Last week, the Bullock Texas State History Museum cancelled a book event three and a half hours before it was supposed to start. Written by journalists Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford, the book is titled Forget the Alamo, and, according to historian H. W. Brands, who reviewed the book for the
Thanks HRC for this Letter, one of your best IMHO.
I remember the Alamo. Or perhaps I should say, "I remember the Alamo myth." When I was 5 years old and living in Seattle with my parents and older sister, "Davey Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier" was a big deal. I had a (fake) coonskin cap which I only took off on days when I thought my Mickey Mouse hat (the big ears were fake, too) was more the thing. My cap pistol was real, however. Very cool! We did not have a TV yet, but our next door neighbors did, so we could keep up with all the larger-than-life events of the Fess Parker/Disney serial version of Davey's life that became intertwined with my yard play and, no doubt, helped plant the seeds of my interest in US history and put me on the road to unquestioning acceptance of many American myths that even now are wrapped up in my understanding of patriotism (which I define as "love of country").
Of course, Davey Crockett (my Dad had always called me Davey, too) got most of my attention for only a year, and then we were off to Pittsburgh PA and my heroes became Roberto Clemente and -- of course -- Alan Shepard who went into space for about 10 minutes on my birthday! My father -- a serious Civil War buff with a groaning bookshelf to prove it -- claiming his right to go out on a Saturday afternoon to do manly things with his son, took me, over my pacifist mother's objections, to see "The Horse Soldiers" on the big screen. Then, having seen I was manly enough not to cry or cover my eyes during the battle scenes, about a year later he took me to see "The Alamo" in which the heroic Union cavalry colonel (John Wayne) had been miraculously transformed into my first true love, Davey Crockett! (Eat your heart out, Fess Parker!)
So my "understanding" of Crockett and The Alamo changed face, but the example of Texian/American heroism was confirmed and -- I am ashamed to say -- my knowledge of that event, even after learning about how the US bullied the Mexicans into giving up what is now a major part of our Southwest, had remained largely unchanged until this morning.
Of course it is now no surprise to me that the Alamo was really about maintaining slavery and Manifest Destiny, and I have no doubt that better historians than John Wayne (who also produced "The Alamo) have gotten pretty close to knowing what really happened there, and I am not surprised that the underlying factors are less glorious than our pop-culture patriotism has made them seem. I am even pleased to know that Davey Crockett had the good sense to surrender and hang onto a few more minutes or hours or days of life, hoping, I suppose, to talk his way out of a bad situation rather than be snuffed out like his compatriots. He was reputedly a good talker and perhaps believed that discretion was the better part of valor, and all that.
Enough reminiscing.... My point is that myths, whether they be ancient Greek and Roman myths or the foundational national myths of modern nations are -- by definition -- both true and untrue simultaneously. Even the Alamo was an example of individuals fighting together in defense of something so important to them they were willing to die for it. We're talking immense physical courage in the face of near certain defeat and death. As the Italians say, "These are not peanuts."
So that part of the myth is true.
But history is not -- or at least shouldn't be -- aimed at propagating uplifting myths. Instead, history is the facts as determined by intelligent people doing the heavy lifting of finding out what really happened. It involves digging through rubble and rummaging in attics and re-reading long forgotten letters and journals and camping out in libraries and then trying to piece it all together so that we can understand the facts as they relate to other facts. And the best historians tend to be good writers as well.
So when historians do their job well, and the majority of other historians confirm the truth of one account over an earlier one, the only reasonable thing to do is accept the new version. And if this means discarding a glorious national myth much beloved by people like me with long memories, so be it, the truth is its own reward.
They very idea that Texas politicians would rudely cancel a "book event" at their State History Museum because the book in question is not to their liking and/or offends them is utterly unacceptable. Are we on the verge of a cultural revolution? Will they send people who disagree with their proto-fascist ideology to the gulags? Or are there gas chambers awaiting the "differently patriotic" among us? Thirty-seven years later, does 1984 still loom on our horizon?
