Too Much Equality in School Curriculum??

                Is equality threatening to ruin the very core of Texas conservatism?  It appears as though we have been given our children too much information on the rest of the world.  The Texas Board of Education has drafted a resolution limiting what is written about Islam in social Studies books.  They have also proposed limiting information about the Constitution’s stand on separation of church and state.  Apparently the Board sees the information provided on the Islam religions to be over shadowing what is presented on Christianity.

                The conservative bloc on the board of education is afraid that such equality may be heightened by the mention of Islam.  Texas will be educating their children on terrorism and how to hijack airplanes.  Islam is bad.  Christianity is good.   The board has a skewed reality on what religions are dominant in the world.  They would rather present their interpretation that Christianity is the dominant world religion.

This resolution says nothing of educating its schools’ social studies and history teachers though.  The presentation of history seems more important to what is written in books.  The ideology of the teacher and the emphasis placed on certain highlights in history will have more impact than the tweaking of a social studies book.  My daughter came home from school one day last year and said’ “Mr. Henry wanted me to ask you if Buddhism was a religion or not”.  Apparently my child told the social studies teacher that her mom was a Buddhist.  Mr. Henry wanted to make a point to me and the class that Buddhism isn’t an actual religion.  I caught on early to what he was trying to prove by letting my daughter know that technically it would be more of a philosophy than a religion, because Buddhists don’t worship a god.  Mr. Henry didn’t win that time.  But it showed me that he was dead set on letting his kids in class know that certain religions are “valid” and certain ones are not.

The Board proposed to remove any mention of Hispanics dying alongside whites at the Alamo.  The board also rejected adding Hip Hop as a cultural movement.  It is no surprise to me that Institutional inequalities exist for racial and sexual minority groups.  In this case, The Texas Board of Education is an instigator in these inequalities and they help to fuel the fire. Whether we hide the fact that Thomas Jefferson had sex with his slaves or the fact that Taoism and Buddhism are valid religions we are left with the same issue.  Why are the conservatives on The Board of Education so against diversifying our children’s knowledge of different cultures?  It is a frightening thought that we are ok in Texas to keep our kids ignorant.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/12/texas-education-board-app_n_497440.html