Texas Insider

Part II of III piece series outlines tactics to re-write Texas history

By Bill Ames

In Part I of this article, published yesterday, I exposed the liberal agenda of education activists to rewrite American history, downplaying the story of the most successful experiment in freedom and liberty in the world’s history. Their goal is to replace that story with one in which even America’s greatest achievements are told in the context of negativism and multicultural oppression and exploitation.The agenda was best exposed in testimony, covered in Part I yesterday by Brooke Terry, education policy analyst for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, on March 26, 2009.

Part II begins with actions taken in response by the State Board of Education (SBOE).

The first action of the SBOE was to cancel the scheduled April meeting of the writing teams, giving the Board time to determine what went wrong.  SBOE chairman Don McLeroy assigned the task to the SBOE’s Committee on Instruction (COI), chaired by Barbara Cargill.  The Committee on Instruction met April 22nd, and included public hearings.  I testified, recommending: 

• Throw out the ideologically-biased TCSS-based U. S. history document; 
• Develop guidelines that will ensure standards that are made up of fact-based academic education;
• Repopulate the TEKS writing teams with a cross section of Texans as required by the Texas Education Code; and
• Use experts to create direction to the new teams to create standards that are based upon an unbiased, fact-based view of social studies.

My recommendations were considered but not adopted.  Rather than balancing the writing teams and establishing boundaries on standards content, the Committee on Instruction focused mostly on the TEA process that creates the standards.

The Committee on Instruction (COI), chaired by Barbara Cargill, revised steps for the standards writing process, specifically stating that the previous TEKS guidelines were to be the “starting point” of all discussions.  While this direction was appreciated and vastly improved the process, in reality it had little effect on the content of next writing teams’ work session on July 28-31.

While some of the COI’s direction was followed, its spirit of the elected SBOE member’s instruction was largely ignored.  

For example, the Board’s asked the writing teams to emphasize the Founding Documents, as called out in the Texas Education Code to be covered during the Texas legislature-mandated “Freedom Week”.  This request was met by the writing teams with bland inclusion of Freedom Week content in the introduction to the standards, rather than in the mainline standards, thus eliminating any pesky requirement to test students on the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, which by the way includes those “controversial” unalienable rights endowed by our Creator.

Also, the COI required that the current standards, rather than the TCSS revisions, were to be the starting point for subsequent work sessions.  But my writing team “satisfied” this requirement by simply projecting the current standard on the wall, then doing a quick clerical update to get to the TCSS February output, and proceeded from there.

The elected Texas State Board of Education should, by now, be aware of these actions.

The July meeting, in some ways, was even more bizarre than the February meeting.  COI direction had opened up the process if not the content, so opposing views, for the first time, could be documented instead of just being ignored. 

Some examples of my team’s work follow:

In the section covering significant military leaders of WWII, Generals Omar Bradley and George Patton were removed, replaced by Oveta Culp Hobby and black Colonel Benjamin O. Davis.  It was a glaring example of significant history being compromised in favor of multicultural diversity.  The only justification given was that Hobby and Davis were “firsts”. 

But in later discussions, “firsts” Orville and Wilbur Wright (powered flight), and Neil Armstrong (moonwalk) were rejected by my writing team.  “Firsts”, in their context, means “multicultural firsts” only.

In the section covering “changing demographic patterns caused by immigration”, my writing team refused to acknowledge the changing demographic patterns created by 12-20 million illegal aliens in the U. S.

One example of excessive negativity centers on the annexation/acquisitions of Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines in 1898.  The current standards define these as “U. S. expansionism”, leading to a historical focus, as believed by Theodore Roosevelt, on growth, progress, commerce, and mutually beneficial self-interests shared   with the territories. 

Today, both the U. S. and the territories are better off as a result.  A majority on my writing team disputed this, however, changing “U. S. expansionism” to “U. S. imperialism”, and these educators made it abundantly clear that this issue was not about shared opportunity, but rather about American oppression of indigenous natives.

Why all the negativism?

In a TV interview aired September 4, Chester Finn, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a nationally recognized education-focused think tank said, “Every group wants to impose its will.  So if you are a left wing, Marxist group you want them (students) to grow up thinking that America is an oppressive capitalist plot to undo the working class.”

During the coming months, the left will claim that conservatives are trying to “whitewash” history

They are wrong.  We are trying to balance their well-established and overwhelming negative bias about America. 

In an attempt to balance the negatives, I insisted on creating a standards line item covering entrepreneurs who had achieved the American Dream.  Included are Bill Gates, Sam Walton, and Oprah Winfrey.  But one team member attempted to even paint a negative picture of the American Dream … by proposing to add investment swindler Bernie Madoff’s name to the list.  Her objective?  Author Thomas Sowell nailed it when he wrote in his The Quest for Cosmic Justice, “to create a world in which successful people are to be considered a grievance rather than as role models”.

Liberal newspapers in Texas have roundly criticized another of my small successes; that of getting a few conservatives mentioned as part of the conservative resurgence during the 1980s and early 1990s.  However, my writing team allowed only three names on the list:  Newt Gingrich, Phyllis Schlafly, and the Moral Majority.  These names were only allowed following the “such as” qualifier, meaning that teachers did not have to use the names, and students would not be tested on them.  My proposal to include additional conservative groups and individuals such as the National Rifle Association and Rush Limbaugh was refused. 

One member commented, in later discussion, that negatives about Ronald Reagan should be added.

The few conservative names, rather than “one-sided, right wing ideology”, as trumpeted by Texas representative Trey Martinez (D-San Antonio), in the San Antonio Express-News, are actually just a small token when compared to the preponderance of numerous  leftist movements covered in the standards:  The Populists, the Progressives, the New Deal, and the Great Society.

Further, the section about civil rights contains no less than six entries (versus 3 conservatives), and the six individuals and groups are preceded by the word “including”, meaning that each must be covered in the classroom, and students can look forward to being tested on each of them.

The six civil rights items include such fringe groups as:  the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the American Indian Movement (AIM), and the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF). 

The group would not agree to add the point that higher percentages of Republicans than Democrats in Congress voted for the various civil rights bills of the 1960s.  So much for Rep. Martinez’ allegation of “one-sided right wing ideology”.

Bizarre anecdotes from other writing teams demonstrate additional bias. 

In one group, a member who suggested the inclusion of Presidents Roosevelt and Eisenhower was rebuked for proposing the inclusion of “dead white guys”.

Another team, searching for minority entrepreneurs to possibly include in the standards, but not sure whether Wally Amos, founder of Famous Amos Cookies was black or white, googled “Famous Amos”.  If Wally is black, he makes the candidate list.  If white, well, sorry, Wally. 

Multiculturalism, in these standards, trumps historical significance.

And the grade 6 social studies writing team even removed Christmas from a list of religious holidays.

Tomorrow, in Part III of this series, I will reveal what happens to curriculum and specifically history textbooks, when they are based upon flawed standards.  Part III will also provides guidance for Texas citizens, with actions to take to ensure that the final social studies standards teach significant history to our youth, and also teach that America is a place of which our youth can be proud.

This year, teams of volunteers are working in Austin to review/rewrite social studies academic standards for Texas public schools.  Bill Ames is a member of one of these teams, the U. S. History writing team.  He gained significant insight into how standards flaws translate into unacceptable curriculum as a voluntary textbook reviewer during the 2002 social studies textbook review process, negotiating some 100 changes to two textbooks.