By YOUNG MONEY Staff
15 March 2010

The Texas State Board of Education has voted to rewrite history.

They have voted to remove current curriculum areas, including civil rights and global politics, replacing them with conservative historic figures and beliefs. These changes will affect courses including history, social studies and economics.

The Texas State Board of Education is made up of lawyers, dentists and publishers who have voted to modify lessons on the civil rights movement, the U.S. free enterprise system and hundreds of other topics.

Think Progress has compiled these decisions made by Texas’ ultra-conservative Education Board. Here are just a few from the Think Progress site:

• To avoid exposing students to “transvestites, transsexuals and who knows what else,” the Board struck the curriculum’s reference to “sex and gender as social constructs.”
• The Board removed Thomas Jefferson from the Texas curriculum, “replacing him with religious right icon John Calvin.”
• The Board refused to require that “students learn that the Constitution prevents the U.S. government from promoting one religion over all others.”
• The Board struck the word “democratic” from the description of the U.S. government, instead terming it a “constitutional republic.”

The Huffington Post adds that, “Numerous attempts to add the names or references to important Hispanics throughout history also were denied, inducing one amendment that would specify that Tejanos died at the Alamo alongside Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie. Another amendment deleted a requirement that sociology students ‘explain how institutional racism is evident in American society.’

“Democrats did score a victory by deleting a portion of an amendment by Republican Don McLeroy suggesting that the civil rights movement led to ‘unrealistic expectations for equal outcomes.’”

In addition, the board has decided that Hip Hop should no longer be taught as a cultural movement and to delete a sociology requirement focusing on institutional racism and its presence in American society.

So far the vote is 10 to 5 for the changes but they will hold an open forum where the public can (hopefully) stop these changes from taking place.

Even if not in Texas, the changes will affect all children across the country: Most school textbooks are published in Texas, causing publishers to change all textbooks to fit their “standards.” If these changes go through, they will be taught to millions of students over the next decade.