2010/01/13
Update on Texas curriculum debates
Texas debates the way history will be taught – Yahoo! News.
Glad to hear this:
Early quibbles over how much prominence to give civil rights leaders such as Cesar Chavez and Thurgood Marshall, and the inclusion of Christmas seem to have been smoothed over. Board Chairman Gail Lowe said at the start of the hearing that Chavez and Christmas will not be removed from the standards.
But board members are still crafting dozens of amendments to be raised for consideration before the tentative vote, expected Thursday. The 15-member board won’t adopt final standards until March.
I’m also glad to hear testimony like this:
In early testimony, the board was urged to include more examples of influential Mexican Americans in the nation’s history and to further acknowledge Sikhism as a major world religion.
Fifteen-year old Harsimran Singh, who attends Round Rock High School, said the lack of understanding about his religion is “dehumanizing” and implored the board to require more discussion of the religion that mandates he wear a turban.
“I would like other people to know that I’m not Osama bin Laden,” Singh said. “I know a little bit about Christianity, I would like other people to know about my religion as well.”
And I’m surprised to hear that this even needs to be debated:
He’ll also ask the board to reconsider mentioning makeup entrepreneur Mary Kay Ash of Addison, Texas, more often than Christopher Columbus in the curriculum standard. At present Ash is mentioned twice; Columbus once.
Why is Ash mentioned twice?
As for the issues surrounding the ways religion is mentioned in the classroom: There needs to be a balance in acknowledging the presence and contributions of religious belief to our nation’s history without promoting one religion as preferable to others. Even from a Christian perspective, I believe we should separate Christianity as historical fact from Christianity as state-promoted religion — just as we might do in discussing the role of Judaism and Buddhism in the lives and contributions of European and Asian immigrants.
