Texas approves explicitly conservative curriculum

The writing was on the wall for a while, but Texas just approved a revision to its history curriculum.  It has an explicit conservative bent — I mean, literally, students are to learn about “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.”

Because it is such a large market and has a very central purchasing authority, Texas carries a lot of weight with textbook publishers, meaning that students of many states will receive textbooks crafted to meet the Texas requirements.  (California is an even larger market but is not buying new books for a long while due to its ongoing slow meltdown.)

Am I worried?  Less than might be expected by people who know me.  Why?  Because I’m a teacher.  I have learned that the easiest way to cause students to reject any piece of knowledge is to proclaim it loudly in a textbook.  Especially with an increasingly distrustful and tech-savvy student population, attempts to ram down an official line on anything seem likely to fail.