Historians are heaping scorn on the Texas State Board of Education’s revision of social studies curriculum standards for public schools. A press release yesterday from scholars who sponsored an open letter to the state board — signed by more than 1,200 historians from across the country — highlights scathing comments from professors who have analyzed the proposed standards. Money quote:
Impossibly large. A missed opportunity. Plagiarized work. Straight out of neo-confederacy. Culturally irrelevant. Greek mythology. Scholars from universities across Texas and the nation have analyzed the final draft of the proposed Texas social studies curriculum and find it falls far short of providing even a basic education to Texas school children. Collectively, the scholars call on the state board of education, the media, and the public to refocus attention on that which truly matters—the education of millions of Texas school children over the coming decade.
Shunning past politicized debates, the scholars raise a host of common sense educational issues and address several substantive concerns: the curriculum is shoddy, it is too large for any teacher to handle, it is plagiarized from Wikipedia, it emphasizes memorization and ignores preparation for college and the workplace, its foibles mean that testing companies will end up deciding what Texas children will learn.
The full text of the professor’s comments about the standards is available here. The full press release follows the jump.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 17, 2010Scholars Say the Texas Social Studies Standards Fall Short
Impossibly large. A missed opportunity. Plagiarized work. Straight out of neo-confederacy. Culturally irrelevant. Greek mythology. Scholars from universities across Texas and the nation have analyzed the final draft of the proposed Texas social studies curriculum and find it falls far short of providing even a basic education to Texas school children. Collectively, the scholars call on the state board of education, the media, and the public to refocus attention on that which truly matters—the education of millions of Texas school children over the coming decade.
Shunning past politicized debates, the scholars raise a host of common sense educational issues and address several substantive concerns: the curriculum is shoddy, it is too large for any teacher to handle, it is plagiarized from Wikipedia, it emphasizes memorization and ignores preparation for college and the workplace, its foibles mean that testing companies will end up deciding what Texas children will learn. Selected conclusions include:
- “We must teach the children that we have in our classrooms. Our social studies curriculum should reflect Texas’s 21st century reality, that it is an urban, post-industrial, multi-ethnic, multicultural, globally-interconnected society” – Jesús F. de la Teja, Texas State University-San Marcos and first State Historian of Texas
- “In terms of problem solving, analysis, and decision making, the Texas Social Studies standards require nothing more of seniors than they do of kindergarteners” – Keith A. Erekson, University of Texas at El Paso
- “Parts of the ‘American exceptionalism’ standard were lifted almost verbatim from Wikipedia . . . . Can we all agree that Texas kids deserve better than this? Shouldn’t the State Board of Education be held to a higher standard?” – Michael Soto, Trinity University
- “I have never encountered ‘nature’s god’ in my studies outside of the coursework taken on Greek mythology. I am curious then, would the entity being referred to here be Dionysus or Pan?” – Christy Woodward Kaupert, San Antonio College
- “Such striking omissions and deletions suggest a pattern of neglect rather than happenstance or an occasional lapse of judgment” – Emilio Zamora, University of Texas
The full text of the analysis can be accessed online at http://sensiblehistory.blogspot.com/p/analysis.html. Additional information about the review process and an online archive of media coverage is available at http://tekswatch.utep.edu.
Co-chairs for the group:
Emilio Zamora, Professor of History, University of Texas at Austin
Keith A. Erekson, Assistant Professor of History, University of Texas at El Paso
