Texas Style Extremism

As we enter the fifth decade of the cultural war pinning the left and right wing Boomers against each other, the new battle lines are being fought over school curriculum.  With legislation such as No Child Left Behind, which will eventually nationalize our school curriculum, both sides of the cultural war want to assure that their point of view is being proselytized to future generations.

Today's battleground is in the state of Texas.  The vastly right wing Board of Education of Texas has voted to change the language in social studies and history text books. And, since Texas purchases the most text books in the country, they dictate what the publishers will print for most other states.

The new text books will alter language regarding many historical events.  For example, instead of referring to the business of bring slaves to the North American continent as the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the new text books will refer to the slave trade as the Atlantic triangular trade.  The most disturbing alteration is in regards to the concept of "separation of church and state".  Wanting to ignore the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the Texas Board of Education points out that the Constitution never actually includes the words"separation of church and state."  They even went as far as removing Thomas Jefferson as an example of an influential political thinker since Jefferson believed in separation of church and state and was not a Christian.

While I do agree somewhat with the frustration of the right regarding the text book language written by the politically correct left, swinging the pendulum so far right and invoking non-factual content, along with omitting critical historical figures, is not the answer.

But, what should we expect from the Boomers.  With such irrational and extremist views, they are not competent enough to rationally eliminate politically motivated curriculum from text books and create factual historical content for which students can analyze and debate. 

This time it is the right wing that is at fault.  But the left wing Boomer zealots are no better.  The text books created by the left wing Boomers had white Americans at fault for seaminly everything.  The left wing text books leave white children sobbing with the realization that their culture is the crux of all the worlds ills even though, most whites in the United States come from as diverse backgrounds as non-whites.

For those of us who study the Boomers, it is no surprise to see what is happening in Texas.  However, we should be concerned that this so called "cultural war" is polluting the education of future generations of Americans.