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March 16, 2010

Townhall: 'Texas Kicks Out Liberal Bias From Textbooks'

The good news is that the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) just told liberals to stop "messing" with social studies textbooks and has ended years of liberals' revisionist history
imposed on our nation's public school students. The bad news is that it was allowed in the first place.

Phyllis Schlafly writes:

By a 10-to-five margin, the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) just told liberals to stop "messing" with social studies textbooks.

For years, liberals have imposed their revisionist history on our nation's public school students, expunging important facts and historic figures while loading the textbooks with liberal propaganda, distortions and cliches. It's easy to get a quick lesson in the virulent left-wing bias by checking the index and noting how textbooks treat President Ronald Reagan and Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

When parents object to left-wing inclusions and omissions, claiming they should have something to say about what their own children are being taught and how their taxpayers' money is spent, they are usually vilified as "book burners" and belittled as uneducated primitives who should allow the "experts" to decide. The self-identified "experts" are alumni of liberal teachers colleges and/or members of a left-wing teachers union.

In most states, the liberal education establishment enjoys total control over the state's board of education, department of education and curriculum committees. Texas is different -- the Texas State Board of Education is elected, and the people (even including parents!) have a voice.

[...] After a public outcry, the SBOE responded with common-sense improvements. Thomas Edison, the world's greatest inventor, will be again included in the narrative of American history.

Schoolchildren will no longer be misled into believing that capitalism and the free market are dirty words and that America has an unjust economic system. Instead, they will learn how the free-enterprise system gave our nation and the world so much that is good for so many people.

Liberals don't like the concept of American exceptionalism. The liberals want to teach what's wrong with America (masquerading under the code word "social justice") instead of what's right and successful. The SBOE voted to include describing how American exceptionalism is based on values that are unique and different from those of other nations.

The SBOE specified that teaching about the Bill of Rights should include a reference to the right to keep and bear arms. Some school curricula pretend the Second Amendment doesn't exist.

Obviously, the best case would be for all states to allow their citizens to have a voice in selecting those that hold so much power over what our children are taught, thereby preventing liberal-progressives' revisionist history to be inserted into our children's curricula. Fortunately, as Schlafly points out in her article, Texas is the largest single purchaser of textbooks, so publishers can hardly afford to print different versions for other states, allowing Texas curriculum standards to have nationwide influence.

Posted by Abdul at March 16, 2010 10:22 AM