how to think.

In the internet age, every kid in school has access to more core documents, opinions, and facts than any generation before them, and yet they are nearly incapable of processing the information in a way that will allow them to draw conclusions.

I've seen the current crop of textbooks, and they aren't very good. Changes need to be made. The changes proposed won't help overmuch, as we'll still be just teaching kids what to think.

 

[Pandora]

yea how can you claim they where racist? just becuse they said they should not be able to have rights, vote, and held slaves?

Don't hate Facts..deal with them

I am sure many of them were and I have no issues with that being part of the teaching as it was in the beginning. I have issue with that being the only teaching currently. Everything you learn about the founders today are negative things. I think both the neg and pos should be taught.

Some were not racist though all are painted as racist. In that day people thought differently than now.

Today a little less than half the American population are ok with cutting babies out of women and killing them. A much smaller percent are ok with killing babies even to the 9th month of gestation. 100 years from now we will look back at those people as nothing less than disgusting monsters, but they really are not as much monsters as they are uninformed. Same for the founders. What was considered normal to them is disgusting to us. Women who kill their children in abortion are not doing it because they hate the children, they dont see them as human beings they see them as something less than human. Founders and the people of that time saw black people as something less than human. And as much as we are disgusted in how the founders treated one type of human beings back then, the future generations will find those who advocate for abortion just as disgusting in 1 to 2 hundred years.

 

[The Scotsman]

Some were not racist though all are painted as racist. In that day people thought differently than now.

That's exactly the right point to put over! Its alright interpreting historical events so long as those interpreting them do so in the context in which they occurred!

 

[CoachV40]

I guess that is right on the same level with liberals trying to teach that the Civil War was only about slavery. This is why the public school systems in large part are failing. Which is why hear in NC charter schools and private schools are so popular.

 

[top gun]

re write or revert?

First vison Founders were decent people

Second re-vision Founders were racist pigs

Third... founders were racist pigs who hated god

current attempt at revision... founders were decent people

That's not it at all.

I went to public school and our text books highly regarded the Founding Fathers and the greatness of America.

Facts like several of the Founding Fathers were Deists and not Christians simply highlighted the true mindset of the time and worked along as one of several reasons why the Founders wanted a clear separation between church and state.

Facts like America willingly participated in the slave trade, the importing, buying and holding slaves was simply something we were very proud our country evolved away from.

Whitewashing historical facts like these is really no different than Mao erasing all mention of China's bloody past to it's school children in the cultural revolution or Iran denying the Holocaust. Nations do both good and bad things over time but the true test of a Nation or it's people is...

(A) Do they learn from them, tell the truth & improve?

(B) Do they continue on with bad things as they are?

or (C) Do they cover up & lie and say the bad things simply never happened.

Only (A) Stands the test of time and shows a nation to be truly honorable.

 

[top gun]

I guess the situation is worrying from the point of view that the TSB has some considerable influence with printers as to the content of text books which a lot of other states use in their school.

Excellent observation from across the pond there Scots.

That's exactly the problem. Texas has such a large school system that many other states get a somewhat better deal on costs if they just buy the same books that are already in print for Texas.

And all this once again shows how there often times really must be a national (call it Federal if you like) standard. Because this is the problem that always pops up with states rights. You get such a small non-diverse group that they often tend to promote not the historical facts as much as what makes their area look best.

We saw that with Civil Rights.

We saw that in treatment of prisoners in State prisons.

On & on...

Hey I might like to promote that Ohio was the state that made all the difference in the North winning the Civil War and it's because Ohio didn't get mixed up with all the religious fervor of the time that it was the most powerful state!

That would all be BS and completely historically inaccurate just like what Texas is wanting to promote... but it would make Ohio & Ohioans look good.

 

[top gun]

yea how can you claim they where racist? just becuse they said they should not be able to have rights, vote, and held slaves?

Don't hate Facts..deal with them

What a novel concept!

 

[top gun]

I guess that is right on the same level with liberals trying to teach that the Civil War was only about slavery. This is why the public school systems in large part are failing. Which is why hear in NC charter schools and private schools are so popular.

This seems very accurate and to the point to me.


It is a fact that when the armies for the North and South were first formed, only a small minority of the soldiers on either side would have declared that the reason they joined the army was to fight either "for" or "against" slavery.

However, equally true is the statement: "Had there been no slavery, there would have been no war. Had there been no moral condemnation of slavery, there would have been no war." (This was made by Sydney E. Ahlstrome, in his monumental study of religion in America A Religious History of the American People, Yale University Press,1972, on p. 649)

The message here is that the reasons a nation goes to war are usually various and complicated. The American Civil War is no exception.

Background

The curious thing is that although slavery was the moral issue of the nineteenth century that divided the political leaders of the land, the average American had very little interest in slaves or slavery. Most Southerners were small farmers that could not afford slaves. Most Northerners were small farmers or tradesmen that had never even seen a slave.

