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The Texas State Board of Education wants to "streamline" the social studies curriculum across the state and as part of that effort, board members have updated the list of historical personalities that students would learn in class. As a result of this vote, Texas students could stop learning about Hillary Clinton and Helen Keller, The Dallas Morning News reported.
On Friday, the Texas National Board of Education voted to eliminate Clinton and Keller from the Texas-wide curriculum, on the recommendation of the Texas Knowledge and Skills Task Force, according to The Hill. Barbara Cargill, a Republican Council member who has served as Chair of the Council, said The Dallas Morning News that the board simply accepted the group's recommendations.
"When talking to teachers and testers, they did not mention these specific deletions," Cargill said.
according to The Dallas Morning NewsThis vote was preliminary, which means that council will take a final vote in November and may modify program changes in the meantime.
While Clinton and Keller seem to have been eliminated from the program at the moment, Houston Chronicle reported that earlier this week, the council countered the recommendation of another working group regarding Alamo. A curriculum advisory group encouraged the council to remove the words "all heroic defenders" from the description of the curriculum of those who fought at Alamo, but as a result of public reactions, the board is unlikely to comply with it.
Clinton has been part of the Texas High School social studies program since her history in 2016 by becoming the first presidential candidate of a large political party. Meanwhile, third-year students in Texas had to get to know Keller, who became the first person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree while being both deaf and blind.
Keller and Clinton are also not the only ones to be eliminated from the Texas social studies program. Barry Goldwater – a five-year-old Arizona senator who was the Republican party's presidential candidate in 1964 – was also excluded from the program, according to the Austin American-Statesman. A task force also advised the removal of Baptist pastor Billy Graham – an evangelist who called for racial integration during relays – but the council chose to keep Graham in the curriculum.
The Texas State Board of Education does not plan to update textbooks and other educational materials for the time being, which means that teachers can always choose between Clinton, Keller, Goldwater and other historical characters, but they will not have to do it. . According to The Hill, the task force that recommended the removal of these people from the curriculum argued that students needed to know too many historical characters.
The task force – made up of a team of volunteers – to modify the required list of historical characters would have created a rubric to assess which figures were "essential" for students and those who were not. The Hill said Clinton had five points out of 20, while Keller scored seven. None of these grades were high enough for both women to maintain their place in the program, by working group.
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