Why do members of the Texas State Board of Education insist on rejecting guidance from real experts? Case in point: far-right board members continue to argue that they were justified in removing Thomas Jefferson, primary author of the Declaration of Independence, from a key curriculum standard for high school world history courses. Those board members claim that Jefferson, who argued that a “wall of separation between church and state” is essential to freedom, was misplaced in the standard.
The original standard read: “explain the impact of Enlightenment ideas from John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Thomas Jefferson on political revolutions from 1750 to the present.”
Cynthia Dunbar, one of the board’s most outspoken religious conservatives, persuaded the board to change the standard to this: “explain the impact of the writings of John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and Sir William Blackstone.”
Board members have pointed to no historian to support the change. In fact, the board’s far-right members, such as Chairwoman Gail Lowe, have simply stated their own opinions about Jefferson as fact. Here’s what Lowe said last week:
“This was inappropriate placement of Jefferson ’s name. Jefferson was not himself an Enlightenment philosopher, although he was heavily influenced by the writings of these individuals.”
We decided it was past time that someone — especially if the board itself won’t do it — ask a real historian, instead of politicians, to weigh in on this. So we forwarded Lowe’s statement and the revised standard to Dr. Edward Countryman, university distinguished professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Prof. Countryman is an award-winning author and specialist on colonial America and the American revolution. Here is what he has to say:
There is absolutely no question that Jefferson is an Enlightenment figure of the first order. In my major-level Revolution course I’ve just taught Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia (1782), having previously taught his emergence piece (“A Summary View of the Rights of British America”) and the Declaration. We’ll continue the Notes on Tuesday dealing specifically with the tortured language on slavery and race.
(more…)
Today Texas lawmakers picked up a bigger megaphone to get the attention of a bitterly divided, out-of-control State Board of Education. At a Capitol press conference, members of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus (MALC) announced that they are scheduling a public hearing for April 28 to examine how and why the state board has run off the tracks and what the Texas Legislature should do about it.
