It’s sometimes hard to know whether candidates for the State Board of Education (SBOE) in Texas really believe the crazy things they say. Today, for example, the Texas Tribune quotes Eric Mahroum of Fort Worth explaining one of the reasons why he’s running for the District 11 seat on the SBOE: “You have CSCOPE teaching our children that communism […]
Textbook Censorship
The Texas State Board of Education decides what every student in Texas public schools will learn from kindergarten through high school. The board does so by adopting curriculum standards and textbooks for public schools in the state.
For decades, far-right politicians on the State Board of Education and their extremist allies have taken advantage of this flawed system to dismiss the advice of experts and scholars. They have instead worked to inject their personal views into textbooks on everything from evolution and climate change to the history of slavery, civil rights, and separation of church and state.
Resources
- Report Reveals Serious Flaws in Social Studies Textbooks
- The State Board of Education: Dragging Texas Schools into the Culture Wars (2008 report)
- Evolution, Creationism & Public Schools: Surveying Texas Scientists (2008 report)
- Culture Wars and the Classroom (2010 report)
- Senate Bill 6: Changes in the Textbook Adoption Process (2011 report)
- Texas Science Curriculum Standards: Challenges (2012 report)
- Science Textbook Review (2013 report)
- Social Studies Textbook Review (2014 report)
Why Does the Right Have Such a Problem with History?
What is it with right-wingers who seem to have so much trouble with American history? See this tweet today from Peggy Venable, Texas policy director for the Koch-funded, anti-government Americans for Prosperity: “Peace is that brief glorious moment in history, when everybody stands around reloading” — Thomas Jefferson Except that there’s no evidence Jefferson ever said that. The Monticello […]
Far-right Org Wants Textbooks to Portray Southern Whites as Victims after the U.S. Civil War
A right-wing organization long involved in the Texas textbook wars wants new history textbooks to portray the treatment of former Confederate states and white southerners after the U.S. Civil War as similar to the British treatment of its colonies in the years leading up the American Revolution. “Radical Reconstruction (1867-1877) featured numerous serious constitutional problems, many of which reprised […]
The History of Slavery in America According to the Right
When the State Board of Education debated new social studies curriculum standards for Texas public schools in 2009-10, tea partyers and other far-right activists complained about what they saw as an overemphasis on slavery in classes about U.S. history. They argued that attention paid to the history of slavery in America is too negative and […]
The SBOE Approved the Ethnic Studies Proposal. Now What?
After 2,358 of your petition signatures and testimony from dozens of Texans in support, the State Board of Education today voted to make it easier for Texas schools to offer courses in Mexican-American, African-American, Native American and Asian-American studies. The 12-2 vote means publishers will have a chance to submit to the state instructional materials […]
