Texas Textbook Critics Just Can't Handle the Truth

[SassyLady]

Has anyone else been tracking this?


Texas Textbook Critics Just Can't Handle the Truth
By Kelly Shackelford

Published June 04, 2010

Unbelievably, the battle over the Texas social studies standards, which could impact most of the nation, is not over. The process and rules required a final vote on the standards, and the board completed the process.

However, now California has passed a law seeking to bar textbooks adhering to Texas’ educational standards from the state, and liberal editorial boards both in the state and across the country are advocating for every stonewalling technique available to keep the standards from going into effect, even suggesting delaying the purchase of new textbooks.

Why? Misinformation about the board and the new social studies standards continue to spread like wildfire, ensuring that this battle will ensue for months, if not years, to come.

“You can’t handle the truth!” This is not only a famous line from a movie, but it’s also a perfect line to describe the unbalanced attacks on Texas State Board of Education members after their passage of good American history and social studies standards for students.

Some critics alleged that the board removed Thomas Jefferson from the standards. That was flatly untrue; unfortunately, many newspapers across the country printed this falsehood without bothering to check the facts. The truth? Jefferson is in the standards five times, second in prominence only to George Washington, and the Declaration of Independence he authored appears another 25 times.

Some argued that slavery was removed and renamed something more “flattering.” False. Slavery is covered numerous times in the standards. One national television host even had to apologize on-air when she looked at the standards and realized she’d been misled on the issue by groups whose goal in spreading this misinformation was to attack the board.

Some of the most attention-grabbing headlines on this issue accused the board of intentionally diminishing women and minorities, which was another contortion propagated by groups seeking only to breed discontent. The truth – numerous civil rights, minority leaders and women were added to the standards – more than ever before by far. The board included Hillary Clinton, Barbara Jordan, Cesar Chavez, Thurgood Marshall, Dolores Huerta, Sonia Sotomayor, Martin Luther King, Jr., the study of Brown v. Board of Education, and many more.

Opponents even argued that Texas is anti-religious freedom because students will now compare and contrast the words “separation of church and state” with the actual words of the Constitution. That truly takes the cake. Reading the Constitution – what a concept! One newspaper, surely intending to appear as a bastion of educational brilliance, used that as their example of the board’s “overreach,” even though this addition to the standards passed by an 11-3 bipartisan vote.

rest of the article:

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/06/04/kelly-shackelford-texas-textbook-social-studies-standards-boycott-delay/

[crin63]

Liberals cant have the truth of our Founding Fathers or Documents get out in the public education system. It undermines all the work they've been doing to pollute the minds of our children.

The children cant find out how religious Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin really were. What the founders actually meant in The Constitution. It would set Liberals back decades.

[SassyLady]

Liberals cant have the truth of our Founding Fathers or Documents get out in the public education system. It undermines all the work they've been doing to pollute the minds of our children.

The children cant find out how religious Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin really were. What the founders actually meant in The Constitution. It would set Liberals back decades.

Yep, I agree with you on this.

[LiberalNation]

their revised history ain't truth.

[Binky]

Liberals cant have the truth of our Founding Fathers or Documents get out in the public education system. It undermines all the work they've been doing to pollute the minds of our children.

The children cant find out how religious Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin really were. What the founders actually meant in The Constitution. It would set Liberals back decades.

Liberals and apathy are what is wrong with the country now. They'll do whatever they have to to try and rewrite history to suit themselves. I remember one saying a couple of years ago that the halocaust didn't even happen.....Yeah right........Idiot. The world is full of them....

[DragonStryk72]

their revised history ain't truth.

what parts are revised?

[Agnapostate]

This agency has taken the role of a ministry of propaganda upon themselves, disseminating bias that will minimize or conceal the more unethical actions of state regimes and comparatively worse domestic conditions in the U.S. There's a touch of Goebbels there.

[fj1200]

When in doubt throw an ignorant fascism claim in there.

[Kathianne]

Has anyone else been tracking this?

Back on 9/4 I posted 5 or 6 threads on reform in education, from kindergarten through university. At heart of the discussion was textbook reform and control. They are found in USA Current Events, here's the first:

http://www.debatepolicy.com/showthread.php?29095-Education-Bubble-and-Other-Problems

[BoogyMan]

their revised history ain't truth.

What revised history would that be?

[Agnapostate]

When in doubt throw an ignorant fascism claim in there.

You'll have to mention any claims of fascism made. Otherwise, you'll appear to be talking to yourself.

[Kathianne]

You'll have to mention any claims of fascism made. Otherwise, you'll appear to be talking to yourself.

Well good for you on that call out, now about the multiple links I provided? Any comments?

[Agnapostate]

Well good for you on that call out, now about the multiple links I provided? Any comments?

