Texas school curriculum calls slavery "side issue"

[Zaune]

Washington Post

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.”

The killings of nine black parishioners in a South Carolina church last month sparked a broad backlash against the Confederate battle flag , to some a symbol of Southern heritage but to others a divisive sign of slavery and racism.

There is also a call to reexamine a quieter but just as contentious aspect of the Civil War in American society — how the history of the war, so central to our nation’s understanding of itself, is presented in public school classrooms and textbooks.
The Confederate flag on display, from 1938 to today
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Public moments featuring the Confederate flag.

“It’s the obvious question, it seems to me. Not only are we worried about the flags and statues and all that, but what the hell are kids learning?” said Dan Quinn of the Texas Freedom Network, a left-leaning advocacy organization that has been critical of the state’s academic standards in social studies.

If teaching history is how society shows younger generations who they are and where they came from, the Civil War presents unique challenges, especially because of the fundamental differences in the way the cause of the war is perceived 150 years after its last battle.

[Their campaign for student government was a joke, but they’re serious about removing campus Confederate statues at the University of Texas]

Nowhere is the rejection of slavery’s central role more apparent than in Texas, where elected members of the state board of education revised state social studies standards in 2010 to correct for what they said was a liberal slant.

Students in Texas are required to read the speech Jefferson Davis gave when he was inaugurated president of the Confederate States of America, an address that does not mention slavery. But students are not required to read a famous speech by Alexander Stephens, Davis’s vice president, in which he explained that the South’s desire to preserve slavery was the cornerstone of its new government and “the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution.”

Rod Paige, a Republican who served as education secretary under President George W. Bush, was among those who criticized the Texas board for minimizing difficult parts of the nation’s past.

“I’m of the view that the history of slavery and civil rights are dominant elements of our history and have shaped who we are today,” Paige told the board at the time, according to the Texas Tribune . “We may not like our history, but it’s history.”

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[Channel72]

Definitely very sad news.

I recall that the elementary and high school districts I attended (which were not in the South...) had history curricula which had a very thorough segment on racial segregation and Jim Crow laws - and it was always emphasized that the primary reason for the Civil War was abolition of slavery. The Emancipation Proclamation and the events leading to it were basically beat into our young minds.

As far as I know, the curricula in the Northeast still includes these components. So basically what's going to happen here is that half the country is going to grow up learning a different version of history, and many of the black people who actually lived through Jim Crow will probably be horrified to find out what young kinds actually think about what went on in the US just a few generations ago.

[SpottedKitty]

Isn't Texas still the 800lb gorilla of US school textbook purchasing policies?

<headdesk>

[Alyrium Denryle]

Isn't Texas still the 800lb gorilla of US school textbook purchasing policies?

<headdesk>

Yes it is. Which is why their blatant historical revisionism is particularly dangerous. Thankfully, the textbook publishers will only cater to them so much before their authors say "no, fuck you".

[Gandalf]

Thankfully, the textbook publishers will only cater to them so much before their authors say "no, fuck you".

But doesn't that just open up a gap for a less scrupulous publisher?

[Purple]

Isn't Texas still the 800lb gorilla of US school textbook purchasing policies?

<headdesk>

Yes it is. Which is why their blatant historical revisionism is particularly dangerous. Thankfully, the textbook publishers will only cater to them so much before their authors say "no, fuck you".

Why would they do that? Publishers are out to make money. Why would they refuse to make money?

[Alyrium Denryle]

Isn't Texas still the 800lb gorilla of US school textbook purchasing policies?

<headdesk>

Yes it is. Which is why their blatant historical revisionism is particularly dangerous. Thankfully, the textbook publishers will only cater to them so much before their authors say "no, fuck you".

Why would they do that? Publishers are out to make money. Why would they refuse to make money?

The authors, not the publishers. The authors are academics who often have some amount of self-respect. There have, IIRC, been instances of authors...telling the TX standards to fuck off. Particularly in biology textbooks.

[Ralin]

The authors, not the publishers. The authors are academics who often have some amount of self-respect. There have, IIRC, been instances of authors...telling the TX standards to fuck off. Particularly in biology textbooks.

There are a whole lot more academics where they came from, and given that we're talking about people who went to grad school in the humanities it's a safe bet that many of them will be both hard up for money and used to accepting humiliating work. Especially since writing a textbook is like the least prestigious thing you can do in history

[Gandalf]

The authors, not the publishers. The authors are academics who often have some amount of self-respect. There have, IIRC, been instances of authors...telling the TX standards to fuck off. Particularly in biology textbooks.

