UT Faculty Focus on Social Studies Standards

Faculty members at the state’s largest public university clearly are growing increasingly wary as they watch the State Board of Education vandalize and politicize social studies curriculum standards for Texas public schools. Two upcoming events will highlight their concerns.

The Texas IP Fellows will host a debate over the proposed social studies standards at 3 p.m. on April 7. The venue will be AVAYA Auditorium (ACES 2.302) on the University of Texas campus in Austin.

UT professor Dan Bonevac and UT mathematics professor Lorenzo Sadun will debate whether the state board is making reasonable changes to proposed K-12 curriculum standards that will guide what the next generation of Texas students learn in their social studies classrooms. Joy Alvarado, a member of UT’s Texas IP Fellows student leadership panel, will moderate. The debate is free and open to the public.

Click here for more information about the debate.

In addition, UT history professor Emilio Zamora announced at yesterday’s Mexican American Legislative Caucus press conference that he is helping put together a teach-in about the standards on May 2 on the South steps of the Capitol in downtown Austin. We will provide more information when it’s available.

5 thoughts on “UT Faculty Focus on Social Studies Standards

  1. Gordon Fowkes wrote: ““Teach-in” is a Sixties Commie word for a Retreat.”

    Gordon, I was in college for the first Earth Day in 1970; several “teach-ins” took place on my campus. So, I take it you’re saying that getting educated about pollution, plants, soils, air, water, etc. is communistic? Uh, could you point me to where Marx says that in the Communist Manifesto or Das Kapital – or to any communist tomes that talk about pollution?

    But maybe you were writing tongue-in-cheek.

    Charles, there’s a Speedway in Tucson, AZ too. In fact, Speedway was voted Ugliest Street in America at some point in time. As a former Detroiter, I find it hard to believe that any street could be uglier than Grand River Ave in Detroit, or Kercheval in Detroit, or Woodward Ave. in Detroit…. etc. You get the picture.