Texas conservatives may change history

By: Gabriel McLaughlin

Posted: 3/16/10

Most days, it's great to call yourself a conservative. Then there are those days where shirking the label consumes your every thought. Last Friday was one of those days.

Down in Austin, Texas, the state's 15-member Board of Education held hearings to finalize the social studies, history and economics curriculum that will be taught in Texas schools for the next decade. Rather than avoid controversy in what should be a rather mundane activity, seven of the Texas Board of Education members, broadly dubbed "conservatives," flooded the curriculum with social conservative ideas.

Changes ran the gambit from "why would you bother to do this" ideas, like replacing the word "role" with "leadership" when describing President Richard Nixon's opening of relations with China, to "what are you thinking" ideas, like removing Thomas Jefferson from the curriculum focusing on the revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries.

The media responded to these actions like lions on a zebra, proudly brandishing to the world every torn piece of flesh labeled "conservative." Headlines blasted out declarations like "Texas Textbook MASSACRE," "Texas Conservatives Rewrite History" and "Texas Conservatives Win Curriculum Change." The New York Times went as far as to repeat the words "conservative" and "republican" 25 times in their coverage of the story, just in case the reader was confused as to who was mucking up Texas' history books.

But let's be clear, the actions of these seven Texas Board of Education members were in no way sanctioned by everyone who would dare to label themselves a "conservative."

The actions of the Texas Board of Education highlight an ever-present division between social conservatives and the rest. Defending the decision to remove Jefferson from the curriculum, board member Cynthia Dunbar claimed that Jefferson's writings were based upon the writings of other political philosophers already listed in the curriculum standards. Surely this must be the case.

Omitting Jefferson has everything to do with his appreciation for John Locke and nothing to do with his Deist religious beliefs or that pesky "separation of church and state" phrase he coined, right? Dunbar's "nothing to do with religion" reasoning for removing Jefferson would be more believable had the Board not rejected a requirement that "students learn that the Constitution prevents the U.S. government from promoting one religion over all others."

By taking a hacksaw to Texas' curriculum standards to promote social conservative ideals, the Board succeeded in perpetrating the cardinal sin of conservative belief - government intervention.

Here are a group of elected officials, mostly lawyers and a dentist - no teachers or historians - using the power of government to dictate what students learn in history class. Since when is that a "conservative" move? Maybe they could make the "state's rights" case. After all this is curriculum made for and by Texans.

But the Board's actions have national consequences. Due to Texas' size and number of school districts, the state buys a lot of textbooks, and as a result, textbook publishers gear their operations based on Texas' curriculum. So the curriculum Texas adopts could rip through the United States like a cancer.

The Board will have a final vote on the curriculum in May, but it is unlikely that anything will change. By their own admission, the Board claims to be proliferating the idea of "American Exceptionalism." But, by leaving out Thomas Jefferson - founding father whose writings inspired this nation and others around the world to rise up from oppression - the Texas Board of Education is making a huge American exception.