So then less scrupulous authors are hired?

[Vaporous]

An extract from the Texas Declaration of Secession, with emphasis mine on the especially pertinent bits.

Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She 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. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association. But what has been the course of the government of the United States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection with them?
....
The States of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa, by solemn legislative enactments, have deliberately, directly or indirectly violated the 3rd clause of the 2nd section of the 4th article [the fugitive slave clause] of the federal constitution, and laws passed in pursuance thereof; thereby annulling a material provision of the compact, designed by its framers to perpetuate the amity between the members of the confederacy and to secure the rights of the slave-holding States in their domestic institutions-- a provision founded in justice and wisdom, and without the enforcement of which the compact fails to accomplish the object of its creation. Some of those States have imposed high fines and degrading penalties upon any of their citizens or officers who may carry out in good faith that provision of the compact, or the federal laws enacted in accordance therewith.
...
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. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.
...
For years past this abolition organization has been actively sowing the seeds of discord through the Union, and has rendered the federal congress the arena for spreading firebrands and hatred between the slave-holding and non-slave-holding States.

By consolidating their strength, they have placed the slave-holding States in a hopeless minority in the federal congress, and rendered representation of no avail in protecting Southern rights against their exactions and encroachments.

They have proclaimed, and at the ballot box sustained, the revolutionary doctrine that there is a 'higher law' than the constitution and laws of our Federal Union, and virtually that they will disregard their oaths and trample upon our rights.

They have for years past encouraged and sustained lawless organizations to steal our slaves and prevent their recapture, and have repeatedly murdered Southern citizens while lawfully seeking their rendition.

They have invaded Southern soil and murdered unoffending citizens, and through the press their leading men and a fanatical pulpit have bestowed praise upon the actors and assassins in these crimes, while the governors of several of their States have refused to deliver parties implicated and indicted for participation in such offenses, upon the legal demands of the States aggrieved.

They have, through the mails and hired emissaries, sent seditious pamphlets and papers among us to stir up servile insurrection and bring blood and carnage to our firesides.

They have sent hired emissaries among us to burn our towns and distribute arms and poison to our slaves for the same purpose.

They have impoverished the slave-holding States by unequal and partial legislation, thereby enriching themselves by draining our substance.

They have refused to vote appropriations for protecting Texas against ruthless savages, for the sole reason that she is a slave-holding State.

And, finally, by the combined sectional vote of the seventeen non-slave-holding States, they have elected as president and vice-president of the whole confederacy two men whose chief claims to such high positions are their approval of these long continued wrongs, and their pledges to continue them to the final consummation of these schemes for the ruin of the slave-holding States.

In view of these and many other facts, it is meet that our own views should be distinctly proclaimed.

We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.

That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states.

By the secession of six of the slave-holding States, and the certainty that others will speedily do likewise, Texas has no alternative but to remain in an isolated connection with the North, or unite her destinies with the South.

For these and other reasons, solemnly asserting that the federal constitution has been violated and virtually abrogated by the several States named, seeing that the federal government is now passing under the control of our enemies to be diverted from the exalted objects of its creation to those of oppression and wrong, and realizing that our own State can no longer look for protection, but to God and her own sons-- We the delegates of the people of Texas, in Convention assembled, have passed an ordinance dissolving all political connection with the government of the United States of America and the people thereof and confidently appeal to the intelligence and patriotism of the freemen of Texas to ratify the same at the ballot box, on the 23rd day of the present month.

Adopted in Convention on the 2nd day of Feby, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one and of the independence of Texas the twenty-fifth.

A side issue.

[Steve]

This is even older than you imagine. Dismissing the slavery elements of the war goes back to the war itself, and the line that Confederate envoys in Europe were ordered to take when promoting the Southern cause. They were aided in the early years by the Union, which also insisted the war was not over slavery, primarily because the Union was afraid that more conservative European governments would show a backlash against the Union on the presumption that it was inciting servile insurrection and further threatening the globally-significant cotton trade.

Of course, as it turned out, the South was wrong to presume foreign recognition on the sole basis of the importance of cotton (one Texas Senator had even declared that "even Queen Victoria must bow to King Cotton") and even their supporters overseas, like Liverpool merchant James Spence, proved antislavery (Spence argued that the South would, of course, embark on gradual emancipation after the war. He was eventually fired as his writings proved too controversial in the South).

