I should confess that, being a product of the public education systems of Texas, Bookbread is prone to assume a topic in haste followed by a knee-jerk response. Despite this disclosure, I, Bookbread, stand correct in my assertion that the recent revision to the social studies curriculum by the Texas State Board of Education [SBOE] will implant Things-that-are-Not into these textbooks, particularly when the SBOE replaces the term “capitalism†for “free enterprise system†and obscures, and thereby devalues, the concept of a separation of church from state [01].
After accepting Ann Althouse’s dare [02], and having read the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills [TEKS] documents from the links she provided, Bookbread believes this data only confirms my earlier accusation of the elaborated couching of terminology concerning a “free enterprise system†and the dithering of teaching concepts involving the separation of many churches and religions from a single nation-state. While TEKS does acknowledge “capitalism†as a legitimate synonym for “free enterprise system†[03] such a system, as taught according to TEKS, focuses only the positive aspects and consequences of free enterprise, implying that such a system is infallible [04].
Bookbread concedes that the TEKS display multiple moments of teaching diversification and multiculturalism where the concept of a separation of church and state (the unique segregation of many religions from a single government under one constitution) might indeed be a relevant, overlapping topic of discussion [05]. But other than one mention in one high school class of the Supreme Court case of Engel v. Vitale concerning school prayer, throughout TEKS, there is no specific focus on the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom via said separation even when other First Amendment rights are specified and elaborated upon [06].
Yet at the end of the day, one can be thankful upon realizing that, in its policies, SBOE has provided an avenue towards a kind of self-criticism within its TEKS texts—a path towards criticizing the way this bureaucracy has institutionalized conformity regarding two concepts: one, of a free enterprise system as infallible, and two, the separation of church and state as obscure. Such a path is to be found in the SBOE’s high school psychology requirements: “The student will understand the influence of society and culture on behavior and cognition. The student is expected to: explore the nature and effects of bias and discrimination [and] describe circumstances in which conformity and obedience are likely to occur,†[07].
Notes
[01] See Bookbread’s “The Lies in Textbooks are Upon You.â€
[02] See Ann Althouse’s “If you’re going to criticize the new social studies curriculum adopted by the Texas Board of Education, you’d better quote it.â€
[03] Everything below comes from 3 PDF documents: Economics with Emphasis on the Free Enterprise System and Its Benefits Subchapter A. High School; Social Studies Subchapter B. Middle School; Social Studies Subchapter C. High School.)
See [§113.46. Sociology (One-Half Credit), Beginning with School Year 2011-2012, (b) Introduction, (3)]: “Students identify the role of the free enterprise system within the parameters of this course and understand that this system may also be referenced as capitalism or the free market system.†However, this is an elective half-credit for high school. It is only after passing the middle school and [§113.41. United States History Studies Since 1877 (One Credit), Beginning with School Year 2011-2012] are students first exposed to, according to the TEKS, of the legitimacy of this synonym.
[04] An example of attaching an aura of infallibility to the concept of a “free enterprise system†can be found in [§113.41. United States History Studies Since 1877 (One Credit), Beginning with School Year 2011-2012, (c) Knowledge and skills, (16) Economics] where we learn:
“The student understands significant economic developments between World War I and World War II. The student is expected toâ€:
(A) analyze causes of economic growth and prosperity in the 1920s, including Warren Harding’s Return to Normalcy, reduced taxes, and increased production efficiencies;
(B) identify the causes of the Great Depression, including the impact of tariffs on world trade, stock market speculation, bank failures, and the flawed monetary policy of the Federal Reserve System;
(C) analyze the effects of the Great Depression on the U.S. economy and society such as widespread unemployment and deportation and repatriation of people of European and Mexican heritage and others;
(D) compare the New Deal policies and its opponents’ approaches to resolving the economic effects of the Great Depression; and
(E) describe how various New Deal agencies and programs, including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Social Security Administration, continue to affect the lives of U.S. citizens.
