So, dentist-turned-Christian historian Don McLeroy lost the District 9 Texas School Board Republican Primary - even if by a tiny margin. What this means, of course, is that he no longer gets to dictate the contents of Social Studies textbooks so as to paint the founding fathers as Bible thumpers who intended the U.S. to be a Christian Nation "serving as a beacon of hope and Christian charit to a lost and dying world." Old news, perhaps. But irrelevant? Hardly. First of all, the narrow loss (50.5%, according to this) means that most still wanted him (and his inflammatory ideas) around. I guarantee that McLeroy is not the sort to "go gently into that good night" - he'll find a way to come back, lend a voice to that 49.5% and all the fundamentalist conservatives who wish to wash over American public education with hyper religious, proto fascist propaganda.
Secondly, all results coming out of the Texas School board inevitably affects public education nationwide, due to Texas' undue influence in the textbook industry. Thirdly, the whole story serves as a cautionary tale: how did we get to this point? Teabaggers, fundamentalist Christianity in Public Schools, the complete erosion of anything that could be considered progressive. How did we get here?
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The Texas School Board of Education has been fiddling with its guidelines for a time now, bringing it ever-so-much closer to radical fundamentalist views. First fiddling with Creationism vs. Evolution, now History and Social Studies have come under scrutiny. Don McElroy, a self-professed Christian Fundamentalist, emerged as a leader of sorts of the movements, willing to go where few dared to tread in proposing amendments to the social studies curriculum guidelines. Items such as Ronald Reagan’s "leadership in restoring national confidence", the fundamental importance of figures and organizations such as Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association, and, of course, the fact that the creators of the Constitution and American Revolution intended this to be a Christian nation are all to be taught, according to this guy, to millions of kids statewide. As such, the only textbooks acceptable to the Texas School Board of Education, under these guidelines, would be those that would allow a rewriting of history along these fanciful lines.
Aside from the great disservice, from a global and educational standpoint, done to the poor souls attending public schools in Texas, why else should we care about this? Because Texas owns the textbook industry. This may be a bit of an overstatement, but considering the $22 billion education fund Texas has as its disposal, its sheer size and the fact that it has unified state curriculum standards since 1998, Texas manages to mobilize 48 million textbooks annually.(NYT)
Tom Barber, who worked as the head of social studies at the three biggest textbook publishers before running his own editorial company, says, "Texas was and still is the most important and most influential state in the country." And James Kracht, a professor at Texas A&M’s college of education and a longtime player in the state’s textbook process, told me flatly, "Texas governs 46 or 47 states."
By extension, public schools nationwide will, unwittingly or not, spread the propaganda. This spells a future scenario where, once again, the poorest districts with the least amount of resources would be exposed to half-formed, simplistic data regarding their history and their world. Instead of educating and empowering the population that most needs it, these textbook guidelines will manage to intensify fault lines in education. Why? Aside from the obvious divergence between public and private school education and resources, school districts in wealthier, more informed, more progressive school districs will, and have, bypassed textbook limitations.
My colleague and I have jettisoned our school's textbook completely and instead rely on primary-source documents available through collections like Yale's Avalon Project. We teach our students that history is made up of stories from a variety of viewpoints. The overriding narrative is that we are a tolerant society and are fortunate to be governed by a living document that is flexible as times change.
Religion should be discussed not to demonstrate exceptionalism but rather to show our progress in tolerance. Textbook publishers are becoming more irrelevant in the digital age, and kowtowing to Texas will only hasten their demise.
KATE MEYER
West Stockbridge, Mass.
What is Texas' aim, anyway? To spread far and wide the seeds of conservative propaganda, for starters. The plan, if successful, would indoctrinate future generations - not just in Texas, but elsewhere - to adopt a messianic, proto-fascist vision of America. Future leaders, Supreme Court judges, voters, teachers, lawyers, and media disseminators would have a concept of their country as having a divinely preordained mission to, well, do whatever the devil it wants, to whoever it wants to do it to. Isn't that half the fun of having a divinely preordained mission? God loves me - not you. Now shaddup or I'll nuke your ass...