[LaCroix]

I know there is probably some complicated reason why there is no Federal oversight over what goes into school books, and maybe no way to order school board to not sanctify such blatant lies, but...

Why isn't anybody suing to shit out of them for printing that bullshit? It should be trivially easy to call for a lawsuit, present the historical documents that say the opposite, and force the school board to issue corrected versions of the books.

[Purple]

The authors, not the publishers. The authors are academics who often have some amount of self-respect. There have, IIRC, been instances of authors...telling the TX standards to fuck off. Particularly in biology textbooks.

That makes a lot more sense. The way you worded it initially sounded like there would be willing authors but the publishers would for some bizarre reason refuse to publish them.

[Zaune]

You're not entirely wrong, actually. Publishing houses have a professional reputation to uphold as well, and I would be surprised if at least some academic publishers hadn't decided to pass on this contract entirely.

[Elheru Aran]

Yeah, if it becomes known that an academic publisher is going to pander to fuckwittery, less stupid states are going to tell it to fuck off and look for their books elsewhere. They do have to maintain a reasonable status quo. California is very influential in this field, as I recall-- Texas isn't the only state that matters here.

[Purple]

Yeah, if it becomes known that an academic publisher is going to pander to fuckwittery, less stupid states are going to tell it to fuck off and look for their books elsewhere. They do have to maintain a reasonable status quo. California is very influential in this field, as I recall-- Texas isn't the only state that matters here.

That's even more confusing to me. Why should a state care who else is buying books from that particular publisher? Surely things such as print quality, paper quality, consistency, you know technical stuff that determines if you are getting your moneys worth are more important. Or at least they bloody should be. I mean, it takes a special kind of idiot to settle for an inferior product just because the superior one offends him.

[Grumman]

Yeah, if it becomes known that an academic publisher is going to pander to fuckwittery, less stupid states are going to tell it to fuck off and look for their books elsewhere. They do have to maintain a reasonable status quo. California is very influential in this field, as I recall-- Texas isn't the only state that matters here.

That's even more confusing to me. Why should a state care who else is buying books from that particular publisher? Surely things such as print quality, paper quality, consistency, you know technical stuff that determines if you are getting your moneys worth are more important. Or at least they bloody should be. I mean, it takes a special kind of idiot to settle for an inferior product just because the superior one offends him.

It's not who buys it but why that is important. If Texas buys textbooks from John Smith Publishing because they produce good textbooks, great! But if Texas buys textbooks from John Smith Publishing because they are either willing to sell their soul and lie to Texan students because the State of Texas pays them to, or because they actually believe this crap, that raises important questions about whether they can be trusted to provide a quality product.

[Elheru Aran]

Yeah, if it becomes known that an academic publisher is going to pander to fuckwittery, less stupid states are going to tell it to fuck off and look for their books elsewhere. They do have to maintain a reasonable status quo. California is very influential in this field, as I recall-- Texas isn't the only state that matters here.

That's even more confusing to me. Why should a state care who else is buying books from that particular publisher? Surely things such as print quality, paper quality, consistency, you know technical stuff that determines if you are getting your moneys worth are more important. Or at least they bloody should be. I mean, it takes a special kind of idiot to settle for an inferior product just because the superior one offends him.

Money.

No, seriously. Textbook procurement is SRS BSNS. Typically it costs a lot of money to have a new edition of textbooks printed up, okay? And states order them in big wads every so often. But if each state orders a different textbook, it's going to cost a lot more. So typically they just follow the leader, which generally happens to be the most populous states-- that's California, Texas and Florida, in order for the top three (though New York is pretty close to Florida). Population (roughly) corresponds to schools, because when you have a lot of people, you have a lot of kids-- that doesn't quite work for Florida as they have more senior citizens, though, who are often immigrants from out of state, which leaves Texas and California. That means that these states are going to be ordering the most textbooks.

As such, the textbook companies will be producing massive wads of just one or two editions, and it's cheaper for all the other states to just order a few lots of those editions rather than request that they write a new edition for that individual state. Textbooks are *really* expensive because they take a lot of time to fact-check, collate authors' work, edit, and all that fun stuff, so if Texas says it doesn't want this or that in its textbooks, the companies will be all 'yes sir no sir' and drop it in order to make sales in Texas. The other states just follow along because they don't have the money to throw around that Texas does.

