How Texas Teaches History

How Texas Teaches History

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/22/opinion/how-texas-teaches-history.html?action=...

"Lies my Teacher Told Me", though published some years ago, had pertinent additional information about the whitewash covering slavery. At the time that book was written, the Texas Board of Education was the largest purchaser of Textbooks for high schools in the USA. If a textbook writer(s) wished for the maximum number of sales, it was best not to annoy Texas sensibilities. Also, the Boards of other states often took advantage of economies of scale by buying Texas approved books and thus buying into the larger print runs. Especially southern states who knew a Texas-approved book was already attuned to "Southern" sensibilities.
Does this still hold? Sadly, probably.

With printed text books provided to students it almost certainly continues. However I have been seeing some history textbooks for the Common Core that take advantage of the resources of the internet and, honestly, only the teacher needs a copy of the book. The students reading can be accessed online, read there or printed out for the students. Engaging with History in the Classroom: The Civil Rights Movement is one such book that I had the opportunity to review. It presents facts and leads the students to develop critical thinking skills by analyzing the information. The far right will hate it.

The problem is that good teachers will seek out accurate information and material; average teachers will default to the textbook as presented. And there is pressure to not 'rock the boat' or 'teach beyond the book'. New teachers are especially at risk to such pressure.

>4 BruceCoulson: This. Even the fabulous teachers often will not go beyond anymore, because these days it's all off to the principal with Ohnoes you have offended my sensibilities by teaching my child this rubbish about XYZ!! How very dare you!! and then the school board cans them, or at the least they get suspended/written-up with a massive warning never to do it again. While the shitty teachers never have to worry about that and stick around forever because they just don't bother, for any number of reasons.

>5 .Monkey.: That is more true then most people would suspect. A few years ago, when I was finishing my history degree circling back and finally taking American History 102, the professor was just talking about what the class would NOT get to cover as soon as she mentioned Roe V Wade one male 20 something student jumped up and walked out saying he did not have to listed to that. It was an evening class half older and half traditional students, everyone looked surprised because all she had said was the name of the court case. She was a good teacher, I had already taken an upper level class on African American history with her. He came back to class a few times and continued to have words with her about RvW. After he dropped the class she had to miss a class meeting to answer charges he had made about her. I don't know if she chose to leave Miami or if they did not renew her contract but I never saw her name on the class list after that semester.

YEP, just like that. Anything that even remotely "challenges" some asshat's beliefs, they go storming off making asinine charges, and even if they have a good boss who listens & believes them and thinks the accuser is a twit and doesn't technically punish them, they are still forced to stop doing whatever it was that upset the person, because heaven forbid more charges be brought forth about the situation. So then they are forced to stop reading that book or bringing up that event in history or, whatever. And it's bullshit. :|

Thus we are self-censored and our lives diminished by having to deal with the massively uninformed. This is a problem for front line educators and a great many people will never have an interesting classroom discussion because of it. Sometimes I wish that parent-teacher nights would also feature a shaming corral to confine parents who are determined to damage the education of their child's classmates.....