Like Laurie below, I read The New York Times‘s story on the Texas Board of Education deliberations and was dismayed at some of the Board’s decisions and comments. The dropping of Jefferson from the group of figures who inspired revolutions around the world, as Laurie points out, is a mistake. Jefferson’s writings have influenced radical and dissident figures not only abroad but at home as well.
The New York Times’s story states that conservatives don’t like Jefferson because of his firm belief in ”separation between church and state.” Their position is doubly errant because it misses Jefferson’s conservatism. Yes, Jefferson regarded the Church as just as threatening as the Court, and he sometimes casually linked “priests” and “kings” as dangers to democracy. But two strands of conservatism claim Jefferson as a forebear.
One, the agrarians: Jefferson regarded cities as zones of corruption, in part because they concentrated people in unnatural conditions. He once calculated the natural population density as 10 individuals per square mile. Increase the number and misbehavior begins to set in.
His other conservatism lies in the defense of state’s rights. He regarded centralization of power as inherently dangerous, and “local control” conservatives can cite him as an authority.
That said, much in the Times story on the case is to be questioned. Reporter James C. McKinley Jr. summarizes the circumstances in openly partisan terms: “the Texas Board of Education on Friday approved a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks.” Their method, he continues, has been to have “passed more than 100 amendments to the 120-page curriculum standards affecting history, sociology, and economics courses from elementary to high school.”
One expects, then, some strong ideological changes to follow, but first we get statements by dissenting board members, one of whom claims, “They are rewriting history, not only of Texas but of the United States and the world.” Later, another one declares, “The social conservatives have perverted accurate history to fulfill their own agenda.” McKinley himself observes that some amendments “seem aimed at tamping down criticism of the right.”
It all sounds dastardly, a power play by backward Texas right-wingers. But except for the addition of Germans and Italians to the record of ”internment,” which appears a gratuitous move, the examples McKinley invokes don’t come close to that characterization.
For example, McKinley writes, “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.” Given Friedman’s and Hayek’s influence and prestige in economic and political circles, they certainly deserve study as serious economists, not as representatives of an ideology. The same case can be made for Marx, in spite of the ideological baggage Marx otherwise carries.
McKinley regards this revision, too, in partisan terms: “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.’” But to teach McCarthyism without any recognition of the now well-documented level of Soviet espionage activity (in the work of Haynes and Klehr and others) is irresponsible historiography. To teach Venona isn’t to justify McCarthy’s antics and thuggery, of course, but it is to provide a more accurate representation of the past.
Also, the story mentions this inclusion: “a plank to ensure that students learn about ‘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.’” As long as that plank doesn’t have a triumphalist profile, then it, too, marks a sound recognition of the rise of a certain form of right-wing conservatism in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. I hear enough liberal voices regretting the force of that movement even today, making it entirely warranted as a historical topic.
This isn’t to say that the board members aren’t ideologically motivated. I haven’t reviewed their deliberations. But the framing in the Times is unfair, and the attributions contradictory. For one thing, one statement explicitly sets historical accuracy second and places an identity-criterion first: “Efforts by Hispanic board members to include more Latino figures as role models for the state’s large Hispanic population were consistently defeated.” Obviously, the “role model” argument leads us away from objective standards.
Finally, to charge conservatives with rewriting history from a conservative perspective is a weak accusation given the fact of all the historical revisionism that has taken place from other ideological perspectives in recent decades. Does McKinley believe that progressivist educators haven’t engaged in the same thing?
A fuller account of the Texas situation would provide some evidence of the curriculum before its revision, weighing just how valid are the conservatives’ claims that liberal bias steered previous curricular changes.
45 Responses to ‘The New York Times’ on Texas Conservatives
marktropolis - March 15, 2010 at 2:58 pm
I’m curious to see what your reaction is when this same gang decides to take on English and language arts standards in Texas. You may want to check the archives to see what went down last year when the science standards in Texas were re-written to give creationism its “due.” As for a fuller account:A piece in Washington Monthly taking a long look at one of the forces behind these changes: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2010/1001.blake.htmlFor some more on the back-and-forth between the board members: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/14/backstory-how-the-texas-t_n_496831.htmlAnd since you clearly have no love lost with the New York Times, since you accuse the author of using “openly partisan terms,” perhaps you’d like the AP version, which opens talking with “A far-right faction of the Texas State Board of Education succeeded Friday in injecting conservative ideals into social studies, history and economics lessons that will be taught to millions of students for the next decade.”: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gPQ3ktQNqImWyQ23yXKoCFXWrN1QD9EDD4EO0How about USA Today? http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2010/03/texas-school-board-backs-conservative-curriculum/1Then again, maybe the New York Times isn’t far off? Last month they published a longer piece on all these things going on in Texas.I think the point about this news you may be missing is that these decisions about curriculum drive how textbooks will need to be written. And Texas is one of the largest purchasers of textbooks. So they have a disproportionate influence in how textbooks get written Nationally.
markbauerlein - March 15, 2010 at 3:03 pm
No, marktropolis, no problem with the Times–I’ve been published there five times in the last year. And my goal is not to defend the Texas Board. It is, rather, to note that several examples cited in this particular article were characterized unfairly as ideological. Furthermore, the absence of any discussion of the pre-existing curriculum and any possible biases there made this a partial account.