(17) Economics. The student understands the economic effects of World War II & the Cold War. The student is expected to:
(E) describe the dynamic relationship between U.S. international trade policies and the U.S. free enterprise system such as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) oil embargo, the General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
So that when talking about failures of free enterprise such as Great Depression, the SBOE couches the language of TEKS by not specifying what failed within (or because of) the current free enterprise system and why the country felt the need to amend the system after these failures occurred. Or does TEKS assume students will intuit “the flawed monetary policy of the Federal Reserve System†as an example of a kind of failure of (or in) our free enterprise system?—as when it suggests in [§118.1. Implementation of Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Economics with Emphasis on the Free Enterprise System and Its Benefits, High School, (c) Knowledge and skills, (6) Economics]:
“The student understands the basic characteristics and benefits of a free enterprise system. The student is expected toâ€:
(A) explain the basic characteristics of the U.S. free enterprise system, including private property, incentives, economic freedom, competition, and the limited role of government;
(B) explain the benefits of the U.S. free enterprise system, including individual freedom of consumers and producers, variety of goods, responsive prices, investment opportunities, and the creation of wealth;
(12) Economics. The student understands the role of money in an economy. The student is expected to:
(A) describe the functions of money;
(B) describe the characteristics of money;
(C) analyze the costs and benefits of commodity money, fiat money, and representative money; and
(D) examine the positive and negative aspects of barter, currency, credit cards, and debit cards.
One would think SBOE would have sorted all this out—particularly when they bothered to add to ibid.:
(22) Social studies skills. The student communicates in written, oral, and visual forms. The student is expected to:
(A) use economic-related terminology correctly;
[05] Despite the lambasts of other bloggers (see note 4 of Bookbread’s “The Lies in Textbooks are Upon Youâ€), Bookbread is in no way accusing SBOE of xenophobia, when all evidence in TEKS suggests otherwise:
§113.18. Social Studies, Grade 6, Beginning with School Year 2011–2012.
(b) Knowledge and skills.
(15) Culture. The student understands the similarities and differences within and among cultures in various societies. The student is expected to:
(C) define a multicultural society and consider both the positive and negative qualities of multiculturalism;
(D) analyze the experiences and evaluate the contributions of diverse groups to multicultural societies;
(16) Culture. The student understands that all societies have basic institutions in common even though the characteristics of these institutions may differ. The student is expected to:
(A) identify institutions basic to all societies, including government, economic, educational, and religious institutions;
(B) compare characteristics of institutions in various contemporary societies; and
(C) analyze the efforts and activities institutions use to sustain themselves over time such as the development of an informed citizenry through education and the use of monumental architecture by religious institutions.
(20) Science, technology, and society. The student understands the influences of science and technology on contemporary societies. The student is expected to:
(B) explain how resources, belief systems, economic factors, and political decisions have affected the use of technology;
§113.41. United States History Studies Since 1877 (One Credit), Beginning with School Year 2011-2012.
(c) Knowledge and skills.
(7) History. The student understands the domestic and international impact of U.S. participation in World War II. The student is expected to:
(D) analyze major issues of World War II, including the Holocaust; the internment of Japanese, German, and Italian Americans; and the development of conventional and atomic weapons;
(26) Culture. The student understands how people from various groups contribute to our national identity. The student is expected to:
(A) explain actions taken by people to expand economic opportunities and political rights, including those for racial, ethnic, and religious minorities as well as women, in American society;
(C) explain how the contributions of people of various racial, ethnic, gender, and religious groups shape American culture;
§113.46. Sociology (One-Half Credit), Beginning with School Year 2011-2012.
(c) Knowledge and skills.
(15) Social institutions. The student identifies the basic social institutions of education and religion and explain their influence on society. The student is expected to:
(C) examine religion from the sociological point of view;
(D) analyze the functions of society and the basic societal needs that religion serves; and
(E) compare and contrast distinctive features of religion in the United States with religion in other societies.
See also [§113.42. World History Studies (One Credit), Beginning with School Year 2011-2012, (c) Knowledge and skills] and [§113.43. World Geography Studies (One Credit), Beginning with School Year 2011-2012, (c) Knowledge and skills].
