This article is from the second December issue of Breezes. Pick up a copy and start reading today!

Back in 2010 the Texas school board approved a new set of highly controversial criteria for their public schools’ history textbooks. This fall, the new books, published by McGraw Hill, are finally in the classroom. Starting this year, a new generation of Texans will graduate not knowing who Thomas Jefferson was and thinking Moses was a founding father.

• The Civil War had nothing to do with slavery. Really. In the words of Texas Education Agency board member Pat Hardy, everybody knows the Civil War was about states’ rights, slavery was just “a side issue.” To their credit, the state requires that students read primary sources from two figures, Lincoln and Davis, but none of the sources mention slavery.

• Jim Crow Laws and the Ku Klux Klan never existed. The textbooks neglect to mention these two fairly significant characteristics of the 20th century south. To Texan students, the Brown vs. Board of Education court case occurred just because some “buildings, buses, and teachers for all-black schools” happened to be “lower in quality.” There’s no mention that this difference was systemic and may have caused huge barriers for black students.

• The textbooks completely omit the incidence of Texas Rangers killing Mexican-Americans and the U.S. Army’s role in the extermination of Native Americans. These omissions are kind of surprising for Texas considering that, according the Pew Research Center, Hispanics made up 38% of the state’s population when the board was voting.
• Thomas Jefferson, despite being the author of the Declaration of Independence, is practically a footnote in the new textbooks which replace him with the right-wing icon John Calvin. This is largely because Jefferson was integral in the establishment of America’s separation of church and state, which the textbooks also try to downplay.

• Moses was essentially a founding father according to these textbooks. The new history standards require students to “identify the individuals whose principles of laws and government institutions informed American founding documents, including those of Moses,” and to establish how “biblical law” influenced America’s founding. So instead of talking about how the separation of church and state was part of what made American democracy such a revolutionary and effective political system, Texas students have to ignore separation entirely and somehow draw a clear line from government to the bible. Good luck.

These regulations are pretty ridiculous, but they wouldn’t be so outrageous if they were only a problem for Texas. This is the state that rants about seceding over health care, so Texas doing crazy things is nothing new. The real issue is that the changes Texas has implemented are affecting other states’ students too. Because Texas is the largest textbook market in the U.S. after California the new books they’re ordering will be the only books some smaller school districts in other states can order, regardless of whether or not they agree with these changes. Texas, by using its power as a large and influential state, it crossing the boundaries by affecting the learning of today’s students.