_perplexed_ - March 15, 2010 at 3:52 pm
You were “…dismayed at some of the Board’s decisions” but think the story meriting attention is the unfair NY Times coverage? That is really the priority? I’m betting that not many Texas students will read the Times article and so they will be spared from having to make any critical evaluation. Just what the Texas Board wants, I think.
markbauerlein - March 15, 2010 at 4:00 pm
It’s the bigger point that matters, perplexed, that is, that asking for the inclusion of Venona, Hayek, etc., counts as an ideological power play. That’s how McKinley played the story, as you can see, and in my experience the tactic is not uncommon.
goxewu - March 15, 2010 at 4:02 pm
Prof. Bauerlein is correct about the liberal overreach–sometimes successful, sometimes not–in public school textbooks since, to pick at year at random, 1968. But that overreach was and is a reaction to public school textbooks having since the day they were invented, a “triumphalist platform” (Prof. Bauerlein’s own term).I once head a friend read to me from his old middle-school text on slavery; my goodness, were those docile black people well-treated on the plantations! It seems that lil’ ol’ slavery was more an issue of principle (people just shouldn’t be allowed to own other people) than of actual oppression, brutality and suffering. Not a word, mind you, about how the slaves got here. Probably one of those discount airliness, with so little leg room. Me, I learned how nice it was of all those missionaries to convert the Indians, and how they did it by showing the poor dears how to plant fruit trees. Indians as a whole existed in my textbooks in a kind of netherworld between being actual persons, who bled when shot and were good for a few noble chiefs and colorful costumes, and abstract inconveniences for the unquestioned (read: white) good of Manifest Destiny. Why, we wouldn’t have the Staples Center and Starbucks if not for James Knox Polk!And so on and so on. Modifying the bad rep of 1950s anti-Communism with a few paragraphs on the Verona papers, or talking about Milton Friedman (who’s probably in hiding, even in his grave, right now) alongside John Maynard Keynes is OK. But it’s a drop in the ocean compared to the revision necessary to try to get the truth about the likes of Frick, Carnegie, Mellon into public school histories of our “Golden Age.” Strike, what strike? All we learned about were libraries and art museums.If you think that some what what these Texas conservatives (you can argue that these don’t represent all conservatives, but they are indeed all conservatives) want to wreak upon the history curriculum is outrageous, wait’ll they demand that “young Earth” be taught in science classes.
marktropolis - March 15, 2010 at 5:09 pm
(#2) “characterized unfairly as ideological”huh?I think I need to understand how you define ideological. Also, since you’ve written for the Times, I would imagine how hard it is to squeeze a lot of information in to a small spot. Asking the Times to go into the entire history of curriculum reform in Texas is kind of like expecting an article on the Iraq war to review 200 years of conflict in a paragraph or less.That said, markb, I know that you have an ideologial ax to grind. We probably all do. But this post shows (at least for me) shows your willingness to call foul anytime those on the right are accused of being “ideological” and then turn around and accuse the left of being ideological. There’s bias, and then there’s being historically inaccurate – or as evidenced by this same board last year, scientifically inaccurate.If your intent was to point out that the Times author was being biased, then prove your point. The reality is that the individuals that made these curricular recommendations are being quite public about their ideology. And the supremacy of that ideology.
marktropolis - March 15, 2010 at 5:14 pm
goxewu (#5). Given what they did to the science curriculum last year, I don’t think we need to wait too long to see what happens.
