Potential Texas school books: Was Jefferson Davis that bad a guy?

[marmar]

from the Los Angeles Times:



Potential Texas school books: Was Jefferson Davis that bad a guy?
March 11, 2010 | 4:46 pm


Producing the next generation of Reagan worshipers is one thing, but the Texas Board of Education may go a giant leap further: Social studies textbooks may cast Abraham Lincoln and Confederate President Jefferson Davis (a traitor to the republic who nevertheless has his own statue in the Capitol) as moral equivalents. You can't make this stuff up:

Even as a panel of educators laid out a vision Wednesday for national standards for public schools, the Texas school board was going in a different direction, holding hearings on changes to its social studies curriculum that would portray conservatives in a more positive light, emphasize the role of Christianity in American history and include Republican political philosophies in textbooks.

The hearings are the latest round in a long-running cultural battle on the 15-member State Board of Education, a battle that could have profound consequences for the rest of the country, since Texas is one of the largest buyers of textbooks.

The board is expected to take a preliminary vote this week on a raft of changes to the state’s social studies curriculum proposed by the seven conservative Republicans on the board. A final vote will come in May.

Conservatives argue that the proposed curriculum, written by a panel of teachers, emphasizes the accomplishments of liberal politicians -- like the New Deal and the Great Society -- and gives less importance to efforts by conservatives like President Ronald Reagan to limit the size of government.

This seems like garden-variety conservatism -- a challenge to the educational orthodoxy, not the historical record. But the New York Times' article gets more interesting as it nears its end. Close to the bottom of the story is this, the money item:

References to Ralph Nader and Ross Perot are proposed to be removed, while Stonewall Jackson, the Confederate general, is to be listed as a role model for effective leadership, and the ideas in Jefferson Davis’ inaugural address are to be laid side by side with Abraham Lincoln’s speeches.

Why stop with Stonewall and Davis? Confederate propaganda makes for great history lessons; plus, much of it is a lot more honest about the South's true cause -- slavery -- than the states-rights inaugural address by Davis, whose birthday is still celebrated in parts of the country by neo-Confederate revisionists. The Texas education board ought to consider including each of the Confederate states' secession statements; here are excerpts from the Lone Star State's, adopted Feb. 2, 1861, to remind schoolchildren what the Civil War was really all about:

(Texas) was received into the Confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal Constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery -- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits -- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time.

In all the non-slave-holding states, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those states, based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern states and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color -- a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind and in violation of the plainest revelations of divine law.

-- Paul Thornton


http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2010/03/texas-may-change-what-its-children-is-learning.html

[HereSince1628]

1. Apparently that's cultural diversity the Texas BOE can really get into.

.

[annabanana]

2. Finally! Light at the end of the Texas Textbook Tunnel!

For YEARS the choices of Texas in the textbook industry has warped the choices that the rest of the Country could make for their public school systems.

With the texas wingnut faction winning the day on History books in Texas, the rest of America will just about HAVE to make other, more reasonable arrangements.

Can you imagine everyone else passively accepting the rejuvenation of Sen. Joe McCarthy's reputation?

[damyank913]

3. In his memoirs, Ulysses Grant wrote...

that he felt secession was not addressed in the constitution but had the founding fathers known "the face that secession would ultimately take on" they would have addressed it specifically. He also wrote that if any states had the right to secede, it would only be the original 13 colonies with that right. Texas was appropriated through the blood and treasure of the federal govt and therefore had no such right. He had great respect for Stonewall and Lee and was a cadet at West Point with these and many of the South's leadership and fought in the Mexican War with them. He still felt that they were traitors to their country.
Another interesting point was that he felt the south, in addition to slavery, had a European style aristocracy that he abhorred. The average confederate soldier had no slaves and fought for his state at the behest of that aristocracy.

[FarCenter]

4. Mexico had abolished slavery in 1829

Therefore, the Texas War of Independence and the subsequent merger with the United States had reestablished slavery in Texas.

So the quoted passage -- "-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time." -- is factually incorrect.

[saltpoint]

5. Next up, they plan to ban re-runs of THE JEFFERSONS in syndication.

[fishwax]

6. ugh. disgraceful.

But, I suppose, not surprising.