During the week of June 22, the State Board of Education is expected to approve the revisions to the Social Studies Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS). This revision a major reform to how history is taught to Texas students, replacing a model where Texas, American, and World history were presented as isolated subjects and out of chronological order. The new framework teaches historical events in the order in which they occurred, enabling students to create a mental model of history, understand cause and effect, and analyze how historical themes built on each other over time.
As powerful as this new model is, some TEKS still require improvement to give students the best history education possible.
These include:
- TEKS that use Social Studies methods to push a social justice agenda.
- TEKS that inaccurately report history out of political correctness.
- TEKS with overly broad or vague objectives.
Social Justice TEKS
Several TEKS ask for the student to question the reliability of historical documents, with objectives like:
- “Evaluate the credibility and reliability of sources by examining their origin, purpose, and potential bias.”
- “Identify the author of the source…and analyze how the author’s point of view may have influenced its content.”
- “Compare and contrast multiple perspectives on a historical event, including the perspectives of groups who are less represented in traditional historical accounts.”
- “Engage in civil discourse about social studies topics, including those with multiple perspectives”
These TEKS operate under the guise of promoting critical thinking, but their real goal is to delegitimize the principles of America and western civilization as a whole. These TEKS encourage students to cynically question primary sources and regard most authors as self-interested liars or hypocrites. By reducing primary authors to their race, nation, and social class, these TEKS tell students that individual ideas are less important than group membership. This is the foundation of all critical theories, including critical race theory.
The most prominent example of this practice is critically examining the backgrounds of the Founders. According to this exercise, because the Founders were wealthy white men, the student should infer that they were oppressive to women, non-whites, and the poor. Any appeal to principles or justice is simply a masquerade to deceive and facilitate the raw exercise of power.
This mode of analysis dehumanizes individuals and reduces individual motivation to the determinism of group membership. Students can understand the motivations and causes of people and events without engaging in post-modern deconstruction.
Politically Correct History
The content advisors and workgroup members have done an excellent job at crafting well-worded TEKS, but a few TEKS have subtle issues.
The TEKS regarding segregation and slavery regard them solely as products of discrimination based on skin color.
First Grade: 1.15(A) identify racial segregation as keeping people apart based on the color of their skin (G/Civ, Geo/C);
First Grade: 11.(B) identify that Africans were enslaved in the United States because of the color of their skin.
The content advisors rightfully noted that this standard is poorly written because segregation is not always about skin color. Moreover, this emphasis has led to some truly disturbing incidents in classrooms where misguided teachers separate students based on certain characteristics (often skin-color) and shame groups of students.
Similarly, saying that slavery occurred solely because of skin color flattens a complex issue that includes economics and the practices of Africans themselves. This level of complexity, however, is inappropriate for first graders. The first grade TEKS should limit itself to saying that slavery existed and was unfair.
The TEKS concerning the Barbary War also glosses over the religion of the Muslim slavers.
Grade 6: Identify the Barbary War, including the Battle of Tripoli, as a key event that influenced Thomas Jefferson’s decision to use military force overseas and contributed to the development of the United States Navy (H, G/Civ);
Grade 11: Describe key developments in the new nation, including Washington’s Farewell Address, Marbury v. Madison, the Louisiana Purchase, the Barbary Wars, the Prohibition on the Importation of Slaves, the Missouri Compromise, and the Monroe Doctrine (H, G/Civ, Geo/C);
Understanding that Barbary slavers claimed that as Muslims they had the right to enslave non-Muslims is crucial to understanding the causes and resolution of the Barbary War. This fact should be acknowledged even if it is uncomfortable for some.
Overly Broad TEKS or Vague Objectives
Several TEKS are far too broad, especially ones where several topics are listed together. Some examples include:
High school government 18.(B) compare the two-party system and the role of third parties in the United States using historical data, maps, charts, or graphs to synthesize evidence and draw conclusions (H, G/Civ, Geo/C, S);
High School U.S. History: 3.(F) describe Revolutionary War events, including Lexington and Concord, Trenton, Saratoga, Valley Forge, Yorktown, and Treaty of Paris (1783) (H);
Specific TEKS are important for a number of reasons:
- Specific standards are assessable and measurable.
- Specificity improves consistency across Texas classrooms.
- Specific TEKS protect instructional time and curriculum quality.
Asking teachers to lead a comparison of the two-party system is far too broad and allows the teacher to take the conversation in whatever direction they choose. Many teachers may be overwhelmed, and others may use it to as an opportunity to criticize America and say our political system is broken.
Similarly, the second TEKS asks teachers to discuss a minimum of six individual concepts. Some teachers may place greater emphasis on different points of this TEKS, which is not effective for student learning or for setting a consistent statewide standard.
Action Items
In order to make these Texas Social Studies TEKS the best they can be for Texas students, the SBOE should make the following revisions to the TEKS draft:
- Revise the noted TEKS to be completely accurate, including:
- Remove the focus on skin color from the explanations of segregation and slavery.
- Include the role of Islam in the motivations of the Barbary slavers.
- Remove any TEKS that encourage students to discredit primary sources based on their identity.
- Divide any TEKS that list different events under one TEKS. Revise any open-ended TEKS without a clear objective.