_perplexed_ - March 15, 2010 at 6:42 pm
Oh let’s do take a look a Venona…will Texas teach that while Julius was apparently guilty as charged, Ethel Rosenberg seems to have neen murdered by a Justice system attempting to extort an admission of guilt from her husband? Think we will see that in the Texas textbooks?
mdanieltex - March 15, 2010 at 7:37 pm
These standards have little to do with what schools actually teach or what students learn. Most of these students could not adequately answer any of the questions whether inserted by liberals or conservatives. It is an ideologically fight over nothing important in actual practice.
suomynona - March 15, 2010 at 9:27 pm
The appropriation of Jefferson fairly equally by liberals and conservatives is a significant topic among early American and Jefferson historians, and there’s plenty of evidence and plum quotes from Jefferson’s life and writings to paint him as either-or. But Jefferson isn’t really a founding father of *any* conservative or liberal strands of thought, though many try to use him for those purposes. I see, for example, a lot of contemporary conservatism in Hamiltonian (Federalist) support for financial engineering and finance capitalism, but I’m not ready to try to map post-Revolutionary American political cultures onto contemporary ones for the sake of culture warring. In fact, I think it’s very characteristic of contemporary conservatives to reach back and try to claim America’s founders as their ideological predecessors, even when things have always been a bit more complicated than that. Ditching the controversial Jefferson for a couple of less sophisticated (protestant) religious reformers, as part of an Enlightenment curriculum no less, looks to me like an overtly ideological move. If we really want to teach both sides of the issues, our Jeffersons are perhaps the best models.
maa0162 - March 15, 2010 at 11:01 pm
mdanieltex is right in a very sardonic sense.I would only add that any good teacher of history knows (and any rookie should have been taught) that the text-book comprises only a small part of what one should be teaching. It should not be driving the entire educational process.By the way, I can’t speak for young women, but for young dudes, women’s asses are what dominates the young man’s thought process in junior high school, not history. We figure that out later for ourselves.
markbauerlein - March 16, 2010 at 11:33 am
Let me put the question to people here:Do you believe that the inclusion of Venona material in a US history lesson on anti-communism is an ideological act?
_perplexed_ - March 16, 2010 at 11:56 am
Inclusion of Venona material in a HS curriculum is not necessarily an ideological act. But: What motivates the decision? What portions of Venona material? What point will be made? Some of the codebreaking details and discussion of the ambiguities in identifying codenamed individuals should fascinate students. There is, I think, a great story there; but I doubt todays textbooks are up to telling it.
goxewu - March 16, 2010 at 12:00 pm
No and yes.No: On its face, it’s a reasonable addition/correction to the curriculum in modern American history. (The Venona papers do not, however, excuse the blacklisting-and-worse of every U.S. leftist who knew somebody who once went to a Party meeting during the Great Depression.)Yes: With the Texas schoolboard, it’s an ideological act because their reasons have everything to do with shoving it to liberals, paving the way for “young Earth,” etc., and little to do with a genuine pedagogical concern for what Texas schoolchildren should be learning.How do I know the “Yes”? Read the longer articles about the scandal (and it is a scandal), see who the people are, consider it’s Texas (see: Perry, Rick–Texas, Republic of), etc.
luther_blissett - March 16, 2010 at 1:20 pm
Mark, the Board members themselves, and the reviewers they chose, articulate these changes in ideological and religious terms, not in terms of historical fact or truth.According to *The Wall Street Journal*, that bastion of left-wing groupthink: “Three reviewers, appointed by social conservatives, have recommended revamping the K-12 curriculum to emphasize the roles of the Bible, the Christian faith and the civic virtue of religion in the study of American history. Two of them want to remove or de-emphasize references to several historical figures who have become liberal icons, such as César Chávez and Thurgood Marshall. ‘We’re in an all-out moral and spiritual civil war for the soul of America, and the record of American history is right at the heart of it,’ said Rev. Peter Marshall, a Christian minister and one of the reviewers appointed by the conservative camp.”Notice: while it is an objective historical fact that the Bible is a primary shaping influence on American history and culture, the reviewers are more interested in deflating liberal icons. They are not debating historical fact; they are instead fighting a metaphysical battle for the souls of children, and history classes are merely the battlefield (just as this same Board did to science classes previously).The WSJ article continues, “The curriculum, they say, should clearly present Christianity as an overall force for good — and a key reason for American exceptionalism, the notion that the country stands above and apart.”Notice: the reviewers want to transform history classes from places where the objective study of history is taught to children to Sunday School classes where Christianity is presented as “an overall force for good.” That sort of moral judgment — like the idea that America “stands above” all other nations — has no place in a history classroom.In *The Guardian*, we read: “Dan Quinn of the Texas Freedom Network, which describes itself as a ‘counter to the religious right’, called the recommendations ‘troubling’. ‘I don’t think anyone disputes that faith played a role in our history. But it’s a stretch to say that it played the role described by David Barton and Peter Marshall. They’re absurdly unqualified to be considered experts. It’s a very deceptive and devious way to distort the curriculum in our public schools,’ he said.”So even non-religious conservatives have deep issues with the ideological brainwashing at work here.Finally, I’d just point to the Board’s recommendation that textbooks cease using the term “capitalism” and instead use “free enterprise” or “free market” because, as one Board member claims, “capitalism” has bad connotations. Even if we accept that “free market,” “free enterprise,” and “capitalism” are synonymous terms, the US has ALWAYS been a site of contention about the role of government regulation in the economy and total hands-off economics has never been the only perspective on economics. But the goal is transform how children *feel* about capitalism by playing with connotation and diction. I think Orwell wrote about that in *1984* and “Politics and the English Language.”
