when it made its recent decisions on social studies curricular matters. This is clear when one examines the results of a survey conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund and released on May 20th. 601 Texans were surveyed, and the results are +/- 4.0%. The results are interesting, to say the least:
Texas voters believe the public school curriculum should be set by teachers and scholars, not politicians - 72% support this position, with only 19% wanting an elected school board making the decision. Consider the breakout by party identification of those supporting the idea of educators and scholars making the decision:
63% of Republicans
76% of Independents
Among parents, support is equally strong, with 78% supporting this position, of whom 69% STRONGLY support it.
There is more below the fold
The majority of Texas voters believe that separation of church and state is a key principle of the Constitution -
overall, 68% of those surveyed agreed with separation as a core principle, of whom a clear majority (51%) strongly supporting this principle. Only 26% disagreed with the idea that separation of church and state is a key principle of the Constitution.
Among those believing it is a key principle by party:
59% of Republicans
76% of Democrats
74% of Independents
The survey was taken BEFORE the recent vote, and was also released before the vote, and obviously had no impact on the conservative members of the Texas Board of Education who were determined to impose their viewpoints upon the rest of the residents of Texas.
I remind readers that there has been a history of elected boards at local and state levels trying to similarly impose their views.
In Kansas the state board of education wanted to drop testing of evolution from the state biology standards. A sufficient number of new members who opposed that right-wing position were elected to reverse the decision. This was a conflict that went on for more than half a decade, from 1999 to the final vote in 2005.
In the Dover Independent School District the school board did impose a requirement to teach "intelligent design" in local biology classes, but (a) lost a US District Court Case (Kitzmiller v Dover ISD) decided by John Jones, a Republican appointed by George W. Bush. No appeal was filed because all members of the school board making the imposition were defeated by opponents of the plan, and the new board had no interest in pursuing the case.
People often get elected to boards, especially at local levels but in some states to the state board, while flying under the radar. Were one to go back a few decades one might find this a key tactic of Christian Coalition adherents.
NO elected office should ever be taken for granted. No candidate should be allowed to run unchallenged at least as far as positions on the issues on which s/he will make decisions: usually this means that candidate will have to have an opponent to raise such issues, otherwise it is unlikely the media will do so for the rest of us.
Elections have consequences. This applies not merely to the office of President and the ensuing power to appoint members of the Federal judiciary, including the nation's highest court. It applies to every board and legislative body, to every executive position, to those judicial offices at state and local levels where the position is achieved through elections.
It is unfortunate that the survey I cite did not get greater attention in the media before the final vote, although it is quite clear that those in Texas voting for the new standards did not give a damn what the people of Texas thought. The framing of the news stories might have been different, for what the headlines should have read is something like this:
Majority of Texas Board of Education imposes Social Studies Standards opposed by a clear majority of Texans
Perhaps you can offer additional - and better - suggestions for headlines more appropriate to what has happened.
We are starting to see opposition elsewhere, starting California. In Virginia, the dropping of Thomas Jefferson in favor of John Calvin will certainly not go over well, even if we now have an Attorney General who seems determined to use his office to similarly impose his religious and personal views, as demonstrated by his action against the University of Virginia with respect to global climate change, a civil request for documents that the University has decided to oppose in court.
Perhaps the dominance Texas had had over textbooks may be broken. Perhaps the forthcoming elections to the state board will sufficiently change its makeup so that there will not continue to be a 9-5 majority for the actions just taken. I am not so hopeful that there will be such a change, since the elections are by district, not statewide, which makes it harder to the statewide opposition to the standards to be reflected in the makeup of the board.
And now, if you don't mind, I will head off to school for another day of teaching real social studies, not the kind of indoctrination the current members of the Texas Board seek to impose on the children of their state.
Peace.