[06] In [§113.18. Social Studies, Grade 6, Beginning with School Year 2011–2012, (b) Knowledge and skills, (19) Culture] We learn that “The student understands the relationships among religion, philosophy, and culture†but for some reason the SBOE omitted the relationship of government to “religion, philosophy and culture.†In other instances, the curriculum appear well-balanced and thorough, except for the de-emphasis and sometimes omission of specifying the separation of religion from government when teaching on the First Amendment. This is most particularly evident in [§113.44. United States Government (One-Half Credit), Beginning with School Year 2011-2012, (c) Knowledge and skills. (16) Citizenship, (B)] where we read: “The student understands the importance of the expression of different points of view in a constitutional republic. The student is expected to: analyze the importance of the First Amendment rights of petition, assembly, speech, and press and the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms†but the specific mention of freedom of religion is omitted. This is the attitudinal pattern of the SBOE repeated throughout TEKS (with the single exception of Engle v. Vitale):
§113.20. Social Studies, Grade 8, Beginning with School Year 2011-2012.
(b) Knowledge and skills.
(15) Government. The student understands the American beliefs and principles reflected in the U.S. Constitution and other important historic documents. The student is expected to:
(A) identify the influence of ideas from historic documents, including Magna Carta, the English Bill of Rights, the Mayflower Compact, The Wealth of Nations, the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, and selected anti-federalist writings, on the U.S. system of government;
(B) summarize the strengths and weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation;
(C) identify colonial grievances listed in the Declaration of Independence and explain how those grievances were addressed in the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights; and
(D) analyze how the U.S. Constitution reflects the principles of limited government, republicanism, checks and balances, federalism, separation of powers, popular sovereignty, and individual rights.
(16) Government. The student understands the process of changing the U.S. Constitution and the impact of amendments on American society. The student is expected to:
(A) summarize the purposes for and process of amending the U.S. Constitution;
(19) Citizenship. The student understands the rights and responsibilities of citizens of the United States. The student is expected to:
(B) summarize rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights;
(25) Culture. The student understands the impact of religion on the American way of life. The student is expected to:
(A) trace the development of religious freedom in the United States;
(B) describe religious motivation for immigration and influence on social movements, including the impact of the first and second Great Awakenings; and
(C) analyze the impact of the First Amendment guarantees of religious freedom on the American way of life.
§113.44. United States Government (One-Half Credit), Beginning with School Year 2011-2012.
(c) Knowledge and skills.
(1) History. The student understands how constitutional government, as developed in America and expressed in the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the U.S. Constitution, has been influenced by ideas, people, and historical documents. The student is expected to:
(A) explain major political ideas in history, including the laws of nature and nature’s God, unalienable rights, divine right of kings, social contract theory, and the rights of resistance to illegitimate government;
(7) Government. The student understands the American beliefs and principles reflected in the U.S. Constitution and why these are significant. The student is expected to:
(D) evaluate constitutional provisions for limiting the role of government, including republicanism, checks and balances, federalism, separation of powers, popular sovereignty, and individual rights;
(8) Government. The student understands the structure and functions of the government created by the U.S. Constitution. The student is expected to:
(H) compare the structures, functions, and processes of the national, state, and local governments in the U.S. federal system.
(13) Citizenship. The student understands rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. The student is expected to:
(A) understand the roles of limited government and the rule of law in the protection of individual rights;
(B) identify and define the unalienable rights;
(C) identify the freedoms and rights guaranteed by each amendment in the Bill of Rights;
(D) analyze U.S. Supreme Court interpretations of rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution in selected cases, including Engel v. Vitale, Schenck v. U.S., Texas v. Johnson, Miranda v. Arizona, Gideon v. Wainwright, Mapp v. Ohio, and Roe v. Wade;
(E) explain the importance of due process rights to the protection of individual rights and in limiting the powers of government; and
(F) recall the conditions that produced the 14th Amendment and describe subsequent efforts to selectively extend some of the Bill of Rights to the states, including the Blaine Amendment and U.S. Supreme Court rulings, and analyze the impact on the scope of fundamental rights and federalism.
(16) Citizenship. The student understands the importance of the expression of different points of view in a constitutional republic. The student is expected to:
(B) analyze the importance of the First Amendment rights of petition, assembly, speech, and press and the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. [But no religion]
[07] §113.45. Psychology (One-Half Credit), Beginning with School Year 2011-2012:
(c) Knowledge and skills.
(13) The individual in society. The student will understand the influence of society and culture on behavior and cognition. The student is expected to:
(B) explore the nature and effects of bias and discrimination;
(C) describe circumstances in which conformity and obedience are likely to occur;
One might also examine:
§113.44. United States Government (One-Half Credit), Beginning with School Year 2011-2012.
