Don’t Let Texas Rewrite History

If you thought that decisions made by the Texas State Board of Education don’t affect you, think again.

Led by right-wing ideologues, the Texas board recently gave preliminary approval to a plan that would radically change what children across the country learn in history class.

The ultra-conservative majority on the board — many of whom are explicitly anti-science and believe that the United States is a “Christian nation” — took the curricula proposed by teachers and made over a hundred changes, questioning the separation between church and state and diminishing the role of women and minorities.

But it gets worse. Since Texas is one of the largest textbook markets in the country, material written to cater to the Texas curricula will find its way into textbooks across the country unless textbook publishers take a stand.

We can’t allow a small group of extreme ideologues on the Texas State Board of Education to re-write history. Click here to tell textbook publishers to stand up to Texas extremists.

Children who use textbooks conforming to the new standards will not learn anything about the political philosophy of Thomas Jefferson or his thoughts on the separation of church and state. When they learn about the Civil War, they’ll have to study Jefferson Davis’ inaugural address alongside Abraham Lincoln’s. And when they study the civil rights movement they’ll have to learn about the “unintended consequences” of affirmative action and Title IX.

In a particularly glaring rewriting of history, when reading about Joe McCarthy students will be told that he was right all along about communist infiltration into the U.S. government.

This is outrageous. We will have failed our children and imperiled our future if we cannot teach accurate history. We can’t let far-right ideologues co-opt our educational system.

Click here to tell the textbook publishers: Don’t let Texas rewrite history.

Thank you for standing up for the American educational system.

– The Change.org Team in partnership with CREDO Action

The job of textbook publishers is to educate our children, not indoctrinate them.