Texas Textbooks Getting Conservative Flavor

The Texas Board of Education has decreed that future curriculum standards will have a more conservative bent. The board's 10 right-leaning members say they're simply "adding balance" to left-leaning academia. The five minority members say they're whitewashing history. Among the changes, expected to formalized in May, as rounded up by the Dallas Morning News and the New York Times:

• Students will learn of the "conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority, and the National Rifle Association."
• When learning of Martin Luther King Jr., the students will also study the violence of the Black Panthers.

• The names of Hispanics who fought and died for Texas' independence at the Alamo will not be added, nor will hip-hop be studied as an important cultural movement.
• The study of McCarthyism must include “how the later release of the Venona papers confirmed suspicions of communist infiltration in U.S. government.”
• Textbooks will provide more coverage of Ronald Reagan, but the board rejected similar treatment for Ted Kennedy and Sonia Sotomayor.

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