(c) Knowledge and skills.
(20) Social studies skills. The student applies critical-thinking skills to organize and use information acquired from a variety of valid sources, including electronic technology. The student is expected to:
(D) analyze and evaluate the validity of information, arguments, and counterarguments from primary and secondary sources for bias, propaganda, point of view, and frame of reference.
Lately when reading, it is not uncommon to come across someone dismissing all books under the category of “dead things.†Three trends that treat books as such occur when folks either: analyze and attend to books, neglect and negate them, or embalm and preserve them. None of these trends relate much to the act of reading.
In the twenty-first century, if fiction happens to be found in a book, it is attended to like a cadaver in anatomy class, analyzed by gangs of pathologists who conduct autopsies in front of students of literature [01]. Yet nobody should expect these pathological non-readers (or their students) to administer any sort of attentive care when their patients, their books in hand, are already assumed dead and subjected to such techniques of dissection as “snippet†and “balanced reading†[02]. True, the dissection of texts was always practiced upon the holy books of a society, but never has a legion of non-reading pathologists institutionalized the reading standards for an entire nation. After their investigations are finished, one wonders whether a mass grave will be provided for these books? Or perhaps cremation is the best option when books bear the burden of neglect [03].
Accompanying the neglect of books is their negation, for readers, grieved by unsatisfactory texts, now demand the negating or “unpublishing†of certain words, phrases, and facts [04]. No longer will unpublishing be limited to kings, judges, and journalists. Moreover, the amount of current, active writers has multiplied as well as diversified [05], and in like manner, books are undergoing their own mutations in their standards, procedures, design, and formats [06]. Book publishers too have resorted to marketing a variety of textual containers (particularly Kindles and iPads). There is a touch of irony in the observation that for well over a millennia books never had any trouble finding their way into the hands of substantially poor readers, writers, and owners—but only in the twenty-first century do we find publishers being shoved into equality with their book-bearing brethren. Today’s writers, publishers, customers, and their books stand united in a democracy of poverty.
Books nowadays are also being embalmed on a new scale—their physical traits are now preserved and standardized by the cramming of books into the backgrounds of consumer catalogues, hotel lobbies, and studios that house television morning shows [07]. Here, in the backgrounds, books are kept preserved (or rather embalmed), but preserved only if one believes the medium of the book to include everything that is a book except its own text. Today it seems only the container of the text is worth preserving.
In such circumstances is it so strange for a book blogger to ask, “How do I display or otherwise admire all these books I keep buying for the Kindle?†[08] Surely limiting the function of books strictly to decorate a space is a habit of society agreed to by all, but to amputate a text from its medium seems somewhat novel, at least as far as book behavior is concerned. As a result we are no longer driven to idealize the memorization of a text—a thing George Steiner once concluded as an ultimate goal for readers [09].
Only a few readers in the republic remain anyway—we who read not for pleasure but to escape, to forget the currency of now, to distract our attention’s natural focus on the void of joy [10]. True, sometimes this escapism comes accompanied by a belief in acclaimed benefits of “learning,†“being well informed,†or “the discovery of something new,†yet such benefits are beneficial only in the sense that they allow us to read more material with slightly more speed, intuition, and understanding which thereby increases our rate of escape from reality. The ultimate benefit of knowledge gained through reading resides in the access that knowledge provides for further reading, but if bad books are still printed, remain unread, left for dead, and continue to be complained about, has anything really changed in human–book relations [11]?
01. This terminology for autopsy was inspired by Mark Bauerlein’s Literary Criticism, an Autopsy (1997). Recently, however, Joy Hakim has claimed in “Let Them Read Whole Books†at the Oxford University Press Blog (03-29-10):
Our schools aren’t letting children read whole books. In this information age, when young people are very aware of the real world, we’re keeping any book-driven consideration of it out of classrooms, especially in those crucial middle school years. Studies show [though not shown by Hakim] that the average American schoolchild never reads a single whole nonfiction books [sic] during middle and high school (except maybe a textbook).
Today, it is only homeschoolers, and children at a few elite or unusual schools who even read as much as one whole book. Teachers are much too busy teaching reading to actually let their students read a nonfiction book.
