Texas votes to remove Hillary Clinton, Helen Keller from the curriculum



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Although the removal of personalities like Clinton and Keller has been widely covered, recent changes to Texas curriculum are raising more questions about history teaching across the country.

"The question of whether Hillary Clinton or Helen Keller are in the norm is hiding the big picture," said Dan Quinn, director of communications for the Texas Freedom Network (TFN), a monitoring group of public education and business. religious freedoms. "You can have fair debates about the names, the details you want to include, but start with big ideas.The council does not do it."

In particular, Quinn stresses the decision to continue teaching that the civil war was a matter of state rights. It has long been taught in public schools in the South that civil war has been waged on issues other than slavery. But researchers, historians and academics systematically reject this argument as a racist vestige of America's past.

"State rights" is a fundamental aspect of the myth of the "Lost Cause", promoted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to erase the African American experience and the historical memory of slavery and civil war. "Shirley Thompson, historian at the University of Texas, writes in a statement." This pro-Confederate interpretation of history also accompanied and contributed to Jim Crow's segregation, deprivation of rights, lynching and terrorist violence and the relegation of African Americans to second-class citizenship. thought has long been discredited by the historical profession. "

The board has until November to make further changes to program standards before a final vote.

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