Have the good people of the great State of Texas lost their marbles? Are they in the streets yet?
Leaving aside (which of course we cannot) global warming, I can think of no greater danger to our country and the world than politicians like Dan Patrick and Gregg Abbott.
There's honest and dishonest. Honest history is a search for truth, a search that is never complete, and a truth that is never fixed. Dishonest history is the creation of myth to live in the place of truth, for the purpose that truth never be known.
It is very similar to science vs. religion. To me, that is the fundamental conflict of our time.
How could any of us have imagined a time in the U.S. when government officials would use their authority to suppress knowledge of what happened in the past? It's like the Soviets revising history to make it all glorious.
What's next? Book burnings? Or, if Republicans like Abbot ever gain enough power, the jailing of historians who dispel myths? Journalists who criticize GOP politicians? I fear we've only seen a glimmer of their potential immorality and corruption.
One thing humans have known, from at least the time of the Roman Empire, is that if you destroy the access to knowledge the population can be more easily controlled. It is a standard method of "culture cleansing."
It is why the Goths burned the Library of Celsus in Ephesus in 262 CE. Why the Ottoman Turks destroyed the library of Constantinople. It's why the Nazis destroyed Warsaw. It's why ISIS destroyed heritage sites in Iraq and Syria.
It is why Republicans are obsessed with perpetuating lies.
Having taught U.S. history for 27 years, and as a current historic preservationist, I find Dr. Richardson to be a beacon of truth. I am deeply grateful for her voice.
Never have truer words been spoken since the GOP has linked itself to the most heinous of lies. Thank you for always speaking truth to power in such subtle, yet powerful of ways. They lead to dialogue, critical thinking, and in-depth assessments of past, present and future realities. You have my eternal gratitude for inevitably shining a bright light on what matters.
"An inaccurate picture of what creates change means that people cannot make good decisions about the future. They are at the mercy of those who are creating the stories. Knowledge is indeed power.
So the destruction of accurate history is about more than schools. It’s about self-determination. It’s about having the freedom to make good decisions about your life.
It’s about the very things that democracy is supposed to stand for."
I haven’t said the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag of the United States since sometime in high school in the early 1960s where I protested saying it by rote each morning in class. IT IS NOTHING BUT LIES.
Also, to their credit, no one in my St. Louis County high school tried to discipline me for that like so many schools ignorant of the law have tried to do since. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1943 that it violates students’ First Amendment rights to force them to recite a “patriotic” pledge.
In 2002, I even wrote a dissention for not pledging allegiance to a national lie. I updated it in 2015. It seems I was a part of a critical history movement before ever hearing about it.
Questions of Allegiance
Rob Boyte
June 26, 2015
Why pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, or to the Republic for which it stands, that allowed slavery until 1863, denied women the vote until 1920, segregated its armed forces by race until 1948, persecuted political minorities throughout the 1950s, and into the 21st Century still denied full rights to homosexuals to serve in its military until 2011 or to reap the benefits of marriage until 2015?
One nation, indivisible would not disfranchise its Atheists, Agnostics, Humanists or others who do not accept the archaic concept of a "god" by forcing them to read "in god we trust" on every coin of a supposed secular state. "We" do not all agree that ours is a nation "under god" and for the religious majority to assume such is a most divisive insult.
With Liberty and Justice for all, except of course those too poor to afford a slick lawyer in the court system, too black to be presumed innocent by the police or too in love with someone of the same gender.