maa0162 - March 16, 2010 at 1:27 pm
From the standpoint of basic instructional history, it is not a political act.Ken Burns, one of the best known historians of our generation, had said once something to the effect that he could tell the story of a Civil War battle (for example)from a variety of different perspectives; there is the soldiers perspective, there is the civilian perspective, there is the Northern perspective, there is the Southern perspective etc. etc.He went on to say that no matter what perspective a historian chooses, they ultimately will never change what happened there. This is also one of the reasons why Glen Beck was right on target in saying that history should be taught from the original source material, not a second hand source.As I said above, the text-book is only one tool. It can guide but it should not be driving all aspects of instruction.That being said, it is legitimate to ask “from what perspective does a text attempt to spin this aspect of history.”Ultimaely, students need to learn about those aspects of our society that it unique from others. As William Chandler Bagley has noted, understanding what is unique about us is what makes it possible for us to function as a unified people and also to appreciate what is unique about other peoples from around the world.This means that students need to understand that many, including many from within our own borders, despise us and our way of life. These people represent a great threat to humanity (as history shows over and over again). Many collectivists think they have a better solution than freedom. Students need to be able recognize those ideas that stand in direct opposition to our core identity as a people.Schools teach many things, not just history, in the attempt to give students the basic tools that will enable them to live as free citizens, not slaves of the state. The ultimate goal of this work is volitional discipline and the understaning of winning and losing in life. To that end teaching the Venona material seems entirely salient.
markbauerlein - March 16, 2010 at 1:42 pm
Good citations, Luther, and I would only question one phrase of yours: “the objective study of history.” We need to apply that phrase in all directions, not just against the conservative Board members. The telling phrase in the Times story is the “role model” argument. I presume you agree that with that approach to history we also depart from “objective study.”
goxewu - March 16, 2010 at 3:42 pm
Re #17:”…students need to understand that many, including many from within our own borders, despise us and our way of life. These people represent a great threat to humanity (as history shows over and over again). Many collectivists think they have a better solution than freedom. Students need to be able recognize those ideas that stand in direct opposition to our core identity as a people.”Translation: Collectivists (e.g., those who advocate, say, a public option in healthcare) within our own borders (e.g., that schoolteacher who we suspect of supporting it) represent a great threat not only to our core identity as a people (i.e., white Christians), but to humanity itself. So students should be able to recognize them and report them to the NSA.A bit of a caricature? Yep, but not much. I’ve been around long enough to know the code words: “collectivists,” “core identity,” etc. And then there’s the giveaway citation of that former cokehead Top 40 DJ who switched to politics when his drive-time ratings went south.Re #18:”Role model” is a bad tack to take. But a corrective was needed to a history of Texas that attributed nothing positively significant to anybody browner than Sam Houston with a slight tan.
maa0162 - March 16, 2010 at 4:39 pm
goxewuYou do not think original source material is important in the teaching of history? By the way, one of the most important aspects of our identity as American people is that we are not bound by where we have been or what we have done in the past. Not just the teaching of history or any of the content areas for that matter, but all of education (including higher education)should be predicated on that fact. To act otherwise is to strip people (and students) of their humanity. That would be a firing offence in my opinion.All that aside and getting back to the original blog post, those who have not taught on the k-12 level also need to take into consideration the limitations the environment places on the value of any text-book. As Marzano might say, “unpack” what your local board/citizens expect you teach, what the state demands you teach according to standardized testing, and the national standards themselves in relation to (i.e. divided by) the amount of actual time on task that a teacher has over the course of the normal school year.Much of what is in a textbook may not even be covered. Whatever is going on in Texas or any other state, it is valid only if it provides curricular alignment between what is expected of teachers in relation to the expected performance of students on the evaluation measure.
