Why I hate the Confederacy, Part IV: Dumbing down U.S. history

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.”

“They are going overboard, they are not experts, they are not historians,” she said. “They are rewriting history, not only of Texas but of the United States and the world.”

I guess this is the famous line in the sand. Between this and the refusal of Texas to get on board with 48 other states supporting the Common Core framework for K-12 learning, I fear for my several Texas relatives who are in the public schools. The Civil War is never over, is it?

March 12, 2010

Texas Approves Curriculum Revised by Conservatives

By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.

AUSTIN, Tex. — After three days of turbulent meetings, the Texas Board of Education on Friday voted to approve a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light.

More disgusting details from a March 10 New York Times story: "References to Ralph Nader and Ross Perot are proposed to be removed, while Stonewall Jackson, the Confederate general, is to be listed as a role model for effective leadership, and the ideas in Jefferson Davis’s inaugural address are to be laid side by side with Abraham Lincoln’s speeches."