It's interesting how "inaccurate history" can have a major effect. My three books on the Korean War demonstrated to me - and it appears I demonstrated to my readers - that the "forgotten war" (which the Korean War is) never got real study afterwards, and that most of the "facts" about the war people who have read anything about it believe are really just unexamined wartime propaganda, buttressed by "facts" that were created by "cooking the books" to the point they were limp spaghetti. This was particularly true with loss rates. The Air Force only listed an airplane as "lost in combat" if it actually went down in a battle. If it was shot up and crashed on the way home, that was "engine failure" or the old go-to, "pilot error", both of which made the lost "non-operational." If the airplane got back to base but was so badly damaged it never flew again, that was also a "non-operational" loss. If it crashed on landing because it was so damaged from combat, that was always put to "pilot error" (since the guy was usually dead and therefore unable to argue otherwise). Then, conversely, they claimed "victories" over the other side that had no connection to reality. The MiG-15 was a very tough airplane, and it was hard to shoot it down with the machine guns an F-86 was armed with (which is why after the war they went to 20mm cannons). So they determined that if on the gun camera film examined later, they could count a certain number of "hits", then that airplane most assuredly went down afterwards if not during the fight directly. The end result of all this hocus-pocus was the famous "10:1" victory ratio. In reality, the overall victory ratio - when the Soviet loss records (they also cooked the books, but not so badly) became available, it was found (as it has been ever since 1915 when the first pilot shot down another airplane) that they had overclaimed by what some of us now call "the historical standard" of 300% of actual losses. Interestingly, that "10:1" victory ratio was held up during Vietnam as proof the air war there wasn't going well - when I talked to Vietnam era pilots and told them the real loss rate in Korea was about the same as what they had done, some didn't want to believe that.
So there you have a very "esoteric" bit of historical fallacy - it had a major effect on coming to an understanding of what exactly had happened in Korea, which incorrect info there led to incorrect analysis in Vietnam (and not just of air losses, but of how/why certain political alliances worked or didn't work).
And the "America First" crowd is just as unhappy to discover the real facts about the Korean War as they are to learn the "1619 project." As the negative reviews of my work demonstrate.
I loved the Dave’s Crockett song as a child and used to sing it over. Thank you for your clear and passionate explanation about why history matters —especially history that is factually based. I had read the review of this new take on the Alamo last Sunday in the NYTIMES book review section. The author and the book received favorable commentary. It’s a shame that the repug powers that be are desperate to appease future repug voters. As a retired teacher and one having been certified to teach high school history— I feel sorry for current history teachers in these backward states trying their best to control what teachers say by politicizing just about everything. Teachers then have to be careful not about passing on knowledge but to make sure they don’t step on toes and stir controversy—especially if they value their jobs. The biggest loss is to the kids who miss a rich, controversial history lesson that gets them thinking how interesting history is.
"Some scholars theorize that levels of religiosity and cultic affiliation tend to rise in proportion to the perceived uncertainty of an environment. The less control we feel we have over our circumstances, the more likely we are to entrust our fates to a higher power. (A classic example of this relationship was provided by the anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski, who found that fishermen in the Trobriand Islands, off the coast of New Guinea, engaged in more magic rituals the farther out to sea they went.) This propensity has been offered as an explanation for why cults proliferated during the social and political tumult of the nineteen-sixties, and why levels of religiosity have remained higher in America than in other industrialized countries. Americans, it is argued, experience significantly more economic precarity than people in nations with stronger social safety nets and consequently are more inclined to seek alternative sources of comfort."
I loved my Davy Crocket hat as a child. I remember running free with the other kids in the neighbourhood in the 1950’s, it’s little fake racoon tail flapping in the breeze.
IMHO, Russell Vought and his Center for Renewing America pose a clear and present danger to our society. I hate how patriotism and Christianity have become weaponized by lies.
IMO, it is a dangerous precedent when there are barriers put in place that limit the assessment and discussion of historical events within factual context.
And of course now the document “Model-School-Board-Language-to-Ban-CRT-SD-HCS-edits-1” has also become part of the historical record of original sources.
I grew up in Texas. I had at least two doses of Texas History. And I can say with almost 100% certainty that retaining the institution of human enslavement was never cited as the reason for the Texian rebellion. I was an adult before I realized that Texas didn't join the Confederacy to "protect states' rights," it joined to protect the right to own human beings. The whitewashing of Texas history has been going on for a very long time.