There is also E. D. Hirsch Jr.’s “How to Save the Schools†a review of Diane Ravitch’s The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education in the New York Review of Books (04-19-10). Hirsch writes:
Two decades ago I was appalled by an international comparison showing that between 1978 and 1988 the science knowledge of American students had dropped from seventh to fourteenth place. In the postwar period we have declined internationally in reading from third place to fifteenth place among the nations participating in the survey.
02. These techniques of dissection are warned of by Hakim as well as in Hirsch on Ravitch:
What schools are doing—endlessly—is teaching reading “strategies.†Our young students are analyzing paragraphs. I call it “snippet†reading…. They tackle reading “strategies….†[A teacher] may take a chapter, or maybe a few paragraphs from a book, combine it with an original document and an activity—and there you have it. No one has to actually read a book. [“Let Them Read Whole Books†at the Oxford University Press Blog (03-29-10)]
And:
Many of the weekly hours that are assigned to language arts in the early grades are now being devoted to practicing reading strategies such as “questioning the author†and “finding the main idea.†Ravitch describes in detail a highly touted reform in New York City and San Diego called “balanced literacy,†which requires students to spend a lot of time practicing such reading strategies but does not prescribe any particular books, poems, and essays to practice them on. [Hirsch “How to Save the Schools†a review of Diane Ravitch’s The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education in the New York Review of Books (04-19-10)]
03. Not only does the intensive inspection of selections of excerpts of texts, in a way, neglect the text as a whole, but Hirsch, via Ravitch, reports on an American tradition of institutionalized book neglect:
By the early twentieth century worries about the stability of the Republic had subsided, and by the 1930s, under the enduring influence of European Romanticism, educational leaders had begun to convert the community-centered school of the nineteenth century to the child- centered school of the twentieth—a process that was complete by 1950. The chief tenet of the child-centered school was that no bookish curriculum was to be set out in advance. Rather, learning was to arise naturally out of activities, projects, and daily experience. [Hirsch “How to Save the Schools†a review of Diane Ravitch’s The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education in the New York Review of Books (04-19-10)]
In a recent survey of 110 news organizations, the Toronto Star found that increasingly, publishers are fielding regular requests from anxious and embarrassed readers to “unpublish” information, sometimes months or years after it first appeared online…. Some readers don’t want their marital status or the price of their home known, or they were quoted saying something they now regret.
As Kathy Steiner of the Jamestown Sun wrote, “‘Unpublishing’ is a word that doesn’t accurately reflect what people are asking. They’re asking to censor or rewrite history….†Yet, as Paulette Haddix of the Post–Tribune of Northwest Indiana said: “If something happened, it happened. If it was said, it was said. We don’t want to set any ‘unpublishing’ precedent where we are rewriting history.”
It is a widely held view that the internet has made writers of everyone. Whether we prodigiously blog or just contribute to message boards, we all like to think that we can make a pithy observation. That shouldn’t mean the specialist correspondent cannot have a greater resonance.
06. Burrell reports that the changes in British publishing now include “creating a network of expertly written websites that cater for the specialist audiences that are arguably no longer being served as they once were by more traditional media organisations.” [ “Journalism’s next generation: A new wave of writers are going online to get their message across” in the Independent (04-22-10)]
Jeremy Caplan, a blogger for the Wall Street Journal, expands the conversation concerning the mutations of published texts in “The iPad and the Future of Text” (04-28-10):
Digital text is at a crossroads, and the iPad’s momentum could nudge it in one of two directions.
Down one path lies a world in which words are increasingly digitized in iPad-like e-readers that function like locked glass boxes. That renders books, magazines and newspapers easy to carry around but difficult to share or remix.
Down the other path, openness wins out, and text can be shared in myriad ways. This brings digital books closer to a historical precursor: commonplace books. These were personal scrapbooks created centuries ago expressly for spontaneous text sharing, long before Web links made that concept, well, commonplace.
