For years the
Texas State Board of Education has fallen somewhere between “embarrassment” and “disgrace.” But lately it's reached a new low: hijacking our kids' textbooks to teach a mindset that's downright un-American.
In its revamp of the state's social studies curriculum, a majority of the board has consistently voted to reshape our history. Instead of the messy, complicated past, the extremist members prefer a simple story of triumphant Christian soldiers.
Last week the board voted to remove
Thomas Jefferson — Thomas Jefferson! — from a list of Enlightenment thinkers who changed the world. The Enlightenment, with its emphasis on reason over tradition, doesn't sit well with the board.
Equally inconvenient is the Constitution's First Amendment, which begins: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The idea — one of those brave young Enlightenment ideas — was that the United States doesn't officially embrace any single religion.
We are a democracy, not a theocracy; a live-and-let-live country where we're all free to worship as we choose. It's a crucial idea, and one that separates Texas from the Taliban.
But the board didn't like it. By 10-5, it voted down a proposal that teachers “examine the reasons the Founding Fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring government from protecting or disfavoring any particular religion over all others.”
Religious freedom? Phooey.
How did we get into this mess? Unfortunately, we elect our board officials in partisan elections that few Texans notice. And since democracy works only when people pay attention, it's easy for extremists to slide into office.
You could argue that democracy is already repairing that wound, that the board has become so terrible that we voters have started to pay attention. In the most recent Republican primary, of the five ultraconservative incumbents running, three lost outright, and one is in a runoff.
But should we have a system that works only after it has sunk this deep into dysfunction? We agree with state Sen. Rodney Ellis, who argues that the entire State Board of Education should be put up for a sunset review and reconsidered from the ground up.
Maybe we should elect our board members in nonpartisan elections. Maybe they should be appointed by the governor and approved by the state Senate (a process similar to the way federal judges are appointed). Or maybe curriculum authority should move from the state board to the Texas commissioner of education, who's appointed by the governor — a higher-level politician that more voters pay attention to.
None of those solutions will be free of politics. Refining a school curriculum is always messy, a battle among competing interests with fiercely held beliefs.
And that's OK. Theocracies are simple. Democracies aren't.
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