luther_blissett - March 16, 2010 at 7:19 pm
Mark, I agree that history classes should be not trying to supply students with role models. They should be teaching historical facts; dominant narratives of historical cause and effect as well as competing models; the skills of historical analysis (document analysis; research; the writing of historical narrative and historical analysis; etc.).But I also agree with goxewu that despite the “role-model” justification, many historical figures, events, and explanations that otherwise were ignored have been rightfully placed in the curriculum.I have no problem with certain of the historical figures and events conservatives want added. Students should see the immense influence of Christianity on the formation of the US. But they should see it objectively, warts and all. I remember writing a DBQ in AP US History (this was 1993) that presented documents defending and attacking slavery. My teacher showed us that Christianity provided both the scaffolding that supported the slave-owners as well as the tools for dismantling it. To underestimate either part of religion in America is bad history.
goxewu - March 17, 2010 at 8:11 am
Re #20:Of course, “original source material is important in the teaching of history.” Home, mother, and apple pie are nice things, too. But any use of “original source material”–especially that which is not in English–is going to be extremely limited for American public school students. Budget, travel, access, etc. Teaching history to public school students requires extensive, if not almost exclusive, use of intermediaries: a teacher, textbooks, secondary sources (e.g., history books which themselves use “original source material”), etc.Anyway, I said nothing in #19 about “original source material,” and its resuscitation in #20 is merely an attempt to draw attention away from the fact that maa0162 has made a hasty–and well-advised–retreat from the noxious paragraph with which I took issue in #19. Now, it turns out, that “core identity” is really NO core identity at all (“we are not bound by where we have been or what we have done in the past”), a one-eighty by maa0162 which is just fine by me.The rest of the near-gobbledygook in #20 says, in essence, that the whole Texas-schoolboard-textbooks issue is really a tempest in a teapot because textbooks are such a minor part of public-school education. maa0162 might want to inform his mentor, Glen Beck, of that fact.
maa0162 - March 17, 2010 at 3:01 pm
goxewuForgiveness, repentence and redemption are indeed major themes of a Christian identity. These are impoortant aspects which unify Christians in their core identity. What is more important, one not need to be a Christian to feel this way. For instance, when one commits a small crime in America for which they have to go to jail, we consider their debt paid when the jail time is done. We need not hack off a limb. Redemption is a major aspect of American life in general. No dignified human relations can take place without forgiveness.As far as Beck is concerned, I figured that since you obviously do not like him, your ire was generated by his idea that original source material is important in the teaching of history. This was the idea presented in my post.I just assumed that the opinions of blog-posters here were related to the original blog or the responses that they supposedly are addressing. In 21, luther_blissett gives a great example of an assignment he did in high school which involves something more than just what can be found in a textbook.
goxewu - March 17, 2010 at 4:12 pm
Oh, please. “Core identity as a people” now consists of “forgiveness, repentence and redemption”? And jail time–with no hacking off of a limb–is somehow a peculiarly American punishment for small crimes in America? (No wonder all those convicted pickpockets in France have no hands!)Most of my “ire” was generated by the statement “original source material is important in the teaching of history” presented as though this were something other something other than as a pragmatically meaningless truism. (Does maa0162 think that anybody would say that “original source material is unimportant in the teaching of history”?) The rest of it was generated by the notion that the importance of “original source material” in teaching is somehow Glenn Beck’s idea. A whole lot of historians and history teachers would be at least mildly surprised to learn that.I probably shouldn’t bother to comment back when maa0162 replies that when Glen Beck repents for hacking off the identity of his blog, it’s part of his core limb as an American textbook.And maa0162 should probably re-read Mr. Blissett’s high school assignment in #21, v-e-r-y c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y.
goxewu - March 17, 2010 at 4:14 pm
Sorry for the typos: redundant “in America,” repeat of “something other.” You know what they say: “Haste makes Beck.”
maa0162 - March 17, 2010 at 4:43 pm
goxewuIf you are angry at Beck, e-mail him and argue with him. Based on your last post, it looks like you actualy agree with him (and others who would make the same point, as you have pointed out). I never said he was the only who said that; rather, that is how you have chosen to read it.And forgiveness and redemption are a very big part of the Christian identity. You missed the point entirely. Because someone is forgiven for their past, it does not mean that they have no identity. That was the point you made in 23 that I was responding to.You are right in a twisted way; Americans are not the only ones who share Christian values at their core. The core values of a people need not be provincial. In the case of America, natives and immigrants of every stripe believe in forgiveness and redemption. And as I said, one does not even need to be Christian to hold the same values. That is what makes it one of our core values as a nation.Also, that particular value orintation is what makes it possible to live in this country even if you do not subscribe to it.