Concerning the Kindle and other electronic reading devices, Virgina Hefferman, in “The Medium” on the Shelf Lifeblog of the New York Times (03-04-10) notes: “The [Kindle], which consigns all poetry and prose to the same homely fog-toned screen, leaves nothing to the experience of books but reading.â€
Unlike other collectibles, books “represent a different order of plenitude,â€Â [Nicholson Baker’s piece, “Books as Furniture,†from the June 12, 1995 New Yorker] writes, one that encompasses “the camel caravans of thought-bearing time to read them through.†And he quotes William Gladstone arguing against a fashion for ornamental bookcases; those objects should remain plain, Gladstone says, because books “are themselves the ornament.â€
Also note Herrman (ibid.):
If [Walter Benjamin] says not reading books can be as sophisticated and European as reading them, I believe him, and I will try to think of my books as Sèvres china. But Sèvres china, if I had any, would be for display on its days off, wouldn’t it? [Virgina Hefferman’s post “The Medium” on Shelf Lifeblog of the New York Times (03-04-10)]
08. Ibid.
09. Steiner, George “Criticâ€/“Readerâ€. New Literary History, Vol. 10, No. 3, Anniversary Issue: I. (Spring, 1979), pp. 423–452. < http://www.jstor.org/stable/468921>:
But a text can only enter into the full life of the canon when it is woken by, housed within, the negated distance of precise memory. It follows that “total reading†has an inherent logic of dispensation, that it tends towards a condition in which the materiality of the text is no longer required. The icon has been wholly internalized. (p. 444)
10. As Twain put it in his last known story, Captain Stormfield‘s Visit to Heaven (1909): “Happiness ain’t a thing in itself—it’s only a contrast with something that ain’t pleasant.â€
11. A recent, semi-humorous example can be found in Sean Fennessey’s post (“Cancel Publish: A Call For the End of Tumblr Book Deals.”) On GQ’s pop culture blog, The Verge. (04-27-10). Fennessy calls for an end to such “spawn of social media,†noting that:
Agent Jason Allen Ashlock explained to Galleycat why he connected at the idea: “The blog to book projects seem tired because so many of them have been one-trick ponies. They’re based around a gimmick: They tell a joke and then they tell it again and again. Image, caption, laugh. Image, caption, laugh. Their concepts are thin. The ones that have been really successful, and have a chance of making the backlist, have had a clear editorial voice: there’s an honest critique or cultural observation built into the ostensibly humorous project.â€
Recently the Texas State Board of Education [SBOE] voted to approve changes to the social studies textbooks of the state’s schoolchildren. These changes will now task students to read several Things-That-Are-Not [TITANs].[01] For example, instead of calling capitalism capitalism, it will now be known as something that it is not, so that the textbooks of Texas will print “free enterprise system†instead of “capitalismâ€.[02]
The Board also approved revisions that would skew the historical context of the phrase “separation of church and state,†substituting it also with a TITAN, perhaps a “unity of church and state.â€[03] After all, the integration of church and state carries benefits aplenty—what could possibly go wrong in suggesting the merger of those who are exempt from taxes with those who collect them?
I am frankly appalled at the language spewed forth as a result of the Board’s new policies.[04] Why tote such loaded words? Already the students of Texas are adapted to high levels of TITAN exposure through journalism, advertising, other forms of mass media, and professional sports.[05] Surely kids can handle a few more TITANs in their lives—why shouldn’t their textbooks be infiltrated as well?
This is not to suggest that the SBOE’s new policy will transmit any kind of reason to its students. For reason (wisdom, logic) is always good, otherwise it would always be good to always be unreasonable—yes, this occurs hourly on cable news, but thankfully no reasonable American watches it)[06]—but to advocate children to believe in TITANs cannot be called reasonable. It instead cloaks the Board’s will to increase the ignorance of the Texas public student populous.
But just because the SBOE’s policy prevents the promotion of reason does not mean that a lack of reason can be blamed for its policy. The SBOE’s underlying reason for approving its new book policy emerges easily to any onlooker: by nurturing Texas schoolchildren with standards of the past, such students might further be inspired to rise up, radicalize, and protest—the same way their hippy grandparents did in the 1960s.[07] Only by spotlighting Phyllis Schlafly, the Moral Majority, the Contract With America, or the NRA can the SBOE point the schoolchildren of Texas towards their proper twenty-first century scapegoats.
It is truly conservative to preserve a textbook tradition that provokes radical protest. The Board has seen the results. They know these methods work, and it is time to apply them again, particularly when there is no fear of this tradition spreading to other states.[08] One should thank God for blessing Texas with such a bureaucracy as the SBOE and its TITAN-ic policies.