"Call out"? It was a response. You didn't provide multiple links; you provided a link to a thread with another link that itself contained multiple links. And that commentary contained one part on the systematic rightist bias that characterized this school board and threatened to dominate textbook contents, whereas it focused double that on anti-leftist rhetoric, and probably more, since even the ostensible introduction and conclusion were dedicated to anti-leftism. The basis stated in that article was that rightists merely sought to benignly foist their moral bias on students, while the "leftist" (actually moderate rightist, but leftist in the context of U.S. consensus politics), contribution was some sinister, calculated agenda:


Class projects in American schools are now often assigned to groups rather than individual students, to dampen the sense of individual achievement if praise is earned — or soften the shame for those who flop. Students are too frequently passed along to the next grade-level, even if they’re not up to the task — so as not to damage their self-esteem (coughor the school’s academic rankingscough). The backhanded compliment, “I’ll give you an ‘A’ for effort,” which in my day was always dripping with sarcasm and usually immediately preceded a big red “C+” on the paper, is no longer sarcastic: Students really do get actual “A”s for effort, even if they don’t come close to finding the right answers.

This is the progressive dream: To eliminate hierarchy and stratification in schooling, and to make sure, by hook or by crook, that no student fails or feels bad, even if the only way to achieve that is to ensure that no other student succeeds or feels good. Because if there are winners, then there must necessarily be losers, and Team Left has banished the very category of “loser” from our vocabulary.

It's a ridiculous non-sequitur logical fallacy, frankly. He repeated several popular perceptions among rightists, without any documentation that they were widespread, concrete, or deliberately designed facets of education, and inferred from that that it represented a liberal plot. He doesn't so much jump to conclusions as he sky-dives to them. For example, consider the fun that he had with an external article that he cited, this being the relevant section of that article:


Citizens also pressure textbook companies at California adoption hearings. These objections come mostly from such liberal organizations as Norman Lear’s People for the American Way, or from individual citizens who look at proposed textbooks when they are on display before adoption in thirty centers around the state. Concern in California is normally of the politically correct sort — objections, for example, to such perceived gaffes as using the word Indian instead of “Native American.” To make the list in California, books must be scrupulously stereotype free: No textbook can show African Americans playing sports, Asians using computers, or women taking care of children. Anyone who stays in textbook publishing long enough develops radar for what will and won’t get past the blanding process of both the conservative and liberal watchdogs.

The series presented the section about stereotypes and the allegation that textbook publishers develop a sense of wariness about offending those with liberal sensibilities with certain images as an exposition of literal rules governing content standards, as though it were actually written down somewhere that "no textbook can show African Americans playing sports..."

The fourth section culminated with a description of how this liberal plot followed along the lines of the theories of the Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci. Marxist educational sociology and theory is flatly at odds with mainstream liberal thought, of course, which can be seen by reading something like Schooling in Capitalist America. Socialists (myself included) generally hold that the school system in capitalist countries is designed to condition students into accepting the structure of the hierarchical capitalist workplace through authoritarian socialization with a clear chain of command.

All in all, Lakoff's Moral Politics is a far apter description, because it explains how rightists view "leftist bias" as the mere absence of rightist bias, in a sense, or the coexistence of rightist bias with other views:


What does Strict Father morality say about other moral and cultural systems? It says they are immoral. If they do not give primary to moral strength, they promote moral weakness, which is a form of immorality. They are also immoral if they blur the strict moral boundaries of Strict Father morality, or challenge the moral authority of Strict Father morality, or challenge the Moral Order of our society.

For this reason, conservatives tend to be against multi-culturalism, which seeks tolerance for cultural diversity and and many other forms of morality. To conservatives, forms of morality other than their own are not moral and therefore will not be tolerated.

[...]

Strict Father morality comes with a principle of self-defense: it is the highest moral calling to defend the moral system itself from attack. The very first category of conservative moral action includes acts of promoting and defending conservative morality. The word "war" in "the cultural war" is not incidental. Conservatives have, at least since the 60's, seen their system of values under attack - from feminism, the gay rights movement, the ecological movement, the sexual revolution, multiculturalism, and many more manifestations of Nurturant Parent morality. Conservatives have seen the values of these movements taught in the schools. They are appalled that what they see as the only system of real morality is being undermined. Conservatives believe that all of the major ills of our present society come from a failure to abide by their moral system. Moreover, they believe that their moral system is the only true American moral system, as well as the only moral system behind Western civilization. They see both of these beliefs challenged in contemporary historical research, which is being taught in our universities. This gives them a sense of moral outrage. They are fighting back.

[fj1200]

You'll have to mention any claims of fascism made. Otherwise, you'll appear to be talking to yourself.

Nice try Joseph.


There's a touch of Goebbels there.

[Agnapostate]

Nice try Joseph.

Where's the claim of fascism? There's only a claim of authoritarian indoctrination. That's a facet shared by most authoritarian governmental regimes, not fascist ones specifically.