{"id":1629735,"date":"2022-09-01T13:32:39","date_gmt":"2022-09-01T17:32:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1629735"},"modified":"2022-09-01T13:33:11","modified_gmt":"2022-09-01T17:33:11","slug":"texas-board-of-education-pauses-plan-to-wokify-public-school-history-instruction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/texas-board-of-education-pauses-plan-to-wokify-public-school-history-instruction\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas Board Of Education Pauses Plan To Wokify Public School History Instruction"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">24<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Ftexas-board-of-education-pauses-plan-to-wokify-public-school-history-instruction%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1629735&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The Texas State Board of Education voted <a href=\"https:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2022\/08\/30\/sboe-social-studies-curriculum\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">7 to 2<\/a> on Tuesday to table until 2025 what critics have warned would have been a woke overhaul of the Lone Star State\u2019s social studies standards.<\/p>\n<p>Working groups, made up of Texans selected from a pool of volunteers by the Texas Education Agency and tasked with developing the first major rewrite of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) social studies standards in decades, released <a href=\"https:\/\/tea.texas.gov\/academics\/curriculum-standards\/teks-review\/social-studies-teks-review-work-group-drafts\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">draft proposals earlier this summer<\/a>, some of which prioritized \u201cinclusivity\u201d over keeping fundamental American principles and founding documents at the forefront of learning.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.houstonchronicle.com\/politics\/texas\/article\/Critical-race-theory-civics-Moses-Texans-pack-17342880.php\">Major backlash<\/a> from Texans about these recommendations prompted the state Board of Education to announce a different plan. Now, the only social studies tweaking the board plans to do in the coming weeks will be on the mandatory civics and media literacy guidelines, including \u201cidentifying propaganda\u201d outlined in the legislature\u2019s recently passed <a href=\"https:\/\/capitol.texas.gov\/tlodocs\/871\/billtext\/pdf\/SB00003I.pdf\">Senate Bill 3<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t think those will be big or controversial,\u201d Republican board member Will Hickman told The Federalist. \u201cIt\u2019s just kind of a ministerial task, being sure we fit our courses to the requirements of the legislature.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The media amplified concerns that this shift was just the board <a href=\"https:\/\/www.houstonchronicle.com\/politics\/texas\/article\/Watchdogs-teachers-unions-blast-State-Board-of-17411051.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">\u201ccaving to right-wing pressure,\u201d<\/a> but Republican candidate Aaron Kinsey, who is running unopposed for the board seat representing Texas\u2019s District 15, said he thinks the board\u2019s caution and attentiveness to Texans\u2019 concerns should be praised.  <\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think we need to commend the board for their courage and being responsive to what the conservatives of our state gave them [as] feedback, which is, this is way too much too fast,\u201d Kinsey told The Federalist. \u201cSo we need to laud them for their courage and taking the vote that they did yesterday to delay some of these changes and to get more input from the community.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Before that pivot, the state Board of Education was facing a massive overhaul that would have changed how and what Texans learned about their nation and state\u2019s beginnings. <\/p>\n<p>That included adding courses that require teachers to \u201cdescribe the practice of land acknowledegment [sic] statements as a way to honor local and ancestral Indigenous people, combat erasure, and recall Tribal sovereignty,\u201d removing references to <a href=\"https:\/\/tea.texas.gov\/sites\/default\/files\/world-history-studies-teks-recommendations-working-doc.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">\u201cradical Islamic terrorism\u201d<\/a> and its connection to 9\/11 because \u201cfocusing content on a single religious group leads to student misunderstandings and potential conflict among students,\u201d and swapping period indicators from B.C. and A.D., Latin for \u201cbefore Christ\u201d and <em>anno domini<\/em> meaning \u201cin the year of the Lord,\u201d with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.audacy.com\/krld\/news\/state\/texas-state-board-of-education-changing-history-designation\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">\u201cnon-religious\u201d<\/a> indicators such as BCE and CE. <\/p>\n<p>This shift, the board claims, was made \u201cfor alignment with higher education and professionals in the field of history\u201d and to provide <a href=\"https:\/\/tea.texas.gov\/sites\/default\/files\/world-history-studies-teks-recommendations-working-doc.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">\u201cinclusivity to all people.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<p>In <a href=\"https:\/\/tea.texas.gov\/sites\/default\/files\/social-studies-teks-review-work-group-e-draft-recommendations.