I guess in their efforts to whitewash history, conservative board members of the Texas Board of Education must have felt they had missed a demographic. Next week, they will revisit its social studies curriculum passed in May that puts a decidedly conservative Christian rewrite on American history. Now, a proposed resolution submitted this week would warn publishers not to include too much information about Islam in their textbooks and warns of a “pro-Islam anti-Christian bias.”
According to the Dallas Morning News:
Members of the board’s social conservative bloc asked for the resolution after an unsuccessful candidate for a board seat called on the panel to head off any bias against Christians in new social studies books. Some contend that “Middle Easterners” are increasingly buying into companies that publish textbooks.
A preliminary draft of the resolution states that “diverse reviewers have repeatedly documented gross pro-Islamic, anti-Christian distortions in social studies texts” across the U.S. and that past social studies textbooks in Texas also have been “tainted” with pro-Islamic, anti-Christian views.
The resolution cites examples in past world history books—no longer used in Texas schools—that devoted far more lines of text to Islamic beliefs and practices than to Christian beliefs and practices.
The full text of the resolution is here. The Texas Freedom Network has a great critique of the resolution’s assertions here. Based on TFN’s analysis, it appears board members, in putting together the resolution, simply glanced at the textbooks they’re criticizing, rather than actually reading and comprehending the texts. So what else is new?
