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Texas Textbooks Whitewash Shariah

Much attention, if not scorn, was heaped upon the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE [2] [1]) when it tried to introduce some semblance of balance and accuracy in public school textbooks. Actually, as we’ve noted, the revisions were rather tame. SBOE

For example, on May 22, 2010, April Castro [3] of the Associated Press reported that “The Texas State Board of Education adopted a social studies and history curriculum Friday that amends or waters down the teaching of the civil rights movement, slavery, America’s relationship with the U.N. and hundreds of other items.”

Actually, the SBOE urged teachers to:

• “Analyze Abraham Lincoln’s ideas about liberty, equality, union and government as contained in his first and second inaugural addresses and the Gettysburg Address and contrast them with the ideas contained in Jefferson Davis’s inaugural address. (8th grade U.S. History)”; and

• “Explain instances of institutional racism in American society. (Sociology)”

It turns out that the revised standards are even much milder than what was left in place. “The SBOE should now add that while U. S. History texts must stop ignoring Christianity, high school World History books must cease attacking it,” the Educational Research Analysts of Longview, Texas assert.

Among other things, they score the texts for:

Moreover, the reviewers found in the texts:

Yet and still, the abuses of Christianity alleged by these texts are past-tense while those of the more radical Islamic regimes on the planet continue to this day and include, but are not limited to, honor killings and slavery itself. Moreover, as we have noted, the Texas standards are of a piece with those laid out by the California [4] Department of Education which actually tries to sanitize the law that, to one degree or other governs all Muslim countries, to the point where the agency actually gives Shariah credit for women’s rights.

In one sense, geography is destiny as sales of textbooks in Texas and California—our two largest states—determine publishers’ offerings to public schools nationwide. Thus, some version of all of the above could be coming to a classroom near you, if it has not already arrived.

Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia [5].

If you would like to comment on this article, e-mail mal.kline@academia.org [6].