Notes
[01] The source for this terminology comes from Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726), Part IV, Chapter V. But there is also Plato’s Cratylus which tells us:
Nor can we reasonably say [that] there is knowledge at all, if everything is in a state of transition and there is nothing abiding; for knowledge too cannot continue to be knowledge unless continuing always to abide and exist. But if the very nature of knowledge changes, at the time when the change occurs there will be no knowledge; and if the transition is always going on, there will always be no knowledge, and, according to this view, there will be no one to know and nothing to be known. [Plato. Cratylus. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. The Dialogues of Plato Translated into English. (1892). Vol. 1. Third Edition. Oxford, UP. p. 388. on Google Books.]
So we may take it that the very nature of the knowledge of capitalism will change when it is no longer called such. Compare also Plato’s Meno:
For this is what our discussion is really about—not if there are or have been good men here, but if virtue can be taught—that is what we have been considering for so long. And the point we are considering is just this: whether the good men of these times and of former times knew how to hand on to another that virtue in which they were good, or whether it cannot be handed on from one man to another, or received by one man from another. [Plato. Meno. In Great Dialogues of Plato. Translated by W.H.D. Rouse, Twelfth Printing, (1956) New American Library. (92B–93E) p. 59.]
One generation cannot handoff to the next any knowledge of capitalism or a “separation of church and state†if the nature of the knowledge of these things has already changed. Hence these things (capitalism and the separation of church and state) become Things-That-They-Are-Not [TITANs].
[02] Coverage on the “free enterprise†/ “capitalism†distinction for the textbooks of Texas is wide and varied:
[SBOE chairman] Lowe’s most fraught vote came when she supported the move by Board Member Ken Mercer, R-San Antonio, to remove references to “capitalism†in the standards, using instead the phrase “free enterprise.â€
Last summer, a compromise had been struck with the group of teachers writing the economics standards about how to refer to the country’s economic system. The challenge was finding a term that conformed both with common academic language and the state law, which calls for the use of “free enterprise.†The result was the phrase “U.S. free enterprise (capitalist, free market) system.
Cumbersome, indeed. But Mercer’s objection was not about the economy of language. It was ideological.
The word “capitalism†has a negative connotation and the standards should not apologize for the nation’s free enterprise system, he said.
And Board member Terri Leo, R-Spring, agreed.
“I do think that words means things,†Leo said. “I see no need, frankly, to compromise with liberal professors from academia,†who have written “distorted and liberal textbooks.â€Â [“SBOE chairwoman tips balance for conservative votes†by Kate Alexander of the Austin American Statesman’s politics and government blog Postcards (03/11/10).]
A majority of the State Board of Education decided Texas students should be shielded from exposure to the perfectly good word “capitalism†— one frequently heard in college-level economics classes. Why? Because member Terri Leo, R-Spring, doesn’t like the sound of it. [“When God was handing out brains…†an op-ed in the (03/27/10) Austin American Statesman.]
When [the SBOE] instructs textbook writers to always use the term “free-enterprise†and never the term “capitalism,†it isn’t doing so because it feels solicitude for imperialists or the big-money set.
Heavens no. Board members are doing it to vindicate the little guy, to wrest the language away from an intellectual elite. As Don McLeroy, one of the leaders of the board’s conservative faction, put it in last year’s debate over evolution, “somebody’s got to stand up to experts.â€Â [“Don’t mess with the Texas Board of Ed†an op-ed by Thomas Frank in The Wall Street Journal political blog Opinion Journal (03/17/10).]
[03] Coverage over the outcry of the phrase “separation of church and state†also runs plentiful:
“I reject the notion by the left of a constitutional separation of church and state,†Board member David Bradley said. “I have $1,000 for the charity of your choice if you can find it in the Constitution.â€Â [“Conservatives on Texas Panel Carry the Day on Curriculum Change†by James C. McKinley Jr., New York Times. 03/13/10. Section A; Column 0; National Desk; p. 10.]
SBOE chairman Gail Lowe insists:
“A critical priority of the State Board of Education in our revision of the curriculum standards has been to emphasize the founding documents, such as the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution. We believe students need a stronger grasp of the freedoms guaranteed in these documents. The First Amendment very clearly prevents Congress from establishing a national church, but it also promotes the free exercise of religion. Students need to understand that this is what the founders intended.
