**A colleague of mine just published this commentary.
Nancy
**
*Texas School Board’s Cultural Imperialism *
*A Commentary by Warren J. Blumenfeld*
**
Following closely on the heels of a bill passed by the Arizona
legislature and signed into law by Governor Jan Brewer severely
restricting ethnic studies courses and multicultural curricular
inclusion in that state’s schools, the Texas School Board voted in
sweeping changing to its social studies curriculum. Considering 213
amendments for changes in the state’s social studies standards, known as
the Texas Standards for Knowledge and Skills for grades kindergarten
through 12, social conservatives, who comprise the majority of Board,
voted strictly along party lines: 9 Republicans, 5 Democrats.
Board member, Cynthia Dunbar, R-Richmond, a high school anatomy and
physiology teacher made her position and the position of the other
Christian social conservatives very clear in her opening prayer at the
hearing, in which she asserted that U.S. laws and the government itself
should be founded on the Christian Bible:
“I believe no one can read the history of our country without realizing
that the Good Book and the spirit of the savior have from the beginning
been our guiding geniuses. Whether we look to the first charter of
Virginia, or the charter of New England…the same objective is present —
a Christian land governed by Christian principles….I like to believe we
are living today in the spirit of the Christian religion. I like also to
believe that as long as we do so, no great harm can come to our country.
All this I say in the spirit of my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.”
Dunbar authored the 2008 book, /One Nation Under God,/ arguing that the
Founders created “an emphatically Christian government” (page 18) and
that government should be guided by a “biblical litmus test” (page 47).
Among the extensive list of changes to the Texas social studies
curriculum include information that presents Confederate President
Jefferson Davis on par with Abraham Lincoln; deletion of Dr. Martin
Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”; addressing the Civil War
as an issue of states’ rights; giving more attention to conservative
organizations like the Moral Majority, National Rifle Association, and
the Heritage Foundation; replacing the term “Capitalism” with
“free-enterprise system”; referring to the United States as a
“constitutional republic” rather than as a “democracy”; questioning
whether the United Nations imperils U.S. sovereignty; vindicating
McCarthyism of the 1950s; teaching about the Christian influences on the
Founders (and I would add even though many did not define themselves as
Christians /per se/, and some considered themselves as secular); giving
expanded information of a list of Confederate officials and conservative
political leaders like Phyllis Schaffley; eliminating references to
James Madison (an ardent proponent for separating religion from the
affairs of state); refusing to update B.C. and A. D. to B.C.E. and C.E.;
watering down and sometimes deleting sections of U.S. civil rights
history; watering down and questioning the legal doctrine and rationale
for the separation of religion (“church”) and state. An amendment
proposed but eventually voted down was a change in the term “Atlantic
Slave Trade” to “Atlantic Triangular Trade.”
*Knowledge Production*
**
On a micro level, what the Texas School Board, and earlier the Arizona
legislature, show us are some of the ways in which those who hold power
determine and define “knowledge” and how "knowledge" is consciously and
very deliberately produced and disseminated.
In academic parlance, we refer to the concept of “hegemony” coined by
social theorist Antonio Gramsci to describe the ways in which the
dominant group, in this case socially conservative Christians in general
and predominantly Protestants, successfully disseminate /dominant/
social realities and social visions in a manner accepted as common
sense, as “normal,” as universal—even though only an estimated 30% of
the world’s inhabitants are Christian—and as representing part of the
natural order. This dominant-group controlled production of “knowledge”
maintains the marginality of other groups, and it denies all students
options in understanding multiple perspectives from which to construct
meaning.
This institutionalization of a socially conservative Christian norm or
standard functions to legitimize what can be said, who has the authority
to speak and be heard, and what is authorized as true or as /the/ truth,
while perpetuating the notion that all people are or should be Christian
and socially conservative, which thereby continues the privileging of
socially conservative Christians and Christianity.
The Schools: An Early History
Throughout the history of this country, in their role as social
institutions, schools have reproduced the cultural norms, often with the
attendant range of social inequities and dominant group privileges found
within the larger society.
In Colonial America, few regions, except for the larger New England
towns, mandated by law the building of schools or the provision of
childhood instruction. Schools that were constructed and teachers who
were hired were done so only because local citizens decided to pool
their resources. During this time, classroom lessons were tied directly
to Protestant religions and the Protestant Bible, which the early
settlers brought with them from England.
School lessons primarily centered on preaching, catechizing, and
prayers, which called for freedom from influences of the Devil and
attacks from the native populations. In addition, the most frequently
used schoolbook was /The New England Primer/, to teach reading as well
as the Protestant catechism. A number of Catholic parishes established
parochial or parish schools, partly due to the Protestant teachings that
pervaded the public school curriculum.
In their attempts to “civilize” and convert Indians to Christianity, the
French, Spanish, as well as the English colonists established Indian
schools, though most Indians refused to attend. Black people, however,
generally were not accorded the right of an education, especially in the
southern colonies, which passed laws enacting heavy fines and physical
punishment against anyone found educating them.
Following the Revolutionary War, leaders such as Thomas Jefferson and
others called for state supported and mandated public education,
believing that the very survival of the new Republic depended on an
educated populous. Jefferson, for example, advocated for a three-year
publicly supported education for all White children—no such guarantees
were to be extended to children of enslaved Africans—with advanced
education provided to a select few males—not females. As Jefferson
wrote, the schools will be “raking a few geniuses from the rubbish.”
The first statewide school system was established in Massachusetts in
the 1820s largely as a result of the efforts of Horace Mann, the first
secretary of education of any state in the United States. While
traveling throughout Massachusetts, Mann found an unequal patchwork of
local schools dependent on the tax base of each community. He proposed a
new structure, which he called “common schools.” These schools were to
serve all children, of all income levels. He hoped these schools would
help to end, or at least reduce, the financial inequities between
citizens of the state. Mann and other political and community leaders
also supported a homogeneity of opinion and belief. They proposed that
the main purpose of public education was for the development of good
character based on religion, which was itself based on the central
teachings of the Protestant Bible.
During the eighteenth century, the public schools throughout the U.S.
used extensively the /McGuffey Readers/. Though children of a number of
faiths attended the schools, a Protestant character infused these books.
So, both during colonial times and the early years of public education
following the Revolutionary War, a Protestant foundation permeated
schooling.
*(No) Conclusion*
**
The Texas School Board has clearly taken a retrenchment position away
from the very modest gains made in curricular development of providing
multiple perspectives, which could stimulate students’ critical thinking
skills, to a default monocultural position from a conservative Christian
European-heritage perspective. Basically, the Board is confusing
education with indoctrination.
Though Texas K-12 students comprise only approximately 8.5% (4.7
million) of the estimated 55.2 million students nationwide, Texas is the
second largest textbook market for book publishers. The curricular
changes in Texas, therefore, have implications for the content in
textbooks nationwide.
Dr. Warren J. Blumenfeld
Department of Curriculum and Instruction
Iowa State University
Ames, IA 50011
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