Chris Rodda, writing for Daily Kos, explains why giving David Barton any influence over a public school curriculum is a very bad idea. As you know, the Texas State Board of Education has appointed Barton to a panel of so-called “experts” guiding the revision of the state’s social studies curriculum standards. Barton founded and heads WallBuilders, a Texas-based organization that argues against separation of church and state and for basing our laws and society on fundamentalist Christian biblical principles.
Money quote from Rodda’s piece:
“(V)ery little of what I’ve been reading about the Texas BOE seems to convey just how dangerous Barton really is. His agenda for the teaching of American history is not merely a somewhat more religious ‘interpretation’ of history, as some are describing it — it’s an all out, lie packed, completely revised, Christian nationalist version of history, designed to muster support for a very clear political agenda.”
Rodda has also shown how Barton’s historical revisionism has already been influential in classrooms. Two years ago she reported that a Barton essay in a U.S. Department of Defense Junior ROTC American history curriculum offers a twisted (and bogus) account of the constitutional principle of church-state separation.