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">other draft recommendations<\/a>, working groups also suggested replacing \u201cmen and women\u201d with \u201cpeople\u201d and adding \u201cpride\u201d as a normal topic of conversation in history classes <a href=\"https:\/\/tea.texas.gov\/sites\/default\/files\/social-studies-teks-review-work-group-f-draft-recommendations-with-intros.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">starting in middle school<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the most controversial proposed changes, however, had to do with how Texans should be taught U.S. and state history. Under the original U.S. history requirements, schools were expected to teach the meaning and importance of the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and other founding principles to historical events in U.S. history to high schoolers. That included \u201cexplain[ing] the meaning and historical significance of the mottos \u2018E Pluribus Unum\u2019 and \u2018In God We Trust.&#8217;\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the new recommendations, all of those standards for high schoolers would have been cut. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe meaning and values of the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are taught in context throughout the course and will additionally be taught in Middle School and Government,\u201d the working group draft <a href=\"https:\/\/tea.texas.gov\/sites\/default\/files\/social-studies-teks-review-work-group-a-and-c-draft-recommendations.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">stated<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>That was in addition to proposals that would have required three years of world history but just three years of combined U.S. and Texas history <a href=\"https:\/\/tea.texas.gov\/about-tea\/news-and-multimedia\/news-releases\/sboe-news\/state-board-of-education-to-increase-texas-history-instruction-to-six-grade-levels\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">across six grades<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>As <a href=\"https:\/\/www.star-telegram.com\/news\/local\/crossroads-lab\/article264452431.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">multiple teachers and critics <\/a>of the now-postponed proposal noted, lumping Texas history into U.S. history courses could result in an incomplete picture of important educational material. Even board members such as Hickman admitted that the old proposal \u201cwas watering down the Texas and the U.S. history.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think we jumped into the [postponed] framework too quickly and didn\u2019t really take the time to deliberate,\u201d Hickman said. <\/p>\n<h2>Preventing Politicization<\/h2>\n<p>To better honor U.S. and Texas history, Hickman proposed a new framework that subjects students in kindergarten through eighth grade to two years of Texas history, two years of U.S. history, and two years of world history. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe board adopted that framework and during the delay, we\u2019re going to hear from Texans on what are their thoughts on the new framework. Do they love it? Do they hate it? What would they move around or what they do differently?\u201d Hickman said. <\/p>\n<p>Even though it will be years before these social studies standards are examined again, the discussion of the radical recommendations isn\u2019t tabled for good. That\u2019s why board member Hickman and board hopeful Kinsey both told The Federalist they want to focus on evaluating how working groups are pulled together to prevent politicized material from infiltrating future recommendations. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne thing that this process highlighted or calls into question is the involvement that conservatives have at the grassroots level of this process. And what I mean by that is the workgroups. We don\u2019t have a lot of clarity right now on who makes up the workgroups. But if we want to get products that don\u2019t have such a liberal slant or leftist slant out of the workgroups, we need to get more conservative people on the workgroups to help influence those,\u201d Kinsey said.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<p>\n  Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.<\/p>\n<div class=\"article-comments mt-30 mt-sm-60\">\n<div class=\"article-comments-container d-flex flex-column align-items-center py-30\">\n    <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"110\" height=\"106\" src=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/fdrlst-mark.svg\" class=\"img-fluid mb-20\" alt=\"The Federalist logo eagle mark\" \/>    <\/p>\n<p>Unlock commenting by joining the Federalist Community.<\/p>\n<p>    <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/plans\/pricing\/\" class=\"btn btn-on-white\">Subscribe<\/a>  <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Texas State Board of Education voted 7 to 2 on Tuesday to table until 2025 what critics have warned would have been a woke overhaul of the Lone Star<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":490,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1629735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1629735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/490"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1629735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1629735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1629735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1629735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1629735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}