Five million public school students in Texas will begin using new social studies textbooks this fall based on state academic standards that barely address racial segregation. The state’s guidelines for teaching American history also do not mention the Ku Klux Klan or Jim Crow laws.
And when it comes to the Civil War, children are supposed to learn that the conflict was caused by “sectionalism, states’ rights and slavery” — written deliberately in that order to telegraph slavery’s secondary role in driving the conflict, according to some members of the state board of education.
Slavery was a “side issue to the Civil War,” said Pat Hardy, a Republican board member, when the board adopted the standards in 2010. “There would be those who would say the reason for the Civil War was over slavery. No. It was over states’ rights.”
You know they say that "History is written by the victors." But in Texas it is clearly being written by the losers.
Historians acknowledge that disagreements over states’ rights played a role in the Civil War. But the states’ rights issue was inseparable from slavery, they say: The right that states in the South were seeking to protect, after all, was the right to buy and sell people.
Isn't that just like the conservatives? If the facts don't work for your version of reality, ignore them, and if history is not on your side, just rewrite it.
So much for the IQ's in Texas going up in the foreseeable future.
Now we know how people get to be stupid enough to elect someone like Louie Gohmert to Congress.
ReplyDeleteThere's a reason some spell it texASS or texA$$.
DeleteWe rewrote American history to diminish what we did to the native Americans, so I guess it is only logical.
ReplyDeleteWith imports shut down, domestic production of new slaves was inadequate to populate the new states of the western expansion. Demographics could not protect the southern states' peculiar institution so they had to go war.
ReplyDeletePre-college school textbooks never mention reproduction as the limiting factor to slavery in the United States. I think that's another effect of "Christian" influence.
I thought the Civil War was started because Lincoln believed that there were WMDs hidden in the coal mines of KY?
ReplyDeleteIf the Republicans have their way, we will never know the truth about why any wars were fought, mainly because most wars were fought to make rich men richer.
This is a continuation of The Lost Cause argument that started after the Civil War ended, to try and, forgive me, no pun intended, whitewash the huge role slavery played. And they use sectionalism as the reason for the war. Hmm, u mean sectionalism where one section of the country believes u can own other people and treat them like livestock, and the other section believes that owning other people is wrong?
ReplyDelete'As Texas schoolbooks go, so goes...' about 23 or 24 other states as well. Publishers don't want to have to publish so many varieties of textbooks so they accept Texas version and peddle that version to other states.
ReplyDeleteAnd so half the country gets dumber and dumber.
EXACTLY!!! What Texas writes in school books will be taught in most of the US schools.
DeleteGoodbye, intelligence and knowledge. It was nice to have met you.
That's not really true anymore. It was when everything was printed in advance, but now with electronic files, it's easy to insert or delete sections for a new run.
DeleteKeep them stupid and Republican = Texas
ReplyDeleteThey're emphasizing states rights as the cause for the civil war. They neglect to mention states rights...to own slaves. I'm really against this present day push for states rights. I think certain states want it so they can pass legislation harmful to individuals but beneficial to businesses and the wealthy. I think increased states rights is going to lead to the fracturing of our country. Call me a conspiracy theorist but I think certain countries want to see this happen and are promoting it in ways we can't easily see.
ReplyDeleteGood point. America has tried it before and the stupid states lost. They are of the past and can't change, but are fully loaded with guns. Just like the Taliban, et al. Fasten your seat belts, it's gonna be a bumpy ride.
DeleteI think that is exactly what is happening. Because of state level legislating we are already seeing some of our citizens enduring conditions that make them unequal to their fellow citizens in non Republican/teabagger states.
DeleteM
Which will come first: civil war or revolution? Bernie, with his potent ideas against "the state" (as in the 1% gang) is fomenting a groundswell of emotion and possibilities. He's a dangerous man, mark my word.
DeleteWith computer-generated publishing, it's easier to edit books or put in new chapters. Texas is certainly a major school book market, but I suspect schools could order replacement chapters for areas of concern. (This is both a good and a bad thing. Other markets can replace the Southern POV to the Northern POV to correct falsity, but other markets could also replace a secular POV with a "christian" one.)
ReplyDeleteThat said, it's always irritated me that they call the Civil War the "War of Northern Aggression" when they started the shooting. Okay, people- don't jump on me about Kansas and Nebraska, okay? The attack on Fort Sumter is widely taught as the actual commencement of hostilities.
I already told my Texas friends that I'll never be back because the joint is nucking futs. It's all I can do not to tell them what I really think.
ReplyDeleteCan't blame you!
DeleteMaybe you can get them to visit you where you live so they can be exposed to something different?
JJ
Once again the TeaNut Republicans in my state have shown exactly how stupid they really are. Pat Hardy is well known for being a hothead and bully, plus being dump as a post. I'm pretty sure she was home schooled. B
ReplyDeleteBut until the Democrats in Texas get off their ass and start voting, we will just have more of the same crap.
A question: how is it that Texas gets to dictate these terms when there are far more people in California? You'd think the larger market would get to have the greater influence.
ReplyDeleteM
Want to Meet America’s Worst Racists? Come to the Northwest
ReplyDeleteMuch of the national debate over racism in the aftermath of last month’s mass murder in Charleston, S.C., has focused on the South and its strange and sometimes jarring nostalgia for the Confederacy. And yet tucked away in the Pacific Northwest of the United States is a vicious group that most people have never heard of but the nation’s most virulent online racists know well (among them, accused South Carolina murderer Dylann Roof, who wrote about the group in his now-infamous “manifesto”).
The group is called the Northwest Front and its final solution to the race "problem," if you will, is to expel non-white people from the Pacific Northwest and to establish a mono-racial republic there.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/07/northwest-front-americas-worst-racists-119803.html#ixzz3fJjAEzdk
Regardless of who writes his-story or her-story.It is a sad day , for all on this planet will never know the facts.It is incredulous that we are so hateful and deceitful to rob ourselves of our legacies . Without the truth, in spite of the negatives,we have nothing to claim as ours.
ReplyDeleteFilo
Of course the northern union states never kept and traded slaves.............................
ReplyDeleteMissouri was a slave state but sided with the North in the Civil War.
DeleteWho here or in that article said the Northern Union states never kept and traded slaves?
DeletePBS's The Abolitionists is replaying this week on SC ETV. So much stuff I never knew! With a good teacher given some freedom in the curriculum, the textbook can't confine you, but, sadly.......
ReplyDeleteTo learn about how bad the textbook selection process can be, get a copy of Richard Feynman's "Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman" and read the chapter "Judging Books by Their Covers". The book is available for download from various sites. Google this file name:
ReplyDeleteRichard_P_Feynman-Surely_Youre_Joking_Mr_Feynman_v5.pdf
If they had been content to limit slavery to the South, there may not have been a war, but no, they wanted to spread it from sea to shining sea. They even had their slave catchers crossing into non slave states until those states finally got fed up with it, but when they wanted to infect all the new states & territories with slavery was when they got stopped. Throwing their tantrums, they turned traitor & declared war on the USA. Bet none of that is in the new "textbooks." Bastards then & now.
ReplyDelete"Facts are stupid things!" said Ronald Reagan.
ReplyDeleteThe only way - the ONLY way - conservatism works is to deny facts to one's self and deceive others about them as well.
...and it's funny...
it's the same thing with religion.