Well that absolutely retarded.

Alt hough I disagree with almost everything they're doing, the Jefferson thing is something that you can't let go no matter how you're looking at it from.

Even if history is someone's point of view, how can you completely ignore one of the most important founding fathers?

That's so Texas. ^_^

I looked at my current history book, and it said George Washigton is my current president (I know the book is old, but come on).

Let me go through this topic by  topic.

1) A greater emphasis on “the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s.”

This is actually probably a good thing.  Politically speaking it pretty much was the biggest change in the last 30 years.   It all depends how it's covered, it's really very interesting to see how NeoConservationism was born... believe it or not... People like Reagan and Bush up until the 80's and 90's were DEMOCRATS.


2) A reduced scope for Latino history and culture.

It depends what there are gains in.   American schools do tend to spend more time on Latino history and culture then corresponding Chinese and African culture.  We could stand to do with less south American and possibly European history for more "other" history


3) Changes in specific terminology. (capitalism to free market, imperialism to expansionism, etc.)

Depends on the rest of the terms.  Those... actually seem like improvements, since capitlism itself is a bit of a misnomer.

4) A more positive portrayal of Cold War anticommunism.

It depends how "postive" current history books do seem a bit negative where it seems like the cold war was waged for absolutely no reason... when back then everybody across the country was practicing bomb drills... and everyone thought they were one step away from total destruction.  How it's taught now doesn't really convey that.

5) Language that qualifies the legacy of 1960s liberalism.

Qualfiers are always good.  Though what they really should be focusing on, was that this was the start of the neoconservative wave that hit and the 80's and 90's... since this is when some of the first neoconservative democrats left for the republicans... few people realize this, but we're really voting for the two different democratic parties of the 1960's-1970's.

6) Thomas Jefferson no longer included among writers influencing the nation’s intellectual origins.

Stupid, and I don't see how it could be because he was a deist.  George Washington and Ben Frankling were also Deists.  Besides, dieists in general just mostly assumed it was still the christian god, just they thought a lot of the scriptures about him were distorted or made up.  You may as well could call them all Christian deists.

7) Excision of recent third-party presidential candidates Ralph Nader (from the left) and Ross Perot (from the centrist Reform Party)

Almost as stupid as Jefferson... I'm guessing third party voting must be up.

8) A recommendation to include country and western music among the nation’s important cultural movements. (The popular black genre of hip-hop is being dropped from the same list.)

Eh, honestly, i'm not a big fan of teaching music as important cultural movements in general.  Now their part in important cultural movements... that's something to talk about.  Like Rap during various movements to recreate a black culture... and countries recent influence after 9/11.

On the sole basis of Thomas Jefferson though....

I just don't see how it could be because of his Deism.

Heck, I'd be more likely to buy it was because he probably was part black.

In reality, depending on how you define black and the possibilties... Obama could be as low as the 8th president who's part black.

Either way it's stupid.  What people don't get is most of the founding fathrs were diests.  It's just, they all including jefferson were basically Christian Deists.

They thought a god existed... and it most likely was the Christian one, it's just they didn't trust the written down organzied religious books that often seemed to have stuff added in to explain things that were latter proven with science.

Hence why there is a Christian tone in the countries founding, yet they want it to be free of religious orginizations grasp.

Well thankfully most school districts across the country are broke, so they won't be able to afford these new revisionist history books for their students.

/looking on the bright side of things

To be fair.  History books SHOULD be updated... like every 5 years or so.

They rarely are because of Laziness.  Believe it or not... history DOES change... a lot.

For example

1) FDR and the Great depression.  History books still talk about FDR and the New Deal getting people out of the great depression.  Most people would tell you this was true.   Most historians and economists would tell you FDR EXTENDED the great depression.

2)  Paul Revere's ride is often taught... Paul Revere was part of a large chain of riders... and he wasn't even the most important one.  The guy who was more important had a "less cool" name.  I think it might of been jewish.  Harvey Finklestein comes to mind, but i'm like 90% sure that was just a wrestling manager.

3) There is an egyptian pharoh, who's taught to have killed his father, only ruled a short time, and them was murdered by his brother.  New evidence shows, he loved hs father, ruled 20 years, and was loved by his brother.  The first was taught as history by pure wild speculation.

We're ALWAYS finding new info about the past.

hahaha I lol'd at this.

While I have not personal experience with the American education system, I can really see both sides of this ...

A couple years back someone very close to me was working at a small publishing house producing text books for elementary schools and I got to know a large portion of their staff fairly well. In a large part because they were staffed by humanities majors (which tend to be far more "progressive" than most university students) the staff was far more "progressive" than the population in general. You could see their political bias being represented in the books they were creating based on the topics they choose to emphasise, the historical figures they featured, the events they deemed significant, and the way they covered all of it.

This is not that uncommon, and this political slant can be viewed in textbooks for all levels of education from elementary school through University; and in University one of my professors insisted upon using a textbook that was 30 years out of print because of what he called the "Politicalization" of Canadian history.

Now, if the Texas Board of Education is trying to counter some of this bias by returning some focus and attention to important events that have been minimized, and a de-emphasis on lesser issues that have been pushed, then this could be considered a return to balance in the study of history. On the other hand this could easily go too far, and the pendulum could swing to the other extreme.

It's not like Texas is the most conservative state.

Texas is one of the most balanced states politcally in the USA.

If you want to see somehting that scares the crap out of republicans... it's the states based on politcal party affiliation.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/114016/state-states-political-party-affiliation.aspx

Republicans live and die off of independents.

Shocking that the policies of one state could effectively become the policy of the whole nation.

So what happens if, say, New York or California decides push their own competing revisionist textbook standards? Seems to me that this could drive the red state/blue state wedge even deeper.