Don’t mess with Texas, once read the state tourism slogan. It didn’t say anything about messin’ with Texas’s history, which Republicans want to rewrite to literally whitewash it, the New York Times reports.
In a state where students are forced to pledge allegiance to the state–schools require students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the State Flag which states, “Honor the Texas flag; I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God, one and indivisible”–teachers will now be forced to teach a propagandistic history of the state, eliminating its history of slavery, Native American genocide, Jim Crow laws and anti-Mexican discrimination–and perhaps even elevating secessionists to the level of heroes.
If the laws before the Texas legislature vowing to gloss over the true history of Texas passes, the impact would be felt far beyond the state: the Texas state school board is the largest single purchases of textbooks in the nation, and textbook publishers often write books they know will be purchased by Texas, thereby scrubbing information found in classrooms around the country.
Texas Republicans also want to bar teaching critical thinking about things like race relations and social justice movements like women’s suffrage, threatening to cut school funding for any school that allows such lesson plans.
“The idea that history is a project that’s decided in the political arena is a recipe for disaster,” said Raul Ramos, a historian at the University of Houston who specializes in the American West.
Historians like Ramos point out that the history of Texas is rife with tragic events and decisions. When Texas won its independence from Mexico in 1835, and when it wrote its first state constitution upon joining the United States in 1836, both constitutions explicitly allowed slavery.
The new rules would not allow teaching those parts of the constitutions.
“How do you have freedom when you have slavery?” Mr. Ramos asked. “1836 values would have enslaved African-Americans in perpetuity.”
Many of proposed laws would essentially mandate that lesson plans in various subjects–not just history, but also others like English, literature and social studies–could be reviewed and approved by a state auditor to determine if they meet government approval for state propaganda.