If you are on Twitter, set an alarm for9 a.m. tomorrow. Go do it right now, we’ll wait.[Jeopardy music interstitial] Okay, now that you’re back, this is what you’re going to dotomorrow at 9 a.m., and why:
Send the following to the Texas Education Agency (TEA):
“.@teainfo Do right by TX kids& public school kids
everywhere. Reject distorted Social Studies curriculum changes.
#SaveHistory”
Why? Because the usual suspects at the State Board of Education
(SBOE), continuing their slash and burn pillage of state curriculum
standards, have proposed a social studies curriculumso egregiously out
of touch with actual historical fact and so literally “whitewashed” that
not even founding father Thomas Jefferson makes the cut, not to mention
prominent civil and human rights leaders from more recent eras.
After curriculum teams of qualified subject area experts presented a draft of revised state standards for the Board’sconsideration earlier this spring,
the board’s far-right
members made substantial changes to the standards. Among those changes:
removing Thomas Jefferson from a world history standard about important
Enlightenment thinkers, exaggerating religious influences on the
Founders and the founding documents; watering down instruction about the
civil rights movement; requiring that students learn about the
political positions of conservative leaders and icons, such as Phyllis
Schlafly, Moral Majority and New Gingrich; portraying Sen. Joseph
McCarthy’s reckless smears in the 1950s as having been justified; and
even removing the concepts of justice and responsibility for the common
good from a list of characteristics of good citizenship. They even
rejected an amendment requiring students to learn that the Founders
barred government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion
over all others.
Why should you care what happens in Texas? Because despite the increase of digital technology and online learning resources, paper still prevails in the textbook market, and Texas buys so many textbooks that publishers write all their
books to meet this state’s standards.
I’veposted here before about how critical the tenaciousTexas Freedom Network is to the fight against the the conservative agenda of the S.B.O.E. In addition to supporting TFN, what else can you do?
Donate directly to the campaigns.Support two candidates running for
the SBOE by donating directly to their campaigns.Dr.
Judy Jennings (running for SBOE District 10) andDr.
Rebecca Bell-Metereau (running for SBOE District 5) are running in
districts that – if you put the two districts together – are
geographically the size of Mississippi and total about 1.8 million
registered voters. Judy and Rebecca are both committed toSaving
History and you can donate to both candidates at their Save
History ActBlue site.Help spread the word through Facebook, Twitter and your blog of
choice. Those of us supporting Judy, Rebecca and others in Texas are
using the #savehistory hashtag on twitter, as well as using that same
tag on our posts.