I so very worry about the public education system of today. It has been a very long time since people have relied on the wealth of education that teachers achieve to educate our young. I remember when No Child Left Behind was enacted and the sudden swing to hold teachers and schools solely responsible and accountable for the deficits and differences in children's achievement. Poverty, addictions, abuse, trauma, lack of parenting skills or mental health struggles were never taken into account for children struggling with their education. The focus became educating the child in how to take the tests. Providing wall references and teaching them how to locate the information they needed while testing. Not that we teach them the actual information on these charts and reference guides, but how to use them. Every morning we had 40 minutes of remediation groups. Children assigned to a teacher for their area deficits. No plans or materials, but fix their problems. Then in the afternoon there was a block of time with purchased materials to learn to take a test. Social studies and science were watered down time wise to put these new "classes" on the schedule. Then we went further and the government "punished" schools and districts and individual educators that didn't match the achievement standards and improve every year. Sadly, for many schools, this regime still exists. And, just like law enforcement, the funding and now emphasis isn't there to provide adequate assistance for family dysfunction and chaos that may be contributing to increase hunger, inadequate supplies and clothing, exhaustion, illness, aggression, developmental delays, and other struggles kids bring into school on a daily basis. All these escalating problems do adversely effect achievement outcomes. And, now it is frustrating to know that many states will be enacting and monitoring what and how teachers present lessons to their students in order to maintain the white man's lies and propaganda to new generations. And it's all based on ignorance. You can't tell me that these very vague and empty guidelines are based on research or the good of the children. It is another way to control the actions of educators in teaching critical thinking skills, facts, and such. Textbooks are bad enough. The amount of errors in grades k-12 textbooks is astounding. I have concluded watching the last decade or so that we are scaring the sh!t out of Republicans with the exploded emphasis on controlling EVERYTHING.
Thanks HRC for this Letter, one of your best IMHO.
I remember the Alamo. Or perhaps I should say, "I remember the Alamo myth." When I was 5 years old and living in Seattle with my parents and older sister, "Davey Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier" was a big deal. I had a (fake) coonskin cap which I only took off on days when I thought my Mickey Mouse hat (the big ears were fake, too) was more the thing. My cap pistol was real, however. Very cool! We did not have a TV yet, but our next door neighbors did, so we could keep up with all the larger-than-life events of the Fess Parker/Disney serial version of Davey's life that became intertwined with my yard play and, no doubt, helped plant the seeds of my interest in US history and put me on the road to unquestioning acceptance of many American myths that even now are wrapped up in my understanding of patriotism (which I define as "love of country").
Of course, Davey Crockett (my Dad had always called me Davey, too) got most of my attention for only a year, and then we were off to Pittsburgh PA and my heroes became Roberto Clemente and -- of course -- Alan Shepard who went into space for about 10 minutes on my birthday! My father -- a serious Civil War buff with a groaning bookshelf to prove it -- claiming his right to go out on a Saturday afternoon to do manly things with his son, took me, over my pacifist mother's objections, to see "The Horse Soldiers" on the big screen. Then, having seen I was manly enough not to cry or cover my eyes during the battle scenes, about a year later he took me to see "The Alamo" in which the heroic Union cavalry colonel (John Wayne) had been miraculously transformed into my first true love, Davey Crockett! (Eat your heart out, Fess Parker!)
So my "understanding" of Crockett and The Alamo changed face, but the example of Texian/American heroism was confirmed and -- I am ashamed to say -- my knowledge of that event, even after learning about how the US bullied the Mexicans into giving up what is now a major part of our Southwest, had remained largely unchanged until this morning.
