Listen live 
High Plains News
Texas social studies standards under review
Mark Haslett, High Plains Public Radio
Sept. 17, 2009
In Texas, the struggle over public school curricula has shifted from science to social studies. Every year, the State Board of Education reviews an academic subject and makes changes to its standards. This year, the subject under review is Social Stuidies. The standards in question have two purposes. They serve as guidelines for teachers in the classroom as well as for textbook publishers. The Reverend Peter Marshall is one of six members of a review panel selected by the state to provide recommendations. He says that the standards in question have influence even outside of Texas.
Marshall: This is a very important piece of work, for the reason that Texas is the second-largest purchaser of school textbooks in the nation- California being first. So the textbook publishers are going to pay a great deal of time and attention noting what the Texas standards are.
Marshall is a Presbyterian Minster from Massachusetts who has co-written three history books used widely in home schooling. He's one of two panelists who have written materials for home schooling. The other is David Barton, a Texas-based minister and activist who founded the organization WallBuliders. The four other panelists are academics from Texas A&M, Texas State, Texas Women's University and American University in Washington, D.C. Reverend Marshall feels that, in general, public school social studies and history texts are biased toward a secular worldview.
Marshall: My primary concern, in all of this, was that the guidelines as the guidelines as they currently stand refelct the overwhelmingly secular view of American history which has come to predominate- frankly, at the expense of the truth.
In the guidelines for history classes, there's debate over which historical figures should receive attention. Marshall's recommendations for the history component single out Anne Hutchinson, Thurgood Marshall and Cesar Chavez as being featured too prominently in the proposed new standards. Regarding Hutchinson, Reverend Marshall objects to her inclusion in a list of significant colonial leaders.
Marshall: She's not a real good inclusion in a list of those eminent leaders like Roger Williams and John Winthrop and William Bradford and so forth. Her contribution mainly was negative in the sense that she was exiled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for creating trouble. I don't think that's a positive example, because, you know, she was disciplined for creating trouble the church in Boston. And she refused to take any, what we would call church discipline or pastoral correction, and she ended up getting herself tossed out of the colony.
Reverend Marshall is less critical in his comments about Thurgood Marshall and Cesar Chavez. He describes those figures as providing positive contributions, but that the standards he reviewed placed them on equal footing with people of much greater historical impact.
Marshall: If we're going to list examples of movers and shakers in American History, you want to come up with an A-list. You want to talk about George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, et ectera, et cetera.
Educators from all levels of instruction have their eyes on the curriculum debate. Janice Sumler-Edmond teaches history and Constitutional law at Huston-Tillotson University in Austin. Sumler-Edmond hopes that Anne Hutchinson makes the final cut. She says Hutchinson's story is an important one in the history of women and religious freedom in the United States.
Sumler-Edmond: She was a woman who was not supposed to have authority or power, who was just asking to be able to speak her mind and to communicate with God in her own way and share her knowledge, her vast knowledge of the Bible with others. And they saw that as a threat to their society.
The Texas Education Agency Committee on Instruction meets today. Both live streaming and archived video of the meeting are available online at Texas Admin dot com. This is Mark Haslett, HPPR News.
© Copyright 2012, hppr
(2009-09-17)
Listen Now:
AMARILLO, TEXAS
(hppr) -
Texas social studies standards under review
null
Mark Haslett, High Plains Public Radio
Sept. 17, 2009
In Texas, the struggle over public school curricula has shifted from science to social studies. Every year, the State Board of Education reviews an academic subject and makes changes to its standards. This year, the subject under review is Social Stuidies. The standards in question have two purposes. They serve as guidelines for teachers in the classroom as well as for textbook publishers. The Reverend Peter Marshall is one of six members of a review panel selected by the state to provide recommendations. He says that the standards in question have influence even outside of Texas.
Marshall: This is a very important piece of work, for the reason that Texas is the second-largest purchaser of school textbooks in the nation- California being first. So the textbook publishers are going to pay a great deal of time and attention noting what the Texas standards are.
Marshall is a Presbyterian Minster from Massachusetts who has co-written three history books used widely in home schooling. He's one of two panelists who have written materials for home schooling. The other is David Barton, a Texas-based minister and activist who founded the organization WallBuliders. The four other panelists are academics from Texas A&M, Texas State, Texas Women's University and American University in Washington, D.C. Reverend Marshall feels that, in general, public school social studies and history texts are biased toward a secular worldview.
Marshall: My primary concern, in all of this, was that the guidelines as the guidelines as they currently stand refelct the overwhelmingly secular view of American history which has come to predominate- frankly, at the expense of the truth.
In the guidelines for history classes, there's debate over which historical figures should receive attention. Marshall's recommendations for the history component single out Anne Hutchinson, Thurgood Marshall and Cesar Chavez as being featured too prominently in the proposed new standards. Regarding Hutchinson, Reverend Marshall objects to her inclusion in a list of significant colonial leaders.
Marshall: She's not a real good inclusion in a list of those eminent leaders like Roger Williams and John Winthrop and William Bradford and so forth. Her contribution mainly was negative in the sense that she was exiled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for creating trouble. I don't think that's a positive example, because, you know, she was disciplined for creating trouble the church in Boston. And she refused to take any, what we would call church discipline or pastoral correction, and she ended up getting herself tossed out of the colony.
Reverend Marshall is less critical in his comments about Thurgood Marshall and Cesar Chavez. He describes those figures as providing positive contributions, but that the standards he reviewed placed them on equal footing with people of much greater historical impact.
Marshall: If we're going to list examples of movers and shakers in American History, you want to come up with an A-list. You want to talk about George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, et ectera, et cetera.
Educators from all levels of instruction have their eyes on the curriculum debate. Janice Sumler-Edmond teaches history and Constitutional law at Huston-Tillotson University in Austin. Sumler-Edmond hopes that Anne Hutchinson makes the final cut. She says Hutchinson's story is an important one in the history of women and religious freedom in the United States.
Sumler-Edmond: She was a woman who was not supposed to have authority or power, who was just asking to be able to speak her mind and to communicate with God in her own way and share her knowledge, her vast knowledge of the Bible with others. And they saw that as a threat to their society.
The Texas Education Agency Committee on Instruction meets today. Both live streaming and archived video of the meeting are available online at Texas Admin dot com. This is Mark Haslett, HPPR News.
© Copyright 2012, hppr
