Revisionist History And Texas' Proposed Textbooks

Findings

Our reviewers’ broad findings noted below are followed by a listing of specific examples of problems they identified during their examination of the textbooks up for adoption in Texas:

• A number of government and world history textbooks exaggerate Judeo-Christian influence on the nation’s founding and Western political tradition.

• Two government textbooks include misleading information that undermines the Constitutional concept of the separation of church and state.

• Several world history and world geography textbooks include biased statements that inappropriately portray Islam and Muslims negatively.

• All of the world geography textbooks inaccurately downplay the role that conquest played in the spread of Christianity.

• Several world geography and history textbooks suffer from an incomplete - and often inaccurate – account of religions other than Christianity.

• Coverage of key Christian concepts and historical events are lacking in a few textbooks, often due to the assumption that all students are Christians and already familiar with Christian events and doctrine.

• A few government and U.S. history textbooks suffer from an uncritical celebration of the free enterprise system, both by ignoring legitimate problems that exist in capitalism and failing to include coverage of government’s role in the U.S. economic system.

• One government textbook flirts with contemporary Tea Party ideology, particularly regarding the inclusion of anti‐taxation and anti‐regulation arguments.

• One world history textbook includes outdated – and possibly offensive – anthropological categories and racial terminology in describing African civilizations.

• A number of U.S. history textbooks evidence a general lack of attention to Native American peoples and culture and occasionally include biased or misleading information.

• One government textbook (Pearson) includes a biased – verging on offensive – treatment of affirmative action.

• Most U.S. history textbooks do a poor job of covering the history of LGBT citizens in discussions of efforts to achieve civil rights in this country.

• Elements of the Texas curriculum standards give undue legitimacy to neo-Confederate arguments about “states’ rights” and the legacy of slavery in the South. While most publishers avoid problems with these issues, passages in a few U.S. history and government textbooks give a nod to these misleading arguments.

Texas' State Board of Education is considering new textbooks. The proposed books were reviewed by an outside source (Texas Freedom Network), and the following are their findings:

http://www.tfn.org/site/DocServer/FINAL_executivesummary.pdf?docID=4625

I'd quote more (and there's plenty more worth reading) but the .pdf doesn't transfer text well to FFXIAH. I'd suggest giving a look to the "What's Wrong?" section at the very least.

Texas "reality":
The South won "the war between the states", 9/11 was perpetrated by the U.S government, Sandy Hook never happened, it's ok to get your sister, cousin, or mother-in-law pregnant... I could name a few more gross, disgusting "facts" your basic standard Texan "thinks" are correct, but then we'd be here all night.

This is all interesting before you think about the fact that you don't really use textbooks in school. (Besides college.)

This is all interesting before you think about the fact that you don't really use textbooks in school. (Besides college.)

I still have one of my high school textbooks. It's filling in for the missing wheel on a bed frame :D

WorldView Software – World History A: Early Civilizations to the Mid-1800s
The text states: “South of the Sahara Desert most of the people before the Age of Explorations
were black Africans of the Negro race.”
Elsewhere, the text states: “The first known inhabitants of Africa north of the Sahara in prehistory
were Caucasoid Hamitic people of uncertain origin.”
What’s Wrong?
First, the term "Negro" is archaic and fraught with ulterior meaning. It should categorically not be
used in a modern textbook. Further, the first passage is unforgivably misleading because it
suggests that all black native Africans belong to a single "racial" group. This is typological thinking,
which disappeared largely from texts after the 1940s. It harkens back to the racialization theory
that all people could be classified as one of three “races”: Caucasoid, Mongoloid, or Negroid.
Better to omit all the language in this passage referring to outdated racial categories.

WorldView Software – Basic American History I: Pre-Columbian Years to Reconstruction
The text states: “The early 1600s were an uncertain time for the colony of Virginia. It was a land
of starvation and high death rates, one in which the Native Americans regularly launched
merciless attacks against the colonists.”
What’s Wrong?
While early Virginians did indeed endure attacks from Native Americans, this passage provides no
context for understanding the complicated relationship between the two groups. For instance,
the Native Americans offered food in the time of starvation that followed the initial settlement.
They tried to establish diplomatic relations on their own terms. Nonetheless, the English made
their intentions plain by constructing a triangular fort, from which they could fire in all directions.
They set out to just take whatever they wanted including food supplies, followed by land. From
the start, they used violence, including such instances as kidnapping the Queen of one group
known as the Pamunkeys, killing her children during the voyage back to Jamestown by throwing
them into the water and shooting them. These events, plus the simple fact that the English were
invaders, provide an essential context for the “massacre” of 1622.

The link is a review of proposed new materials. This group, an outside party, reviewed the new materials with 140 different professionals in the educational field. This isn't a critique of current curriculum/textbooks, and is not a review funded or endorsed by the Texas State Board of Education.

All of my HS textbooks were owned by the school, we turned them back in and the end of the year, etc. (honestly it'd be cheaper for schools to use open source/free texts and buy a tablet for each student, but ***).

eh, probably perpetrated by a left leaning group who wishes to portray Columbus as a rapist of Indians, thanksgiving as meat murder, and Christmas as a celebration of "winter solstice".

The textbook bias runs both ways, considering the education sector is full of liberals anyways, I wouldn't be surprised if this was mostly smoke and mirrors.

Thanksgiving as meat murder is laughable, but historical facts are historical facts.

Columbus was a rapist (child rapist, at that), and Christmas is situated where it is to piggy back it upon traditions older than Christianity.