Whither goest Texas...

Browsing the internet over lunch (nachos at a local Mexican restaurant called Tequilas, yes, they were tasty, thank you), I found myself stumbling across a series of articles about ongoing sessions of the Texas Board Of Education, which is deliberating revising their textbook standards again. The story wasn't exactly what I was expecting from the headlines I was looking at--usually this kind of thing ends up being about the science curriculum and whether you can say "Darwin" without "balancing" the account with the story of the Sun and Spider-Woman the tale of the frost giant, Ymir the story of Father-Of-All and the Sun Mother Bible class the rival scientific doctrine of intelligent design proposed by many respectable scientists as an alternative to evolutionary THEORY. No, it turns out that the hoopla is because it appears that the Republican-controlled committee feels that "conservatives" are inadequately represented by liberal-leaning textbooks.

This isn't unimportant nationally: when it comes to school textbooks, whither goest Texas and California, so goest the rest of the nation. These two states are the largest purchasers of educational materials in the country, and so textbook publishers will generally tailor their materials to meet the standards of one or both states and basically tell school boards in the other forty-eight states to pretty much get stuffed, buy the book they have on sale or use whatever materials they have warehoused (or revert to an oral-history-based mode of education where teachers memorize and recite entire textbooks like ancient bards reciting epic sagas, whatever, look are you going to buy the damn book or not?). (As an aside: having had the chance now and again to compare newer texts to older ones, I'm not sure forcing school districts to re-use their older materials is that bad a deal. Certainly when it comes to evolution, older textbooks tend to be better; it's not that there aren't tons of scientific progress between editions, but that the newer editions frequently not only fail to mention the progress but they whittle down the previous text so that the older books actually end up covering the subject in more depth, even if some of that deeper coverage is out-of-date.) So the ramifications of the Texas process will inevitably ripple outward.

Thing is, I'm having a hard time getting incensed about this particular story. I have to be honest, what TPM reports sounds less like a nefarious attempt to indoctrinate schoolchildren than it does the desperate last gasps of dinosaurs struggling to maintain some kind of relevance in a world that's passing them by.

Put it this way: pleading for equal time is something that you do when you're in a minority and nobody is listening to you. That's not to say equal time isn't always deserved, but honestly: if you really represent America's core values and a majority sentiment with the full weight of American history behind you, why are you so desperate to be heard? Even if one were to concede some kind of nefarious attempt to force feed children liberal dogma or something, wouldn't the pervasive and fundamental truths of your fundamentally American culture wash that out every time your child walked out the schoolhouse doors?

I think the thing that dooms the whole project to comedy is Kate Klonic's piece at True/Slant: "Schlafly: Textbooks standards could offset the 'bias to the left'". Here we learn that part of the conservative Texas' BOE agenda is restoring Phyllis "I Didn't Know She Was Still Alive Either" Schlafly to her proper pre-eminence as an American historical figurehead. Which forces one to wonder, is Phyllis Schlafly really the best they could come up with? Seriously? Of all the conservative women in American history, surely someone would have suggested Clare Boothe Luce or even Ayn Rand for inclusion in a history textbook before Schlafly's name was picked at random off a Google search results page.

And of all the conservative American women they could be focused on, isn't this the one that would be like manna from heaven so far as liberals are concerned? Maybe I over-estimate the pluckiness of young women, but it seems to me that presenting a woman whose singular accomplishment was sending elected officials homebaked pies to show her opposition to the principle "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex" as an icon of American womanhood is about as good a way as any to radicalize a generation of young women. Regardless of how you might feel about some civil rights leaders--Malcolm X is and always will be a polarizing figure--the one thing you really can't deny about them is that they were standing against oppression, which ties neatly into the American national mythos. It's awfully hard to sugercoat Ms. Schlafly as anything other than someone who stood up for oppression. It even sounds bad in bald terms: "Phyllis Schlafly opposed the Equal Rights Amendment." It has "Equal Rights" right there in the title. You might as well say she opposed puppies and hugs.

No, no, I'm not the least bit opposed to teaching little girls who Phyllis Schlafly is. (I am, however, opposed to typing her name one more time in this damn post. Lady, your husband's ancestors should have bought a damn vowel. You know what's a good name? Stewart.)

I'm not sure schools can do a worse job of teaching history, and I'm not sure the Texas BOE hearings reveal any acceleration in what's been a death-spiral for a while now. But there it is. Am I wrong to be amused? Should I be afraid? Should I be very afraid?