Texas textbook clout

A recent article in the New York Times Magazine (02-14-10) reported on the disturbing influence that the Texas State Board of Education has on the content of textbooks used in schools. Why the clout?

Because the huge size of the public schools in Texas, along with their statewide unified requirements for textbook content, make them the largest single client of textbook publishers; and, because it's too expensive to publish different texts for different states, publishers tend to edit their books to meet Texas' requirements. So Georgia and Maine wind up using textbooks designed for Texas.

So why is this disturbing, other than that diversity might be a good idea? Because the Texas School Board has been virtually taken over by a majority of right wing Christian zealots whose main purpose is to change what children are taught. This is not just trying to outlaw teaching of evolution in Kansas or blacklisting Heather Has Two Mommies in Mississippi.

This is about re-writing history to claim that: "the United States is a Christian nation founded to advance Christian ideals."

The latest tactic seems to be to establish this in the textbooks as a basic historical "fact," which will then be influential in legislation and court decisions later. Their motto is: "what is taught to schoolchildren today becomes the philosophy of the legislators of tomorrow."

The task forces of educators who design curricula and recommend educational standards and textbook content to the Texas Board are reportedly quite good, thorough, and thoughtful about such matters. But then the zealots on the Board overrule the recommendations and substitute their own bigotry for the educators' superior knowledge of the subject. Until recently, the Chairman of the Board was a dentist, who insists on substituting his version of history for that of professional historians.

So, what of this claim that we are a Christian nation founded to advance Christian ideals? Letters in response to the article are in today's edition of the Magazine. The claim is just not true. The evidence should be not what the religious activists of today claim but the writings of the founders of the nation.

First: the Declaration of Independence mentions God, but the Constitution does not, despite the attempts to conflate the two. It is the Constitution that establishes our system of government and our laws. James Madison, the chief author of the Constitution wrote that Christianity has been on trial for almost 15 centuries.

What has been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."

Thomas Jefferson, as President of the University of Virginia, prohibited the teaching of religion to undergraduates. He famously coined the term "wall of separation" between church and state, although that does not actually appear in the Constitution. It was in a letter about the subject. More to the point, in 1779 the Senate unanimously ratified the Treaty of Tripoli, which contains the words:

"As the government of the United States of America . . . . is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."

This right-wing, activist influence on the Texas Board has decreased somewhat as voters have replaced some of the more zealous members. The answer is not to erase any mention of Christianity or God from textbooks, as though it is too hot an issue for school children to handle, and not simply to replace one set of bogus facts by another set of more authentic facts.

The place of religion in the history of our country is complex and should be presented as that -- as a debate between conflicting values and beliefs, about which different people will arrive at different answers. In our a nation of diverse religious groups, as well as groups of no religious beliefs, the over-riding principle is -- and should be understood by all as such -- tolerance of difference and strict avoidance of government favoring or promoting one group or another.

One only needs to distort the facts if one's belief cannot stand the scrutiny of truth. And that, of course, is their point. They don't want children to be told that beliefs are not absolute truth and that one may make up one's own mind about these questions.

The facts are that Christian ideals may have inspired many of the early settlers and may be consistent and overlap with our system of government in many ways, but the structure and protections in our Constitution are much more a reflection of the principles of equality and justice springing from the Enlightenment thinkers. And that should be recognized -- as should the clarity with which the Founders made religious freedom a right, and at the same time eliminated any suggestion that one religion would be favored over any other by our government.

Ralph