goxewu - March 17, 2010 at 6:06 pm
Oh, laboring in the vineyards:1. I’m not angry at Glen Beck. (I don’t take him very seriously; he has a lot of fans, but so do Yanni and Dr. Phil.) I’m just astonished that anyone would cite him as the source of an idea, especially one as long and universally held as “original source material is important in the teaching of history.” (And when one says, “Glen Beck was right on target in saying that history should be taught from the original source material,” it implies to the point of declaration that this is an idea that Glen Beck came up with. Otherwise, why mention him at all?)2. There’s a lot of waffling (I’d say weaseling if I wasn’t in such a good mood) about “core identity” here. To dilute it to the abstractions of “forgiveness and redemption” is to render it practically meaningless, along the lines of, oh, claiming that “niceness” is part of the “core identity” of a people.3. Actually, a lot of immigrants don’t believe in forgiveness and redemption, and neither do many native-born Americans, including a lot of hellfire-and-damnation nominal Christians.4. What makes it possible to live in this country is a) being born here, b) immigrating legally, or c) immigrating illegally and not getting caught. As Mae West said to the hat-check girl who exclaimed, “My goodness!” upon seeing West’s diamonds, “Goodness had nothing to do with it. And neither do “forgiveness and redemption” “make it possible to live in this country.”5. To get back to the main thread of this thread: the Texas schoolboard members whose proposed changes are at issue in these “Brainstorm” posts are ideologically driven, ignorant philistines, and whatever small improvements (e.g., mention of the Venona papers) they manage to bring to the teaching of history in the public schools of Texas will be purely inadvertent.
maa0162 - March 17, 2010 at 7:22 pm
goxewuYou are right in a certain sense but always keep in mind…#2…there is nothing wrong with abstracting if the general logic employed is linked with the basic information of intuition (what we take in through the senses that is not abstracted). For instance, our entire system of law is predicated on abstractions because it is not practical to employ a new system of law for all 300+ million people that exist in the land on a case by case basis. Thus, we consider the basis of our law a part of our core values as a people. This has to do with Kant…let’s not go there.#3. See my last post, I address that at the end I do believe.#5. Yes!! There is a difference between deciding what your own kids will learn and being interested in what other people’s kids learn. That is why it’s called politics!!!
goxewu - March 17, 2010 at 8:17 pm
Does anybody out there understand what maa0162 is getting at? Or how he or she thinks he or she is getting at it? As far as I can tell, maa0162′a comments are veritable blizzards of non-sequiturs. But I’m open to being enlightned by a third party.
maa0162 - March 17, 2010 at 8:33 pm
Yes, someone please help this person, goxewu. It is more than obvious that this person needs help in “understanding.”Happy St. Patrick’s Day!! It’s time to drink green beer!!What’s the line for the Blackhawks and Ducks tonight?
goxewu - March 18, 2010 at 9:33 am
See what I mean, people?
marktropolis - March 18, 2010 at 9:37 am
goxewu (#28), while I can’t discern precisely maa0162′s intent, you have pointed out a fair amount of waffling. All beginning with the subtle dropping of Beck’s name. Which as you said, “why bother” unless you’re making a point about Beck. And the only point to make about Beck these days is either (a) you agree with him (becasue he supports your worldview) or (b) you disagree with him, and wish perhaps he’d loose his show, so he could stop spreading ignorances throughout the land. Now, clearly there may be some shades of gray in there, but from what I’ve seen in these discussions (esp in markbauerlein’s blog) there isn’t a lot.maa0162 strikes me as the type who will shout Fire! in a theater and wonder why everyone is so pissed. You don’t drop Beck’s name in the middle of a conversation over the culture wars in this country and expect it to not be heard. And, given maa0162′s apparent admiration for Beck, I would assume she/he is in support of what the school board did in Texas. All that business of getting back to “original intent” and American execptionalism. Natural law, yada yada.But here’s my question: if “forgiveness and redemption are a very big part of the Christian identity” how is it that Texas, this apparent bastion of Christian (white) identity (let’s ignore all those Mexicans for the time being), has the highest number of folks on death row? If forgiveness and redemption are what’s driving the agenda for these school board members, how does that translate into some of the decisions they’ve made. Let’s just kick Cesar Chavez out there on his but, seeing as he’s not as important as Milton Freidman. After all, the intellectual underpinnings of modern capitalism (sorry, “free market”) are for more important than the story of the economic liberation of Mexican farmworkers.And anytime someone starts waxing poetically about Christian identity (thank goodness identity wasn’t capitalized) I do tend to get a tad nervous. Especially when the conversation is about history curriculum. I’m assuming for the time being, that for maa0162 one of those “original sources” would be the Bible…
marktropolis - March 18, 2010 at 11:43 am