Of course it is now no surprise to me that the Alamo was really about maintaining slavery and Manifest Destiny, and I have no doubt that better historians than John Wayne (who also produced "The Alamo) have gotten pretty close to knowing what really happened there, and I am not surprised that the underlying factors are less glorious than our pop-culture patriotism has made them seem. I am even pleased to know that Davey Crockett had the good sense to surrender and hang onto a few more minutes or hours or days of life, hoping, I suppose, to talk his way out of a bad situation rather than be snuffed out like his compatriots. He was reputedly a good talker and perhaps believed that discretion was the better part of valor, and all that.
Enough reminiscing.... My point is that myths, whether they be ancient Greek and Roman myths or the foundational national myths of modern nations are -- by definition -- both true and untrue simultaneously. Even the Alamo was an example of individuals fighting together in defense of something so important to them they were willing to die for it. We're talking immense physical courage in the face of near certain defeat and death. As the Italians say, "These are not peanuts."
So that part of the myth is true.
But history is not -- or at least shouldn't be -- aimed at propagating uplifting myths. Instead, history is the facts as determined by intelligent people doing the heavy lifting of finding out what really happened. It involves digging through rubble and rummaging in attics and re-reading long forgotten letters and journals and camping out in libraries and then trying to piece it all together so that we can understand the facts as they relate to other facts. And the best historians tend to be good writers as well.
So when historians do their job well, and the majority of other historians confirm the truth of one account over an earlier one, the only reasonable thing to do is accept the new version. And if this means discarding a glorious national myth much beloved by people like me with long memories, so be it, the truth is its own reward.
They very idea that Texas politicians would rudely cancel a "book event" at their State History Museum because the book in question is not to their liking and/or offends them is utterly unacceptable. Are we on the verge of a cultural revolution? Will they send people who disagree with their proto-fascist ideology to the gulags? Or are there gas chambers awaiting the "differently patriotic" among us? Thirty-seven years later, does 1984 still loom on our horizon?
Have the good people of the great State of Texas lost their marbles? Are they in the streets yet?
Leaving aside (which of course we cannot) global warming, I can think of no greater danger to our country and the world than politicians like Dan Patrick and Gregg Abbott.
There's honest and dishonest. Honest history is a search for truth, a search that is never complete, and a truth that is never fixed. Dishonest history is the creation of myth to live in the place of truth, for the purpose that truth never be known.
It is very similar to science vs. religion. To me, that is the fundamental conflict of our time.
How could any of us have imagined a time in the U.S. when government officials would use their authority to suppress knowledge of what happened in the past? It's like the Soviets revising history to make it all glorious.
What's next? Book burnings? Or, if Republicans like Abbot ever gain enough power, the jailing of historians who dispel myths? Journalists who criticize GOP politicians? I fear we've only seen a glimmer of their potential immorality and corruption.
One thing humans have known, from at least the time of the Roman Empire, is that if you destroy the access to knowledge the population can be more easily controlled. It is a standard method of "culture cleansing."
It is why the Goths burned the Library of Celsus in Ephesus in 262 CE. Why the Ottoman Turks destroyed the library of Constantinople. It's why the Nazis destroyed Warsaw. It's why ISIS destroyed heritage sites in Iraq and Syria.
It is why Republicans are obsessed with perpetuating lies.
Having taught U.S. history for 27 years, and as a current historic preservationist, I find Dr. Richardson to be a beacon of truth. I am deeply grateful for her voice.
Dear Prof. HCR,
Never have truer words been spoken since the GOP has linked itself to the most heinous of lies. Thank you for always speaking truth to power in such subtle, yet powerful of ways. They lead to dialogue, critical thinking, and in-depth assessments of past, present and future realities. You have my eternal gratitude for inevitably shining a bright light on what matters.
"An inaccurate picture of what creates change means that people cannot make good decisions about the future. They are at the mercy of those who are creating the stories. Knowledge is indeed power.
So the destruction of accurate history is about more than schools. It’s about self-determination. It’s about having the freedom to make good decisions about your life.
It’s about the very things that democracy is supposed to stand for."
