Links
Texas textbooks to finally tell history right
After nearly two and a half centuries since the American Revolution--roughly a sixth the age of the earth--U.S. history may finally be recorded accurately if the Texas State Board of Education is permitted to proceed with its proposed alterations to the state's textbooks. Dominating 80% of the nation's school-textbook purchasing power, changes made to the Lone Star state's public school curriculum would be felt by students from Kindergarten to 12th grade across the country for the next 10 years.
"Now we don't have to burn books anymore," said Don McLeroy, who leads the Board of Education's ultra-conservative majority. "By simply rewriting American history, we can finally nip that ol' chore in the bud."
For starters, the revised textbooks would once and for all clean up ideologically-loaded terminology that many feel leans too far to the left. America's modern rise to world power would no longer be referred to as "Imperialism," but rather "Expansionism"; abstract concepts like "Separation of Church and State" would be clarified with the more straightforward "Christian Nation"; and the touchy issue of racial language would finally be put to rest, with words like "Black," "Negro," and "African-American" replaced by the all-encompassing "Socialist."