Just found this nugget today. An “imagined” snippet from the as-yet-unwritten new history book that will align with the Texas board’s new curriculum requirements. The “study questions” are pretty good too. Since McCarthy has been mentioned above, here’s one paragraph (I’d say read the whole thing):”Yet instead of being treated as a truth-telling hero, McCarthy was reviled by the liberal establishment (particularly The New York Times and CBS News), who exaggerated the importance of unfortunate factual errors made by the anti-Communist Wisconsin senator. Sadly, under relentless pressure from the liberal Democratic enablers of Soviet agents, McCarthy lapsed into alcoholism, which led to his untimely death. Although McCarthy was unjustly censured by the Democratic Senate in 1954, the Wisconsin senator’s patriotic contributions have long been championed by such objective commentators as former Richard Nixon speechwriter Patrick Buchanan (1938- ) and erudite magazine publisher William F. Buckley (1925-2008).”http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/03/15/texas-textbook-wars-how-conservatives-might-teach-history/
johntoradze - March 18, 2010 at 12:38 pm
While I agree that adding those economists is warranted, and that discussing the NRA, etcetera is also warranted, Mr. Bauerlein sandwiches his apologism between the removal of Jefferson and a closing statement asking for more evidence of previous revisionism by the Texas board. The former damns the board. Bauerlein’s closing? It appears that he missed such books and other scholarship as “Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong” by Loewen. http://www.amazon.com/Lies-My-Teacher-Told-Everything/dp/0684818868Educate yourself Mr. Bauerlein. Read Loewen’s book. If you are going to write on higher education, you should at least know that peer review has accepted that American textbooks below college level were as or more revisionist than Soviet textbooks! Frankly, Mr. Bauerlein, I’m stunned. The Texas Board is notorious, and has been for decades.
markbauerlein - March 18, 2010 at 1:53 pm
I looked at Loewen’s book several years back, john, and I found it so out of date (stuck in a pre-Civil Rights, pre-Women’s Liberation world) that I couldn’t take it seriously. And your equation of Soviet textbooks to American textbooks is hard to credit, seeing as how authors of the former who strayed from the Party line risked their lives. And to marktropolis, Friedman matters much more than just an “intellectual underpinning” of capitalism. He was, in fact, a policy advisor to heads of state.
marktropolis - March 18, 2010 at 2:20 pm
#34: I’m not surprised by your dismissal of Loewen’s book. Anytime there’s mention of the importance of race and gender, Mark is there to counter it with some well thought critique. But I think you may be missing the point about equating Soviet and American textbooks. At least, maybe not johntoradze’s point, but mine: the Texas board’s insistence on dismissing anything that doesn’t fit neatly into their so-called conservative, date I say myopic, worldview, is akin to dismissing entire pieces of history. Which, for women and people of color, is the entire point of working to infuse those non-white, non-male perspectives into history books. When a group of white decision makers decides that someone like Cesar Chavez doesn’t warrant mention, they are in effect telling an entire population that their history doesn’t matter. At best it’s patronizing. At worst it’s racist.Furthermore, my dad was an advisor to heads of state. But I’m not pitching for him to be in a national history book. If we added all the policy advisors to heads of state to the history books, then we’d have to include that patriotic American Karl Rove. And there woudn’t be any room for Ronald Reagan. My point is that Friedman was added for political purposes. And Chavez was pulled for political purposes. Free-market good; brown people, not so much.Look, making decisions about what to teach is difficult. But when it comes to being convinced about those choices, I’m more inclined to listen to an experienced (and presumably successful) educator, rather than some lawyers, plumbers and “activists” with explicitly political goals.
maa0162 - March 18, 2010 at 4:57 pm
marktropolisThose are some fair points regarding Beck. But that is why I mentioned his name; he is right in the middle of such discussions these days. But I must also admit, I did do it to see if it would get a rise out of people. As Schopenhauer might say, the content of what is in the text-books has next to do with nothing; it is how people view that content in relation to their own identity which governs how they think about it. As goxewu pointed out, such things are an abstraction.As far as Mexicans in Texas are concerned, I do believe as a percentage within their group, Catholics comprise the largest number.I can not speak for the intent of any decision making body in any state; I have never served on one. It should seem obvious though what every poster on this blog thinks about the decision, including yourself. That being said, there is a real danger in assuming what those positions might also imply about people you have never have met and probably never will.At the very least, it takes the spirit of exchange out of the process. Perhaps that is your goal?As Beck would say, “when you assume, you make an ass out of both you and me.”
markbauerlein - March 18, 2010 at 5:40 pm
In light of your comment about my dismissal of race and gender, marktropolis, note that I am a co-author of “Civil Rights Chronicle”http://www.amazon.com/Rights-Chronicle-African-American-Struggle-Freedom/dp/0785349243Check closely the name of the second co-author.
