Texas School Board Gives Lesson on Revised History Texts

(May 21) -- The Texas Board of Education is teaching students a lesson about how to stand their ground.

The conservative-dominated school board is expected to approve changes to the state's history textbooks in a final vote today, rejecting protests from historians and civil rights leaders who say the new curriculum is overtly political and de-emphasizes the role of blacks, Hispanics and other minority groups. Its decision is expected to have influence far outside Texas because of the state's major impact on the nation's textbook publishers.

Under the proposals, Texas students will soon get a more conservative take on American history that celebrates the free market, minimizes the role of labor movements and gives greater prominence to conservative figures like Phyllis Schlafly.

On Wednesday, hundreds came to a hearing to voice their concerns over the changes and ask the board to delay a vote on the curriculum, but the board refused. On Thursday evening, it approved the changes in an unofficial vote.

"I would just like to finish something," said board member David Bradley, a Republican.

The debate over the curriculum has been rancorous. For months, Democrats and Republicans on the board have been engaged in sometimes vicious arguments over the specific language of the proposals.

In the end, the board did back down on a few of the more controversial items. For example, it agreed not to refer to the slave trade as the "Atlantic triangular trade."

And Bradley's request to include President Barack Obama's middle name, Hussein, failed. Bob Craig, another Republican board member, was skeptical about his colleague's motives.

"The intent of what you're doing is pretty obvious, but I don't think it is necessarily correct," he said.

But most of the board's proposals have survived, and the changes to the state's curriculum will be sweeping if they are approved.

Students will now study Confederate President Jefferson Davis' inaugural address alongside President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. Upton Sinclair's book "The Jungle," which documented the horrors of working conditions in the meatpacking industry and led to calls for greater regulation, has been removed from the list of suggested readings. So has the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter From a Birmingham Jail." Earlier this year, the board took Thomas Jefferson's name off a list of the country's great thinkers because he advocated the separation of church and state.

NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous said the proposals have broad implications.

"The biggest danger is we'll end up with children who don't understand history," Jealous told The New York Times. "The school board members are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts."