The New History

Gail Lowe, the chair of the Texas State Board of Education, told The Daily Texan newspaper "I don't see any evidence that people are pursuing any political or personal agendas,". The board, which is made up of 10 Republicans and five Democrats, seem to have concluded that Texas' classrooms have been tainted with a liberal preference. As a result, the board has spent numerous hours hearing from members of the community on subjects such as whether labor activist Chavez and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall deserve space in history textbooks alongside founding fathers like Benjamin Franklin. The issue of whether Christianity deserves more classroom time in the Texas public school systems, and whether Abraham Lincoln deserves so much. Last week, the board voted 7-6 to make some changes, so that the state standards will mandate that lessons include the causes and key organizations and individuals of the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including anti-feminism advocate Schlafly, the Contract with America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association. Discussions ranged from whether President Reagan should get more attention which received a yes, to whether hip-hop should be included as part of lessons on American culture which received a no. President of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis's inaugural address should be studied alongside Abraham Lincoln's was also approved.

Contributers: David Knowles (AOL), Michael Birnbaum (Washington Post)

EAdams: Winston Churchill said "History is written by the Victors" and he was right, what he did not realize is that History is re-written by those with power. The separation of church and state is a policy that America’s founding fathers felt needed to uphold.

"Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind," Thomas Paine writes in The Age of Reason, 1795.
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god," was said by Thomas Jefferson Letter to Peter Carr, 10 August 1787
"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution," said James Madison’s Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments in 1785.

It would be a gross violation of those very principals to add more Judeo-Christian beliefs and bias to a government funded textbook association and educational institution. To disproportionately remove people of color’s contributions to the United States History is also a direct act of negligence on the part of the Textbook commission and could potentially be viewed as an attempt to promote white supremacy.
The significance of language is made very apparent when issues of slavery are brought up. One of the potential alterations of history are to change to Slave Trade that occurred in the Atlantic to calling the process simply the Atlantic Trade Route and removing the word Slave from it’s title. Slavery makes up the vast majority of American History and according the Textbook commission the chapters discussing the subject will have to be shortened to make more room for information on Presidents such as George Bush and Ronald Regan.

My Response: Fuck That...