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In response to concerns Texans shared through public input about vague and inaccurate historical references, the Texas Education Agency made minor revisions to certain texts but largely defended its choices by saying that “the content in these instructional materials is written in an age-appropriate and suitable manner.”
Several of the nearly a dozen parents, historians and educators whom the Tribune interviewed about the curriculum agree that age appropriateness is an important factor to consider when teaching history.
Teaching elementary school kids about slavery in a meaningful way “can build on children’s instincts and help students apply them to their classrooms, communities and study of the United States,” according to Learning for Justice, a community education program of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which created a guide for history teachers.
Rather than poring over the gruesome details of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, for instance, the organization recommends intentionally building instruction “that prepares students to understand the long, multidimensional history of slavery and its enduring consequences,” similar to how math instructors teach the basics of addition and subtraction long before students learn algebra.
That includes teaching that many of the founding fathers enslaved people, that enslavers often separated entire families for profit and as a form of punishment, and that the forced labor of enslaved people built many important buildings and institutions, according to Learning for Justice.
Historians interviewed by the Tribune also say that if the state is unwilling to use the materials it designed as a vehicle to provide students a more comprehensive picture of the country’s history, then education officials should reconsider its cross-disciplinary approach and whether the proposed reading and language arts curriculum is the appropriate venue for such lessons.
“I would just start, as a basic premise, that you not lie to kids,” said Michael Oberg, a history professor at the State University of New York College at Geneseo who previously taught in Texas and followed debates over the state’s social studies standards. Oberg pointed to excerpts of the state curriculum about the founding fathers’ desire for liberty and equality and Robert E. Lee’s leadership as lessons he believes leave out significant historical context.
How the curriculum covers other major historical chapters also calls into question why lessons on some events are considered age appropriate and others are not.
In stark contrast to the state curriculum’s lack of detail when covering American slavery, for example, a fifth-grade lesson on World War II is clear and precise about the horrors of the Holocaust, which it defines as “the state-sponsored and systematic persecution and murder of six million Jewish people by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.” The lesson further highlights how Jewish people “were dehumanized, imprisoned, attacked and murdered” and “stripped of their rights, dignity and lives.”
How Texas schools teach U.S. history to children has been the focus of intense political conflict in recent years. The state passed legislation in 2021 making it illegal for schools to teach slavery and racism as part of the “true founding” of the country.
The legislation came about after the summer of mass protests for racial justice in response to the murder of George Floyd, a Black man killed by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020. In the years that followed, Republican state lawmakers across the country pushed for legislation outlawing what Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick once described as “woke philosophies” maintaining that people, by virtue of their race or sex, are either oppressed or inherently racist. Many State Board of Education members have successfully campaigned on similar ideas in recent years.
Now, the 2021 law prompts Texas schools to teach children that slavery and racism are “deviations from, betrayals of, or failures to live up to the authentic founding principles of the United States, which include liberty and equality.”
The law has sowed fear and confusion about what teachers are allowed to teach, while causing others to stray away or move quickly past certain topics like slavery and civil rights, said Jerrica Liggins, secondary education curriculum director for the Paris school district. Students are the ones who ultimately suffer, she said.
“Left out of the curriculum, I would say it would be anyone of color. But if you think about left out in the classroom, it’s everyone. Because we’re not giving them everything the way it happened,” Liggins said. “I’d say we were kind of sugar-coating it to make it seem to be more pleasant when it was really horrific.”
Caleb McDaniel, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian who teaches at Rice University, worries the state curriculum’s framing of American slavery could diminish its significance and make it difficult for students to understand. The Civil War lesson he reviewed, for instance, doesn’t detail the legal mechanisms built into the Constitution that enabled slavery to expand in the decades leading up to the war. The lessons about the founding fathers, he said, also fail to provide students a full picture of who the men were.
George Washington is quoted in the curriculum, for example, as saying “there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition” of slavery. But the quote is cherry-picked from a longer letter in which Washington criticizes Quaker abolitionists in Philadelphia who are working to free enslaved people, McDaniel noted.
McDaniel added that the materials he reviewed reflect how history curricula have come a long way from a time when some would question whether slavery was the cause of the Civil War. But he said their evolution has not quite “reached its ending point.”
“I think the serious study of the American past reveals a lot of inequality and a lot of failures to live up to the ideals of democracy, and racial injustice is a key example of that,” McDaniel said. “I would challenge the idea that calling attention to that and helping students understand that part of our history is ideological in some way.”
Mark Chancey, a religious studies professor at Southern Methodist University, was one of several people who provided public input about how the curriculum addresses slavery and religion.
Chancey said the materials’ whitewashing of the nation’s founders stood out to him, as did the repeated insistence that they sought freedom for all Americans. He also pointed out that for a curriculum that its defenders claim will teach children about the role Christianity played in the nation’s founding, it fails to address the fact that many people used the religion to justify their support of slavery.
“Public schools are educating for civic purposes. We’re developing our citizenry. We’re preparing students to function in a pluralistic democracy and to deliberate about different ideas,” Chancey said. “Students need to have an accurate understanding of history to do that, and many of these lessons work against that goal by oversimplifying American history to the point of distortion.”
The state cannot afford to produce another generation of children who don’t have an accurate understanding of history, added Susan Nayak, a mother of an Austin school district graduate who provided public input to the Texas Education Agency on the curriculum.
“You can’t just, ‘Oh, this person is just a hero, and we’re just going to talk about their good parts, and that’s it.’ I just don’t think that’s helpful for kids,” Nayak said. “They understand that they are not all good and all bad. And experiencing these people, historical figures, as true, complex humans, is actually helpful for them.”
Public education advocates plan to continue calling on the State Board of Education to reject the materials, said Emily Witt, senior communications and media strategist for the Texas Freedom Network, which produced a report on the curriculum and raised concerns about the religious emphasis and whitewashing of American history.
Board members have also raised concerns about the curriculum, though some of their worries are different.
Patricia Hardy, a Fort Worth Republican serving on the board, said she’s still reviewing the materials. But thus far, she doesn’t think they do an adequate job of merging reading and social studies lessons. The history lessons are scattered and not in chronological order, she said, which could make it difficult for students to retain the information. Nor does she find the history lessons — like a second grader learning about the Emancipation Proclamation — age appropriate.
“It does need to be taught, but it’s got to be taught at the right place,” said Hardy, a former history teacher and social studies coordinator.
Some parents told the Tribune it’s crucial that their children see themselves accurately reflected in the state’s history lessons.
Keiawnna Pitts, a Round Rock community activist and mother of four, who is Black, acknowledged that kids are impressionable but said they’re exposed early in their lives to topics like race outside of their homes and classrooms. She also said children start asking questions from a young age. Glossing over the difficult parts of history, she said, does not help them to make sense of the world around them.
“Why do we need to introduce it to our kids early? Because I need them to think critically past what is being told to them,” Pitts said. “We’re gonna have to be the ones teaching our kids, because this is what we’re gonna always get — what they’re comfortable with.”
Disclosure: Rice University, Southern Methodist University, Southern Poverty Law Center and Texas Freedom Network have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
–texastribune.org