—-
HERE’S A FACT OF HISTORY
I haven’t said the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag of the United States since sometime in high school in the early 1960s where I protested saying it by rote each morning in class. IT IS NOTHING BUT LIES.
Also, to their credit, no one in my St. Louis County high school tried to discipline me for that like so many schools ignorant of the law have tried to do since. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1943 that it violates students’ First Amendment rights to force them to recite a “patriotic” pledge.
In 2002, I even wrote a dissention for not pledging allegiance to a national lie. I updated it in 2015. It seems I was a part of a critical history movement before ever hearing about it.
Questions of Allegiance
Rob Boyte
June 26, 2015
Why pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, or to the Republic for which it stands, that allowed slavery until 1863, denied women the vote until 1920, segregated its armed forces by race until 1948, persecuted political minorities throughout the 1950s, and into the 21st Century still denied full rights to homosexuals to serve in its military until 2011 or to reap the benefits of marriage until 2015?
One nation, indivisible would not disfranchise its Atheists, Agnostics, Humanists or others who do not accept the archaic concept of a "god" by forcing them to read "in god we trust" on every coin of a supposed secular state. "We" do not all agree that ours is a nation "under god" and for the religious majority to assume such is a most divisive insult.
With Liberty and Justice for all, except of course those too poor to afford a slick lawyer in the court system, too black to be presumed innocent by the police or too in love with someone of the same gender.
It's interesting how "inaccurate history" can have a major effect. My three books on the Korean War demonstrated to me - and it appears I demonstrated to my readers - that the "forgotten war" (which the Korean War is) never got real study afterwards, and that most of the "facts" about the war people who have read anything about it believe are really just unexamined wartime propaganda, buttressed by "facts" that were created by "cooking the books" to the point they were limp spaghetti. This was particularly true with loss rates. The Air Force only listed an airplane as "lost in combat" if it actually went down in a battle. If it was shot up and crashed on the way home, that was "engine failure" or the old go-to, "pilot error", both of which made the lost "non-operational." If the airplane got back to base but was so badly damaged it never flew again, that was also a "non-operational" loss. If it crashed on landing because it was so damaged from combat, that was always put to "pilot error" (since the guy was usually dead and therefore unable to argue otherwise). Then, conversely, they claimed "victories" over the other side that had no connection to reality. The MiG-15 was a very tough airplane, and it was hard to shoot it down with the machine guns an F-86 was armed with (which is why after the war they went to 20mm cannons). So they determined that if on the gun camera film examined later, they could count a certain number of "hits", then that airplane most assuredly went down afterwards if not during the fight directly. The end result of all this hocus-pocus was the famous "10:1" victory ratio. In reality, the overall victory ratio - when the Soviet loss records (they also cooked the books, but not so badly) became available, it was found (as it has been ever since 1915 when the first pilot shot down another airplane) that they had overclaimed by what some of us now call "the historical standard" of 300% of actual losses. Interestingly, that "10:1" victory ratio was held up during Vietnam as proof the air war there wasn't going well - when I talked to Vietnam era pilots and told them the real loss rate in Korea was about the same as what they had done, some didn't want to believe that.
So there you have a very "esoteric" bit of historical fallacy - it had a major effect on coming to an understanding of what exactly had happened in Korea, which incorrect info there led to incorrect analysis in Vietnam (and not just of air losses, but of how/why certain political alliances worked or didn't work).
And the "America First" crowd is just as unhappy to discover the real facts about the Korean War as they are to learn the "1619 project." As the negative reviews of my work demonstrate.
I loved the Dave’s Crockett song as a child and used to sing it over. Thank you for your clear and passionate explanation about why history matters —especially history that is factually based. I had read the review of this new take on the Alamo last Sunday in the NYTIMES book review section. The author and the book received favorable commentary. It’s a shame that the repug powers that be are desperate to appease future repug voters. As a retired teacher and one having been certified to teach high school history— I feel sorry for current history teachers in these backward states trying their best to control what teachers say by politicizing just about everything. Teachers then have to be careful not about passing on knowledge but to make sure they don’t step on toes and stir controversy—especially if they value their jobs. The biggest loss is to the kids who miss a rich, controversial history lesson that gets them thinking how interesting history is.
