From today’s TFN News Clips:
“[Texas students] are going to know a great deal about their own state and it is a fine state, but they are going to know very little about the world and they are going to leave high school with a very myopic view of the history of humankind.”
— Gary Nash, founder and director of the National Center for History in Schools and a professor at UCLA, claiming proposed changes to Texas’ social studies curriculum overemphasize the state’s history, depriving students of important lessons in world history.
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I wonder if, in fact, they will be learning that much about Texas history. How much will they learn about Lyndon Johnson, who produced the most progressive legislation since the Roosevelts, or Sam Rayburn, or Barbara Jordan (who may have reached icon status enough to be mentioned but her lesbianism won’t be mentioned) or Molly Ivins, or Janis Joplin? Will they learn about Ralph Yarborough or Ann Richards, or, on the other side, about the Fergusons, Coke Stevenson, Pappy O’Daniel, Armey and DeLay?
I expect they will learn the same sorts of things about Texas History that you would learn about George Washington — if you were taught from Pastor Weems’ biography, and from nothing else.