Texas Board of Education and the Re-writing of American History

[Negotiator]

Interesting factoid:

Number of times these terms are used in the Bible.

Christianity: 0

Christian: 3

Disciple: 263

[Toad]

This Texas BoE attempt to change the history books reeks of rewriting and whitewashing history. History class is generally kind of a joke since it's already been scrubbed down to near-illegibility as far as high school is concerned. I don't agree with inserting new 'facts' in there to promote a Christian or Conservative agenda, just like I wouldn't agree with inserting 'facts' to promote a Liberal or Scientologist agenda. If we want to put controversial things in our history books, we could start with "How things really went down" and let everything hang out so that the kids can decide on their own what to think of it.

History is pretty dark, and I'm not just talking about American history (I think that world history is 2 years in high school although I forget). The history of humanity in general is varied and interesting, but to understand the high points you have to understand what low points we've overcome, and I think that we do our children a disservice by not giving them access to more real history in high school. This is not to say that some history teachers don't do a good job teaching history, but they're doing so by expanding a lot on "the book" based on their own knowledge, and succeeding despite our history education system instead of because of it.

Putting pro-Christian advertisements in our history books, which is what this seems to amount to, is what Negotiator refers to "the cross and the flag holding hands" and I agree that we need to keep it out. It's not like Christianity is not already referenced a ton in the history of the United States, but making a big point of how the Founding Fathers, who kids are taught to basically worship in our history books as it stands, were Christian Men who decided to make a Christian Nation, "and they were the best dudes who ever lived and were obviously Christian because it's the best, just sayin kids" is going way too far in terms of both lying about history and promoting a particular religion above all others in state schooling.

If we could get a neutral third party to write a True history of the USA starting from day 1, and make teachers present that to our children, then I would be 100% for it. Let em learn how it all happened. But our high school history books aren't anything like that and I'd be surprised if anyone here thinks they are.