Here's a thought - are we seeing Trump as a cut leader?
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/07/12/what-makes-a-cult-a-cult
A quote
"Some scholars theorize that levels of religiosity and cultic affiliation tend to rise in proportion to the perceived uncertainty of an environment. The less control we feel we have over our circumstances, the more likely we are to entrust our fates to a higher power. (A classic example of this relationship was provided by the anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski, who found that fishermen in the Trobriand Islands, off the coast of New Guinea, engaged in more magic rituals the farther out to sea they went.) This propensity has been offered as an explanation for why cults proliferated during the social and political tumult of the nineteen-sixties, and why levels of religiosity have remained higher in America than in other industrialized countries. Americans, it is argued, experience significantly more economic precarity than people in nations with stronger social safety nets and consequently are more inclined to seek alternative sources of comfort."
I loved my Davy Crocket hat as a child. I remember running free with the other kids in the neighbourhood in the 1950’s, it’s little fake racoon tail flapping in the breeze.
IMHO, Russell Vought and his Center for Renewing America pose a clear and present danger to our society. I hate how patriotism and Christianity have become weaponized by lies.
It's right out of 1984 - if you control the past, you control the future.
We have always been at war with Eastasia...
IMO, it is a dangerous precedent when there are barriers put in place that limit the assessment and discussion of historical events within factual context.
And of course now the document “Model-School-Board-Language-to-Ban-CRT-SD-HCS-edits-1” has also become part of the historical record of original sources.
I grew up in Texas. I had at least two doses of Texas History. And I can say with almost 100% certainty that retaining the institution of human enslavement was never cited as the reason for the Texian rebellion. I was an adult before I realized that Texas didn't join the Confederacy to "protect states' rights," it joined to protect the right to own human beings. The whitewashing of Texas history has been going on for a very long time.
I so very worry about the public education system of today. It has been a very long time since people have relied on the wealth of education that teachers achieve to educate our young. I remember when No Child Left Behind was enacted and the sudden swing to hold teachers and schools solely responsible and accountable for the deficits and differences in children's achievement. Poverty, addictions, abuse, trauma, lack of parenting skills or mental health struggles were never taken into account for children struggling with their education. The focus became educating the child in how to take the tests. Providing wall references and teaching them how to locate the information they needed while testing. Not that we teach them the actual information on these charts and reference guides, but how to use them. Every morning we had 40 minutes of remediation groups. Children assigned to a teacher for their area deficits. No plans or materials, but fix their problems. Then in the afternoon there was a block of time with purchased materials to learn to take a test. Social studies and science were watered down time wise to put these new "classes" on the schedule. Then we went further and the government "punished" schools and districts and individual educators that didn't match the achievement standards and improve every year. Sadly, for many schools, this regime still exists. And, just like law enforcement, the funding and now emphasis isn't there to provide adequate assistance for family dysfunction and chaos that may be contributing to increase hunger, inadequate supplies and clothing, exhaustion, illness, aggression, developmental delays, and other struggles kids bring into school on a daily basis. All these escalating problems do adversely effect achievement outcomes. And, now it is frustrating to know that many states will be enacting and monitoring what and how teachers present lessons to their students in order to maintain the white man's lies and propaganda to new generations. And it's all based on ignorance. You can't tell me that these very vague and empty guidelines are based on research or the good of the children. It is another way to control the actions of educators in teaching critical thinking skills, facts, and such. Textbooks are bad enough. The amount of errors in grades k-12 textbooks is astounding. I have concluded watching the last decade or so that we are scaring the sh!t out of Republicans with the exploded emphasis on controlling EVERYTHING.