[RSCT] "Does the Texas Board of Education need a history test?"

[Rick Kisséll]

Does state board need a history test?

by Gary Scharrer
San Antonio, TX Express-News
3/9/10

AUSTIN — This is what can happen when you ignore
experts, don't fully know your history, and are responsible for
approving textbooks for Texas schoolchildren, according to critics
worried about the State Board of Education:
You might delete
someone recognized by Ladies' Home Journal as one of the 100 Most
Important Women of the 20th Century — citing her membership in a
socialist organization.
You could ban a popular children's author
from textbooks because his name is the same as a professor who wrote
favorably about Marxism.
You might even vote to teach youngsters
that U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy's 1950s crusade to smear suspected
Communists was vindicated by later research on Soviet spying.
The
State Board of Education will meet again this week before taking final
action in May on new social studies curriculum standards that will
influence history and government textbooks for 4.7 million public
school students.
In January, board members ignored the
recommendation of experts it appointed to help draft the new social
studies standards when it rejected Dolores Huerta as required reading
for third-graders. Huerta co-founded the United Farm Workers of America
with César Chávez and is a former regent for the University of
California System. Seven schools are named after her, including Dolores
Huerta Elementary School in Fort Worth.
Geraldine “Tincy” Miller,
R-Dallas, encouraged colleagues to yank Huerta because “she was a
prominent member of the Democratic Socialists of America Party” and,
therefore, did not “exemplify good citizenship” like Helen Keller.
Helen Keller joined the Socialist Party in 1909 and advocated for socialism the rest of her life.
Without discussion, the board voted 7-4 to remove Huerta.
“This
goes to the fundamental issue. The board is not made up of educators,
let alone historians,” said Julio Noboa, a history professor at the
University of Texas at El Paso, who was one of the board's socials
studies experts offering recommendations. “It really makes them look
stupid.”
Miller spokeswoman Alexis DeLee said the veteran Dallas
board member “thought the story of a child (Keller) who overcame
tremendous hardship through the help of her teacher would resonate with
small children, especially children with disabilities.”
“She was
not referring to (Keller's) political views as an adult,” DeLee said.
“She did not know she grew up to become a socialist.”
DeLee noted Huerta remains in the high school history curriculum.
Huerta is now president of the non-profit Dolores Huerta Foundation, which works on issues important to low-income communities.
“I
don't know what this silliness is all about,” Huerta said of the
board's action. “Probably the real reason is not because I'm a member
of the Socialist Democrats of America organization but the fact that I
am a registered and voting Democrat. And I've also been an advocate for
farmworkers.”
She said her work is what's important — not herself.
The
board tentatively decided to add W.E.B. DuBois, who co-founded the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, to the
reading list for elementary school students.
“I was just stunned
that I never knew who this man was. He is a true, great American,”
board member Don McLeroy, R-Bryan, told his colleagues.
DuBois
spent his final years in Ghana, having broken with the NAACP. He joined
the Communist Party and pronounced capitalism “doomed to
self-destruction.”
Some of the board's votes were embarrassing,
McLeroy acknowledged. But, he said, the process can catch mistakes
before final action in May.
“Those things will be corrected,”
McLeroy said, adding he believes Huerta belongs in the curriculum —
along with DuBois, whose communist beliefs did not undermine his status
as “an influential leader in helping establish civil rights.”
McLeroy
also influenced the board to change a section on McCarthyism so
students learn “the Venona Papers confirmed suspicions of communist
infiltration in U.S. government.” In a memo to curriculum writers last
fall, McLeroy said McCarthy “was basically vindicated” by the archival
documentation.
McCarthy was right about some of the bigger
issues, but “virtually none of the people that McCarthy claimed or
alleged were Soviet agents turn up” in the new research, Venona scholar
and Emory University history professor Harvey Klehr has said.
“The new information from Russian and American archives does not vindicate McCarthy. He remains a demagogue,” Klehr has said.
Some of the 100-plus board appointees say the process is frustrating.
Judy
Brodigan, immediate past president of the Texas Council for the Social
Studies, said she pushed to have Revolutionary War hero Nathan Hale
removed from the first-grade curriculum as inappropriate for that age.
“How
do you talk about someone who is hung for being a patriot to a
6-year-old? They can't write, so they draw pictures of a man hanging
from a noose,” she said.
The experts moved Hale to the fifth grade, but state board members returned him to first grade.
Pat Hardy, R-Fort Worth, encouraged the board to pull Bill Martin Jr. out of the standards.The
board apparently confused the author of “Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do
You See?” with a different Bill Martin who wrote about “Ethical
Marxism.”
It's a process that relies only sporadically on
expertise, said Keith Erekson, director of the University of Texas at
El Paso Center for History Teaching & Learning.
“Experienced
review committees, invited experts and the public provide their
feedback early in the process before the State Board of Education
closes the door in order to do what they want to do,” Erekson said.
“That would be like hiring top-rate engineers to design a car only to
rush it off the assembly line without inspecting the final accelerator
pedal.”

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/education/87084042.html














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