This is the part that smacks of proto-fascism to me. American Exceptionalism was one of the primary goals of the new guidelines - basically anything that dictates that God prefers America over other nations, and Christianity over other religions. Franco, Hitler, Mussolini, the Taliban, etc - all succeeded in disseminating Exceptionalism so successfully that fascism was an inevitable result. And if this seems a little extreme, this line cinches it for me:
McLeroy moved that Margaret Sanger, the birth-control pioneer, be included because she "and her followers promoted eugenics"
But the guy lost the vote. It didn't happen. No matter. What interests me about this whole issue are the larger ramifications. How did the conservative movement gain so much speed, so much so that it threatens to overtake the American cultural and political landscape so completely? How did we get to the point where some of the greatest progressive gains of the 20th century seem so imperiled?
They managed to form a movement. At a time of economic uncertainty, cultural upheaval, and (for some) overwhelming pluralism, the ultra conservatives have managed to forge a cohesive social movement that bridges socioeconomic gaps, differing special interests and other demographic differences around a single, all-powerful identifying mission. They are in it for the long-haul; planning strategically not for short-term gains as much as for long-term changes, 10 or 20 years into the future. The individual organizations are permeable enough to allow cooperation and mobilization of agendas. Furthermore, the successes they are having are capable of changing the very culture around them. In short, Conservatives are having a movement moment.
Beth Zemsky describes the attributes of movement moments precisely on these terms, and a lot of what has happened in Texas, and elsewhere, sounds a lot like it.
Social movements tend to cluster temporally in waves. Each wave has its own lifecycle: a beginning, a peak, and a trough (Snow and Benford, 1992). Specific movements within any given historical wave are ripples off the bigger wave. These specific movements tend to share the same way of analyzing and explaining the problems facing their communities. This shared explanation provides a way of interpreting experience and a core narrative that underlies everything the movement does. Social movement theorists call this core interpretative lens the "master frame" for a movement wave (Lakoff, 2005; Benford and Snow, 2000; Snow, et al, 1997).
Framing is "meaning" work; a struggle over the production of values, ideas, symbols, and language that mobilizes some people while dampening the mobilization of others (Gerzon, 1997). It is an active and ongoing process that results in a sense of shared understanding for a group that helps render events that happen in the world or close to home collectively meaningful. By simplifying and condensing aspects of the "world out there," successful organizing frames function to categorize experience and guide action. The more a frame resonates with the daily life of a community, the more mobilization potential it has (Snow, et al, 1997).
Progressives had a movement moment too, during the Civil Rights era. The rallying cry was rights, a concept that, according to Zemsky, has lost relevance with the collective culture.
It is not that "rights" are not needed or essential to the well-being of communities, or that the progressive agenda is wrong per se. Rather, because we have been on the downward slope of the last progressive movement wave for so long, the way social problems are defined and the solutions that are suggested are simply no longer as meaningful to a majority of people.
The conservatives' rallying cry resonates to those disillusioned with the perceived elitism and failures of the progressive movement, as well as builds its momentum from the progressives' fading frame: Civil Rights. What progressives need, then, is not just a new concept, but a larger, more permeable, more long-term vision, tethered to a unifying core of values, a frame. Progressives need to find a greater YES to counteract the YES that the conservative concept provides at present.
The Minnesota-based ISAIAH organization provides an interesting example of what this might look like. A religious organization, interestingly enough (and evidence that it's not really Jesus' fault, the mess in Texas), ISAIAH has managed to learn these lessons and create a powerful organization which, at the local, state, and national level, effects change on issues ranging from public education, transportation, affordable healthcare and international issues. By tethering social justice concerns to a larger (in this case, faith-based) YES, ISAIAH has succeeded in mobilizing and building successful coalitions across a wide spectrum of issues and concerns.
ISAIAH is an interfaith organization. ISAIAH leaders have been working in our community for over a decade. Our work is based on the broadly shared values of:
· A hopeful attitude toward our common future
· Understanding that we live in community, systemic injustice that affects one, affects us all
· Sharing our abundance of resources and natural talents/gifts for the benefit of the common good
When it comes to thinking of how to spearhead a powerful movement, ISAIAH is a place where non profit leaders, progressive citizens and all those concerned with where this country is headed, could take a look.