The TEA (Texas Education Association) is considering replacing the old textbooks with new ones that, instead of teaching American history, will teach “GLOBAL” history for the purpose of developing “GLOBAL CITIZENS.” Throughout the United States, it’s easy to see how this change could have a big impact on a national level. At the moment, we only need to worry about Texas because California, having been bankrupt for quite some time, has not bought textbooks for years and may not for the foreseeable future.
Ok, now the real surprise. TEA would also introduce new United States history textbooks that exclude all founding years up to 1877—that’s right, the part that teaches about our hero forefathers and how they made us a great nation. That means our children will no longer learn how the Constitution was derived or any of the history of the Civil War.
As a writer and historian, and better yet, as an American, I am horrified by that idea and cannot imagine our school systems omitting this formative part of our culture and heritage. Don’t you think it’s an important foundation of the education of our children, children who in all likelihood will one day find themselves serving this nation in some remote country like Afghanistan with a rifle in their hands and people shooting at them? Wouldn’t it help your resolve to know that they are upholding a tradition of standing up for your rights and the rights of others that dates back to the American Revolution?
How did we get here and how will it affect the future? An important loss will be not teaching our next generations the mistakes that were made and that nobody wants to repeat. For example, not all of our history includes examples that you can look back on with pride. Let’s not forget that the reason we fought in the Civil War was to abolish slavery. Don’t we want our children to learn that freedom doesn’t come easily? Not just freedom for all races and all colors, but also freedom of speech and the right to own property. Are we no longer proud of the achievements of our founding fathers and mothers? Shouldn’t they know how Betsy Ross made the first flag or that a strong and courageous woman named Florence Nightingale made important contributions to the hospital environment? Do we no longer want to hold up these great Americans as examples and role models for our future generations?
It’s like your parents planned to raise you leaving out your ancestors and the stories of how they started and ultimately how you got yours. Doesn’t everyone want to know who their parents were? In the future, the new textbooks being used across the country may no longer teach our children how America began. This is even more astonishing when you consider that the highest-grossing movie of all time was “Gone with the Wind,” a book written about the period in our nation’s history that the TEA wants to erase.
Copyright 2010 Gregory David Page