goxewu - March 18, 2010 at 10:57 pm
That last line in #36, that “Beck would say” was in an episode of the TV show version of “The Odd Couple” broadcast way back with the estimable Mr. Beck was still a tasteless-prank rock disc jockey desperately searching for a gimmick to rescue his plummeting ratings in market after market where his shtick had worn thin. (He did eventually manage to find such a gimmick, right-wing politics.)As for #37, that co-authorship just renders all the more disappointingly remarkable the cumulative opinion and tone of what Prof. Bauerlein so frequently posts.
maa0162 - March 19, 2010 at 1:15 am
goxewuDo us all a favor; e-mail Beck and argue with him directly.
goxewu - March 19, 2010 at 7:52 am
#40:maa0162 brought Glen Beck into the discussion way back in #16 (“Glen Beck was right on target in saying…”), presumably as some kind of authority (otherwise, why mention him?), and has been trying to dig his or her way out from under him ever since. Glen Beck is maa0162′s problem, not mine. If maa0162 now wants to disavow Mr. Beck with something like, “I don’t know what made me drag a rightwing psuedo-populist ideologue into this by quoting him [twice!]; maybe I was just desperate for a big name to buttress my points,” that’d help. Otherwise maa0162 has voluntarily tethered himself/herself to Mr. Beck, and I’ve little compassion regarding the consequences.
marktropolis - March 19, 2010 at 8:47 am
maa0162 (#40) – goxewu beat me to it. Except to say that in #36, you said “I must also admit, I did do it to see if it would get a rise out of people.” You raise an issue, then complain when others choose to pursue it. If you don’t want to debate it, don’t bring it up.As for #37, leaving aside for the moment that sounds a bit like “some of my best friends are Black,” I hardly think that your contribution to a coffee table book absolves you of any challenges. We’ve all got our issues with race and/or gender. But I think it’s interesting that on the one hand, you want to dismiss someone else’s work that’s based on lessons learned from the civil rights movement (meaning learning from what was in many ways our first national conversation about race), and on the other hand you want kudos or credit for your own work on race.A book of photographs “documenting” the so-called civil rights era does not a critical assessment make. Back to the Texas board for a sec, my issue is that they don’t even want to document it, let alone look at it in any critical way. Which is what I continue to see in your blog: you want credit for addressing issues or race, but any time those issues come up, you want to dismiss the conversation as irrelevant. Almost a “been there, done that, here’s my t-shirt.” Another way to look at this: I think even your book wouldn’t make the reading list in Texas under the new guidelines: Since it probably doesn’t spend enough time highlighting the important work of Sheriff “Bull” Connor in maintaining law and order.
markbauerlein - March 19, 2010 at 9:59 am
That’s an awfully cheap dismissal of the Chronicle book, marktropolis, which is not at all a coffee table book. We intended it partly as an encyclopedic treatment for young adults. You stated that I always deny the “importance of race and gender,” thereby asking for proof to the contrary. Now, you call it a “some of my best friends are Black” statement–a low blow.
dnewton137 - March 22, 2010 at 10:43 am
Yesterday we all witnessed an historic event in the political evolution of our nation. It will be interesting to see whether the Texas Board of Education takes any note of it in its campaign to redesign history in accord with its political perspective.
lexalexander - March 22, 2010 at 2:37 pm
At the end of the day, the Texas school board does not come to the table with clean hands. Its support for creationism alone renders its every academic decision suspect. In most of the countries with which we compete in the international marketplace, loons such as those would never have been allowed anywhere near a position of responsibility.
marka - March 25, 2010 at 4:22 pm
Yikes! Amazing how differently I read the lead article, and then the increasingly flaming comments!From where I sit, original article simply takes NYT report to task for using what objectively should be unobjectionable non-ideological inclusions in a history text, as ideological additions. The point was the inclusions listed, standing on their own, are NOT ideological, and it constitutes overly biased reporting to label them otherwise, and use them as examples of ideology. The NYT, and many comments, confuse the inclusions themselves, with those proposing them. How many have taken formal logic courses? How many remember the classic fallacies of ad hominem & tu quoque? And yet these classic fallacies are used repeatedly in these comments. These are logical fallacies folks – so why continue to use them – except as sophistic emotional appeals?This illustrates the partisanship infecting much of this commentary: if you say it, it must be wrong, regardless of objective consideration of the statement on its own. If it comes from a D or L, it must be opposed by an R or C, and vice versa. Sheesh – I expect more out of an academic forum — guess you can’t take the partisan advocacy out of the discussion. Too bad, sigh …