This article is fairly informational: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archive ... oks-on-us/

[Irbis]

I know there is probably some complicated reason why there is no Federal oversight over what goes into school books

Because that's communism? And if you tried to enforce it, you'd have a lot of people scared by 'evul gubmint' propaganda home-schooling kids?

Why isn't anybody suing to shit out of them for printing that bullshit? It should be trivially easy to call for a lawsuit, present the historical documents that say the opposite, and force the school board to issue corrected versions of the books.

Okay, sue for what, exactly? Even in such suit-happy country as USA, they need to break some law before you can initiate lawsuit. And, given how exotic and mind boggling interpretations of freedom of speech laws in USA sometimes are, I am sure you can drag textbook content under one of them if you pay lawyers good enough.

[Borgholio]

Okay, sue for what, exactly?

False advertising possibly. One should expect a history book to be accurate. If it deliberately re-writes history to be less accurate, then it should not be sold as a history book.

[Purple]

Okay, sue for what, exactly?

False advertising possibly. One should expect a history book to be accurate. If it deliberately re-writes history to be less accurate, then it should not be sold as a history book.

It's not really a "history' textbook though. It's a textbook meant for the curriculum of the subject as prescribed by the state what ever that subject might be.

[Borgholio]

That's splitting a very fine line. It's like saying that a geology textbook should be edited to remove all references to the age of the Earth being more than 6,000 years...and still calling it a geology textbook.

[Purple]

That's splitting a very fine line. It's like saying that a geology textbook should be edited to remove all references to the age of the Earth being more than 6,000 years...and still calling it a geology textbook.

Yes, absolutely. Textbooks are not supposed to be reference books you use to get facts about the world. They are educational aids meant to help a student learn the content of the subject they are written for. The only way a textbook can be wrong is if it does not correspond with the curriculum it is designed to support.

[Elheru Aran]

That's splitting a very fine line. It's like saying that a geology textbook should be edited to remove all references to the age of the Earth being more than 6,000 years...and still calling it a geology textbook.

Yes, absolutely. Textbooks are not supposed to be reference books you use to get facts about the world. They are educational aids meant to help a student learn the content of the subject they are written for. The only way a textbook can be wrong is if it does not correspond with the curriculum it is designed to support.

...textbooks *do* serve as references, even if they aren't intended to be such. They're quite often the only reference books students have to hand at home. And if the curriculum espouses an objectively wrong position, misrepresents facts or is simply inaccurate, then it's not serving the students by ensuring that their education is at least based upon fact. If the textbook follows such a curriculum, then it is wrong, regardless of correspondence or lack thereof.

Seriously. If a curriculum said that pi equals 3, and the textbook reflects that, then that's not going to help the student, because pi will never equal 3. The content of textbooks have to be factual (literature notwithstanding).

[Purple]

...textbooks *do* serve as references, even if they aren't intended to be such. They're quite often the only reference books students have to hand at home.

You know very well what I meant so don't change the context. Yes, they are the one and only reference but exclusively for that subject. They are not supposed to be a reference for you when you actually go and do something else in life.

And if the curriculum espouses an objectively wrong position, misrepresents facts or is simply inaccurate, then it's not serving the students by ensuring that their education is at least based upon fact.

I absolutely agree. But that was not the point of the discussion here.

If the textbook follows such a curriculum, then it is wrong, regardless of correspondence or lack thereof.

No it is not. The textbook has as its one and only purpose for existence to help the student pass what ever class he is taking. If a textbook fails to follow the curriculum than it is going to fail at that one and only duty. And thus it is useless. In fact it is worse than useless as it is an expensive waste of paper, ink and other resources.

Seriously. If a curriculum said that pi equals 3, and the textbook reflects that, then that's not going to help the student, because pi will never equal 3.

Again, no argument there. But at the same time if the state mandates that students have to say pi = 3 in order to pass than a textbook that does not give them that information is at best useless and at worst actively holding them back.

If your textbooks do not correspond with the curriculum than and only than are they just as bad as a car that steers right when you turn the wheel left. And like the driver that plows into a tree if the curriculum it self does not correspond with reality that is not a fault of the textbook but of the curriculum. You can not blame something for being up to standards if it is the standards that are bad.