“It is inaccurate to say the founding fathers were neutral about religion; most were strong proponents of religious faith but did not believe in a national church controlled by the federal government.â€Â [“Q&A: Texas Board of Education Chairman†from in The Baptist Press, by Jerry Pierce of the Southern Baptist Texan (03/29/10).]
Yet Lowe’s comments would not rule out the possibility for teaching through textbooks an advocacy for state churches, county churches, school district churches etc. And because of things like—
“The conservative faction handily defeated an amendment that would have required children to learn the significance of the separation of church and state and rejected several attempts to include more minorities in the curriculum.â€Â [“Education board OKs changes†by Zahira Torres of the El Paso Times (03/13/10).]
Board members defeated an amendment by member Mavis Knight, D-Dallas, that would have required students to examine the reasons the Founding Fathers “protected religious freedom in America by barring government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion over all others.â€
The seven social conservatives on the panel—several of whom openly question the legal precedents affirming the separation of church and state—were joined by the three moderate Republicans in voting no. [“Texas education board refuses to require religious-freedom lesson†by Terrence Stutz of the Dallas Morning News (03/12/10).]
—it can be reasonably concluded that the SBOE “have deleted [references] to church-state separation.â€Â [“Analysis: Texas influence on national textbook market is small and shrinking†from the Texas on the Potomac blog of the Houston Chronicle, analysis provided by Brian Thevenot of the Texas Tribune (03/29/10).]
Even Baptists groups were dismayed. See “Baptists decry Texas education board’s curriculum votes†by Robert Marus of The Baptist Standard (03/16/10).
[04] Examples of such appalling language appear endless, beginning with mild exaggeration such as Mike Chapman’s post “Stop the schoolyard bullies of the SBOE†on Burnt Orange Blog (03/26/10): “the SBOE are systematically engaging in an extreme ideological agenda in an effort to skew history,†to the slightly silly title for Robert McHenry’s post “The Creedalists†at American.com, (03/25/10).
Yet fiercer language abounds. Take for instance the op-ed “When God was handing out brains...†in the Austin American Statesman (03/27/10) and its use of phrases like, “a jihad against knowledge†and “handicapping Texas students.†Or “Don’t mess with the Texas Board of Ed,†an op-ed by Thomas Frank in The Wall Street Journal’s political blog Opinion Journal (03/17/10) that spews: “the proceedings appear like a sort of Texas inquisition.â€
[05] In journalism, take Jason Blair, the Balloon Boy saga, or the yet-to-be-found (though thoroughly reported on) WMDs of Iraq. Even so, the public students of Texas are completely used to TITANs in other forms of mass media such as the fake violence of some video games, or the false sense of creativity felt when playing Guitar Hero, or reality’s clash with Disney’s aesthetics and ethics via the pretended powers of characters and superheroes in movies and comic books. In professional sports, take not only the steroids scandals throughout the Olympics and Major League Baseball, but the fact that some ballplayers perjured themselves before Congress and with no apparent consequence. Kids in the twenty-first century are inundated with Things-That-Are-Not (TITANs) so why should the content of their textbooks be any different?
[06] Terry McDermott’s “Dumb Like a Fox.†Columbia Journalism Review for March/April 2010 recently notes:
Cable news is not literally a broadcast business, but a narrowcast. At any given moment, there are a relative handful of people (in peak hours less than five million and in non-prime hours half that, out of the U.S. population of 320 million) watching all of these networks combined. American Idol, in contrast, routinely draws 30 million.
One need only look at the recent example of CNN’s audience decline for further support of McDermott’s observations.
[07] Robert McHenry makes this point in his post “The Creedalists†at American.com, a magazine published by the American Enterprise Institute:
Does the Texas board member pause to reflect that those radicals of the ’60s were schooled on the textbooks of the Eisenhower years? Perhaps not. That they then went off to college, discovered that a few facts had been omitted from their schooling, and promptly made a fetish of them? Does [SBOE member Don McLeroy] stop for just a moment to wonder if what he is doing now is likely to have the desired effect?
[08] See note 3 above of Brian Thevenot’s comments in: “Analysis: Texas influence on national textbook market is small and shrinking.â€
