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Reason of being the SBOE
Debbie Ratcliffe, spokesperson for the Texas Education Agency, said the recommendation was made in response to complaints that the curriculum standards were too long. The advisory group reviewed program requirements, subject by topic, to streamline teaching. This will be the first time that social studies standards will be updated since 2010.
"Could this be reduced by removing information, combining standards or clarifying? It was the goal," Ratcliffe said. "They suggested that Travis's letter be deleted because they think that when teachers talk about Alamo, they will mention it all the time, but the fact that they did not describe it accurately meant that teachers would spend less time there. above."
The National Board of Education will meet next week to discuss the issue. A public hearing on all program changes will take place on Tuesday, and the council could proceed to a provisional vote on Friday. A final vote will not be taken until the November board meeting.
Walter Buenger, a historian specializing in Texas history at the University of Texas at Austin, said he could understand why it might be desirable to remove a subjective as well as "heroic" descriptor from discussions with people involved in the battle.
"Many times, the Alamo boils down, as is often the case in movies, to the bad guys, and the good ones are good Anglos in caps," Buenger said. He noted that many Mexicans fought alongside Texans at the siege.
"Part of the problem with the word heroic maybe it's too simplistic, "he said.
But Thomas Lindsay, director of the Center for Innovation in Education at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, said it was appropriate and necessary for educators to teach students good and bad in history books.
Lindsay, a longtime academic educator, said that he had often referred to Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr as "heroic" in his history lessons.
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