Texas board starts shaping guidelines determining state history lessons, pushes vote to Friday

Texas board pushes back social studies vote a day

AUSTIN, Texas — Christmas and Aesop’s Fables are in, but Henry Cisneros won’t be included in new social studies class guidelines considered Thursday by the Texas State Board of Education, which could influence curriculums nationwide.

The board spent more than five hours wading through dozens of amendments, but then adjourned late Thursday, pushing a tentative vote on all the new standards to Friday.

The guidelines will dictate what some 4.8 million students from kindergarten through 12th grade are required to learn in social studies, history and economics classes for the next decade. A final vote is expected in March.

Debating the required curriculum grade by grade Thursday, the board discussed everything from including Vaisakhi, the Sikh new year, alongside Christmas to the merits of teaching Aesop’s Fables and whether first graders are old enough to learn about holding public officials accountable.

What’s decided in Texas could affect what school children elsewhere learn as well. The guidelines will be used by textbook publishers who develop material for the nation based on Texas, one of the largest markets.

In vote after vote, the board added more names to the list of historic figures elementary school students would be expected to learn.

“We’re choking our kids with a list of names,” board member Pat Hardy, a Republican from Fort Worth, said as astronauts James A. Lovell, Ellen Ochoa and Girl Scouts founder Juliette Gordon Low were added to the third-grade list.

Jose Antonio Navarro, a Texas revolutionary and contemporary of early Texas leader Stephen F. Austin, was added to the kindergarten curriculum in response to a public push for more examples of notable Mexican Americans.

Even in their name-adding frenzy, however, the board voted to leave Cisneros, the former Housing and Urban Development Secretary, out of fourth-grade lessons.

Other discussion centered on whether first-graders are old enough to learn about the accountability of public officials.

“It ought to be in every single grade, so maybe by the time they get out of high school they understand that we need to hold our elected officials accountable,” said board member Geraldine Miller, R-Dallas. “Maybe that’s the problem, that we’ve got to start early.”

“I would like to know how in the world a first grader can hold public officials accountable?” countered board member Mavis Knight, D-Dallas. “I don’t think it’s appropriate for this grade level.”

The amendment passed, however, and the topic could soon become required for first-grade classrooms.

The board also debated the merits of having second-graders read Aesop’s Fables. Some board members questioned whether the students were too young to decipher fact from fiction in the fables. The prevailing side argued they could handle it.

Early squabbles over how much prominence to give civil rights leaders such as Cesar Chavez and the inclusion of Christmas appeared to have been smoothed over in the later draft being considered.

After an initial recommendation and ensuing outcry, the board chose not to remove Christmas from a list of religious holidays and observances in a sixth-grade world cultures class. But the section still generated a flare-up when Rep. Terri Leo tried to remove Vaisakhi and the Hindu observance Diwali.

“A great percentage of the world is found in India and those … observances represent a tremendous portion of the world,” Hardy said. “It does not hurt at all to have that balance in the representation of the world cultures.”

Leo’s amendment was rejected.

Another flashpoint was expected over how much emphasis should be given to the religious beliefs of the nation’s founding fathers. Some activists have sought to promote and highlight their Christianity. But many liberal activists who testified before the board Wednesday implored members to respect the constitutional separation of church and state.