But political leaders on both sides were very interested in slaves and slavery. The South's economic system was based upon cotton--and slavery. The political leaders of the South, such as Robert Barnwell Rhett of South Carolina, William Lowndes Yancey of Alabama, The Fire Eaters and Robert Augustus Toombs of Georgia, recognized that if the South lost her slaves (i. e., had to pay slaves wages similar to what white laborers were paid), her entire socio-economic system would probably collapse. Hence any political action that took place that threatened the slavery system of the South received the undivided attention of the South's political leaders, many of whom were themselves slave owners.

Political leaders in the North were much more divided about the slavery issue. Many of the powerful abolitionists, such as William L. Garrison of Massachusetts, were either religious leaders or newspaper editors. A fewer number of abolitionists, such as Senator Edwin Sumner of Massachusetts and Salmon P. Chase of Ohio, were politicians. The north had equally powerful political leaders such as democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas who were either indifferent toward or supportive of slavery.

Today we recognize slavery as a moral issue. But in the early nineteenth century, it was seen as an economic issue first, moral issue second. A series of legislative actions, most notably the Missouri Compromise of 1820, had been enacted by Congress to put limits on the propagation of slavery, but compromise with northern and southern interests was always kept in mind. The South had an economic interest in the spread of slavery to the new territories so that new slave states could be created and the South's political influence would remain strong. The North had an interest in limiting the spread of slavery into the new territories for both purposes of controlling Southern political power AND support of the moral issue.

Up until the middle 1800s, slavery was kept as a background issue that remained largely the concern of political leaders of the South, and abolitionists of the North. But in 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, sponsored by Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, brought slavery to the forefront of national attention. Kansas-Nebraska eliminated the old Missouri Compromise (which in 1820 had designated areas of the new territories in which slavery could and could not be introduced) and made it possible for slavery to be introduced in virtually any new territory. Douglas called the concept of allowing residents of the territories to decide the slavery issue for themselves Popular Sovereignty. Kansas-Nebraska caused a firestorm to erupt in the North, awakening many people to the danger of the potential spread of slavery. Moderate politicians such as Abraham Lincoln became active in the cause of fighting both the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the spread of slavery.

Conclusion

Although the majority of the American people-- including many moderate politicians like Abraham Lincoln--wanted to avoid Civil War and were content to allow slavery to die a slow, inevitable death, the most influential political leaders of the day were not. On the southern side, "fire-eaters" like Rhett and Yancey were willing to make war to guarantee the propagation of their "right" to own slaves. On the northern side, abolitionists like John Brown and Henry Ward Beecher of Connecticut were willing to make war in order to put an immediate end to the institution of slavery.

These leaders, through either words or action, were able to convince the majority that it was necessary to go to war, and in order to convince them they justified the war with arguments that only indirectly referred to the subject of slavery (i.e., state rights et. al.).

Southern politicians convinced their majority that the North was threatening their way of life and their culture. Northern politicians convinced their majority that the South, if allowed to secede, was really striking a serious blow at democratic government. In these arguments, both southern and northern politicians were speaking the truth--but not "the whole truth." They knew that to declare the war to be a fight over slavery would cause a lot of the potential soldiers of both sides to refuse to fight.

So-was the war about slavery? Of course. If there had been no disagreement over the issue of slavery, the South would probably not have discerned a threat to its culture and the southern politicians would have been much less likely to seek "their right to secede." But was it only about slavery? No. It was also about the constitutional argument over whether or not a state had a right to leave the Union, and--of primary concern to most southern soldiers--the continuation of antebellum southern culture. Although the majority of Southerners had little interest in slaves, slavery was a primary interest of Southern politicians--and consequently the underlying cause of the South's desire to seek independence and state rights.

 

[PLC1]

This is why we educated our kids at home up until middle school. They were taught critical thinking skills, and to look at all sides of an issue. The one thing I hate about all these "textbook" debates is that the focus is on what to teach kids, instead of teaching them how to think.

In the internet age, every kid in school has access to more core documents, opinions, and facts than any generation before them, and yet they are nearly incapable of processing the information in a way that will allow them to draw conclusions.

I've seen the current crop of textbooks, and they aren't very good. Changes need to be made. The changes proposed won't help overmuch, as we'll still be just teaching kids what to think.

Exactly right. Instead of trying to indoctrinate children to a particular viewpoint, we need to be teaching them how to evaluate information and make up their own minds.

California's standards are already big on "critical thinking skills", which is bureaucrat speak for teaching kids to exactly what you are suggesting.

The Texas board of education is of a different mindset, or so it appears.

 

[Pandora]

That's not it at all.

I went to public school and our text books highly regarded the Founding Fathers and the greatness of America.

You are older than I am, and I learned some of what you learned but by the time I learned it There were more negatives added in and silly things like .....thanksgiving was giving thanks to the natives not God.

Now ask a kid what they learn, it wont be the same things you learned. First they learn very little bout the founders and what they learn is more neg than pos.


this is kinda my point. in the old days we learned of the founders greatness now if the kids learn much bout the founders at all its more neg stuff than anything else.