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May 20, 2010, was the date of the Texas Schoolbook Massacre. In its rush to the bottom, the Texas school board voted to incinerate American values. This should serve as a warning to those who take the progress of civilization for granted.
The school board decided that the 18th century Enlightenment principles upon which the United States was founded are not compatible with the controls they want to exert over the minds of children. Educational elitism is imposing one version of truth on those we are supposed to educate without exposing them to contrasting views for consideration. Rather than to “promote the general welfare” as mandated by our Constitution, Texas education will now promote the views of a backward-looking elite.
The view of John Adams that liberty and real education go hand in hand is apparently weighted too heavily toward liberty for Texas. Instead, children will be forced to partake of the version of history that the board feeds them, regardless of the opinions of the majority of historians and scientists. Thomas Jefferson – author of the “Declaration of Independence” and advocate for a “wall of separation between church and state” – is too radical for Texas, and will be seen as a minor figure in the founding. The medieval view that the church is the state will be given prominence – in this case intolerant reactionary Christianity – and will replace the balanced perspective now taught to most American children.
Ronald Reagan, who turned our country from a creditor to a debtor nation while preaching “fiscal conservatism,” will replace Jefferson in prominence in the Texas version of history. There will be a new appreciation of Joseph McCarthy, the 1950s US Senator, who shredded the Constitution and many lives with false accusations of communism in his bid for personal power. Newt Gingrich, a master of obstructionism who focused on the scandals of others while mired in his own, also will be studied. Jefferson Davis, the Confederate President, will be examined alongside Abraham Lincoln. The Civil Rights Movement will become only a minor episode in our march toward equal rights that were always guaranteed to minorities. The National Rifle Association will be praised for upholding the Constitution. Gay rights and global warming will be ignored. Evolution will be shown to be only a theory about which many doubts still exist. “Capitalism” will be replaced with a study of “free market enterprise” – the system that under any name recently brought our economy to its knees because of its lack of guarantees of fairness for the average citizen.
Since Texas is our largest market for schoolbooks, children in many parts of the country will be subject to reactionary platitudes as a substitute for education. Lessons will be based on beliefs – not facts – and children will no longer be taught the methods of investigative inquiry favored by those who founded our country. Our most essential American values – including respect for the right of Americans to come to their own conclusions about what is right for them – will be abandoned. It is only a matter of time before children in Texas are taught that war is peace.
If the people of Texas and other states allow the education of their children to be taken over by those who demand a non-thinking allegiance to dogma – rather than providing a forum for thought – it can be guaranteed that the practice will spread. We will have a tyranny of belief over reality, if only because the majority doesn’t see the danger and fails to speak up. We only have to look to Germany before World War II – and there are many more examples – to see what the result can be.
Education in Texas no longer represents the hard-fought value in our Constitution of respecting the rights of all individuals, but now primarily promotes the intolerant views of the reactionary faction in control. Perhaps this is where the next revolution should take place.