As many know by now, this month the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) has voted on a variety of amendments to the state social studies educational curriculum. These amendments will severely mitigate the information Texas students will receive concerning the 1st Amendment rights and and the boundary between religion and government in the U.S.
Furthermore, since Texas is the one of the largest consumers of textbooks in the country, most publishers tend to shape the content in textbooks based on the curriculum standards set by Texas government. Thus, this misguided change in curriculum could potentially affect our children across the nation, not just in Texas. Urgent action is very much needed on this front.
Among the proposed changes to be made in the Texas curriculum, the SBOE voted to: 1) Remove Thomas Jefferson from the world history curriculum of Enlightenment thinkers and replace him with Christian thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin; 2) Require that students explore the right to bear arms as part of the 1st Amendment rights of free expression (but which is already covered in the 2nd Amendment); and 3) Eliminate an amendment that would require students to "examine the reasons the Founding Fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring government from promoting or disfavoring any particulary religion over all others. The amendment didn't pass because many on the SBOE thought it "historically inaccurate." (Source: Interfaith Alliance)
If you are concerned about 1st Amendment rights for the freedom of religion and the separation of religion and government, please take action by sending a letter to 3 major textbook publishers urging them to reject the Texas SBOE's curriculum changes. Let's act to make sure our children's educational curricula are based on historically backed evidence and not on any ideology.
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