Saturday, January 16, 2010

History teaching standards tilt to right for Texas high schoolers


Go read the whole article, it's just horrific.

AUSTIN – Texas high school students will have to learn about leading conservative groups from the 1980s and 1990s – but not about liberal or minority-rights groups – under U.S. history standards tentatively adopted by a politically divided State Board of Education on Friday.

The Republican majority on the board also gave a thumbs down to requiring history teachers and textbooks to provide coverage on the late Sen. Edward Kennedy and new Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, as well as leading Hispanic civil-rights groups such as LULAC and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund.

Led by the board's social-conservative bloc, Republicans left Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton and former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the nation's first black justice, on the list of important figures that will have to be covered in history classes.

But they also added, on a 7-6 vote, Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly, the National Rifle Association, Moral Majority and the Heritage Foundation to the list of persons and groups that students will learn about.

How's this for a kick in the pants?
McCarthyism: Social conservatives pushed through an amendment that will require a more positive portrayal of Joseph McCarthy and his accusations that the U.S. government in the 1950s was infiltrated by Communists. McCarthy's tactics have been discredited by most historians.

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