There Is Hope
When I read a report on Jefferson County Colorado high school students walking out in protest over proposed changes to the school’s history curriculum, I rejoiced. Anyone that pays attention to current events knows there is a concerted attack on common sense being administered by conservative ideologues and their corporate sponsors. The kids in Colorado have decided enough is enough. Their misguided school board members are proposing a flag waving revisionist history curriculum that emphasizes obedience to law, extolls the virtues of individual freedom and free enterprise, and at the same time dismisses social consciousness, past struggles and victories for civil rights as mere footnotes. Hardly worth mentioning…, and PLEASE disregard the fact that our nation was actually forged in the fires of revolution caused by lack of representation in our government. Yeah…that’d be great.
These high school students have the good intuitive sense and understanding that to ignore history is to repeat it and that the constitution was not written by Jesus and Goldman Sachs. The protest was a clear message to parents and school board members alike that they, the kids, can handle the truth! Five schools were involved in the political action. At Arvada West High alone, five hundred students walked out and teachers have been leading actions as well. Fifty teachers at Standley Lake and Conifer high schools staged a sickout to protest the new standards, forcing classes to be canceled. YES!
Part two of this story originates in Texas. As they say, everything is bigger in Texas, including school textbook sales, which is why Texas has an inordinate amount of influence on the content of those books. As we know, historically Texas is not a hotbed of progressive critical thought. As a matter of fact the Texas State GOP platform in 2012 proposed specifically outlawing critical thought being taught in their school system! I am not making this up. That was in 2012, but I have a feeling that not much has changed there in regard to the mental condition of the GOP controlled state house.
A recent article in Newsweek on Texas’ diddling of the nation’s text books, describes the growing general acceptance that lay persons beliefs and opinions are legitimately on equal footing with trained academic’s findings in any chosen field. This new phenomenon of the untrained somehow knowing more than the trained is exemplified by the conservative co-option of the Jefferson County school board and their attempt to introduce a Texas style interpretation of history. For example, did you know Moses had a hand in writing our constitution? Nor did I. The board member at point on this proposed new history curriculum for Jefferson County is community college graduate Julie Williams, an office manager at a dental office. She feels the current curriculum “…questions our American values and leaves out so many of our Founding Fathers”, (huh?) and that “We shouldn’t be encouraging our kids to think America is a bad place.” Ms. Williams has every right to “FEEL” anything she wants to feel, but she is entirely unqualified to pass judgment on an advanced history course developed by bona fide professional historians. As was humorously stated in the article, no more than those same historians are qualified to clean teeth at her dental office.
Students like protester Maggie Ramseur of Dakota Ridge High School feels a “dangerous” precedent would be set with this new curriculum. She told reporters, “The policies they are suggesting are ridden with political agendas” and that is “something that belongs in our curriculum as much as religious agendas do.” Perhaps high school students will take up the mantle of civil disobedience left unused for decades by the sixties college students of yore. I don’t blame the college students. The draft has been replaced with multiple deployments by “volunteers” (well played, ministry of endless war) and there just isn’t enough time in the day to work several jobs, attend classes and still be the country’s conscience. The good news is the high school student does not bear the economic burdens and time constraints of the college student and is in a good position to point out injustice, hypocrisy in government and political shenanigans in general. Revisionist history and the aforementioned “religious agendas” being foisted on high school students by those that would prefer compliant zombies would be a good place for these newly minted political activists to start.
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Alex Symington
Alex lives with his wife, Anna in Key West, Florida. He enjoys writing poetry and prose and making the complacent uncomfortable.
More From Other Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/26/ap-history-protest_n_5890768.html?cps=gravity
http://www.newsweek.com/2014/10/03/textbook-case-bad-textbooking-texas-272351.html
http://billmoyers.com/content/messing-with-texas-textbooks/
your argument is one of degree; all schools, in all nations teach “revisionist” dogma according to the mandates of the state. no where is the “real” history put in front of students, at any level of education. I have a Ph.D. in economics, and at no time in my journey to acquire that degree was I taught the genesis of the modern American financial system nor what preceded it. you are taught what the state wants you to be taught, so you are socialized into the society that you occupy. I spent several years as a kid in England, and I can assure you that the history I was taught there glorified the nation rather than revealing it as the death machine that it once was. we were all taught that Washington was a great general, that Lincoln freed the slaves, that FDR ended the depression; all demonstrable lies. yet they are taught for a reason: to socialize you to love America, to give you heroes to look up to, to believe that America is good.
the mistake you make is blaming this on conservatives as if there exists a real divide in this country. there is no divide. there is no liberal and conservative, republican or democrat, there is only the state. and the purpose of any government, of any state, is control of its citizens.