Abstract
“From Lone Star State to Laughing Stock State” lamented former Texas Lieutenant Governor Bill Hobby in March 2010 as Texas lurched toward producing its new social studies standards.1 Expressing frustration and embarrassment at the ostensible trumping of history by ideology, this scion of a bipartisan Houston politicaldynastyreflected, andperhaps attempted to deflect, the negative reactions of so many inside and outside the state. Comedians and other critics had a field day, to be sure, but what transpired during the meetings of the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) was no laughing matter. At the end of the day, with legitimate historians and experienced teachers effectively cut out of the process, the will of the social conservative majority triumphed. Although the history that Texas schoolchildren are now mandated to learn and be tested on does follow a conventional narrative in some respects, it also displays an odd blend of head-scratching particulars, misleading revisionism, and outright invention, wrapped neatly in the flags of American and Lone Star exceptionalism. Moreover, the 2010 standards overemphasize content—easily politicized—while paying scant attention to the skills associated with learning how to think historically.2 In the end, the prescribed history reveals far more about the present than the past, much more about contemporary cultural politics than the nature and value of historical understanding.
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Bill Hobby, “Comment,” Texas Tribune, March 12, 2010.
John Fensterwald, “Texas Tales Won’t Pollute Our Texts: Vetoed Bill Wouldn’t Have Made a Difference,” Thoughts on Public Education, September 30, 2010, http://toped.svefoundation.org/2010/09/30/texas-tall-tales-wont-pollute-our-texts.
Peter Charles Hoffer, Past Imperfect: Facts, Fictions, Fraud—American History from Bancroft and Parkman to Ambrose, Bellesiles, Ellis, and Goodwin (New York: Perseus Books Group, 2004), 17–31.
Fritz Fischer, “The Texas History Standards: The Case of ‘The Venona Standard’ and Effective History Teaching,” History Matters, 23, no. 1 (September 2010): 3–6;
Michael Birnbaum, “Historians Speak Out against Proposed Texas Textbook Changes,” Washington Post, March 18, 2010, A03.
Gary Scharrer, “‘Experts’ Stir Controversy over Social Studies Textbooks,” Houston Chronicle, July 16, 2009.
Keith Erekson, “Texas Social Studies Simplified,” TEKS Watch, July 1, 2010.
Kate Alexander, “SBOE Swamped by Comments on Social Studies Standards,” Austin American-Statesman, May 20, 2010.
Sheldon M. Stern and Jeremy A. Stern, The State of State U.S. History Standards 2011 (Washington, DC: Thomas B. Fordham Institute, 2011), 33–34, 141–43.
Sheldon M. Stern and Jeremy A. Stern, “Run Down by Traffic in Both Direction: Is It Possible to Have a Rational Discussion of State U.S. History Standards?” History News Network, March 1, 2011.
Stern and Stern, “Run Down by Traffic”; Gary B. Nash, Charlotte Crabtree, and Ross E. Dunn, History on Trial: Culture Wars and the Teaching of the Past (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997); National Standards for History (Los Angeles: National Center for History in the Schools, 1996).
Phillip Van Fossen, “‘Reading and Math Take So Much of the Time …’: An Overview of Social Studies Instruction in Elementary Classrooms in Indiana,” Theory and Research in Social Education 33, no. 3 (2005): 376–403;
Diane Stark Rentner, Caitlin Scott, Nancy Kober, Naomi Chudowsky, Victor Chudowsky, Scott Joftus, and Dalia Zabala, From the Capital to the Classroom: Year 4 of the No Child Left Behind Act (Washington, DC: Center on Education Policy, 2006).
Van Fossen, note 41; Andrea Koskey, “History Class Is History at San Francisco’s Lowell High School,” San Francisco Examiner, April 7, 2011;
Norman Draper, “History Classes Might Be Taking a Back Seat in Minnesota,” Star Tribune, July 4, 2011.
A Blueprint for Reform: The Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (Washington, DC: US Department of Education, 2010); Allan Kulikoff, “A Modest Proposal to Resolve the Crisis in History,” Journal of the Historical Society 11, no. 2 (June 2011): 239–63.
Lindsay Kastner, “Texas Shuns Common Standards for Schools,” San Antonio Express-News, June 21, 2009.
Sam Dillon, “U.S. History Is Still Troublesome for U.S. Students, Nationwide Tests Show,” The New York Times, June 15, 2011, A19;
Stephanie Banchero, “Students Stumble Again on the Basics of History: National Test Shows Little Progress in Grasping Democracy, U.S. Role in World,” Wall Street Journal, June 15 2011;
Lee White, quoted in Joy Resmovits, “U.S. History Test Scores Stagnate as Education Secretary Arne Duncan Seeks ‘Plan B’,” Huffington Post, June 14, 2011.
Richard Ingersoll and Kerry Gruber, Out-of-Field Teaching and Educational Equality (Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics, 1996), NCES 96— 040, 23–24.
Rachel G. Ragland and Kelly A. Woestman, eds., The Teaching American History Project: Lessons for History Educators and Historians (New York: Routledge, 2009). For “History’s Habits of the Mind,” see http://www.nche.net /document.doc?id=43.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2012 Linda K. Salvucci
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Salvucci, L.K. (2012). A Perfect Storm in Austin and Beyond. In: Erekson, K.A. (eds) Politics and the History Curriculum. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137008947_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137008947_12
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-43587-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-00894-7
eBook Packages: Palgrave Education CollectionEducation (R0)