The Texas State Board of Education is pursuing a complete overhaul of the state’s social studies curriculum, affecting over five million Texas students. The overhaul prioritizes Western Christian culture and downplays the impact of people of color throughout history. This move is meant to further the Make America Great Again agenda, and other red states, such as Florida, are attempting to do the same.
The lesson plans will instead focus on Texas and U.S. history alongside biblical stories. It will also attempt to gloss over critical points in American history, such as the slave trade and the Trail of Tears. The BOE is waging a war on history, ignoring basic facts in favor of pushing a white-washed agenda. The new curriculum will propagate a new wave of Christian Nationalism in the Lone Star State, where schools are an Orwellian nightmare of misinformation.
There have been clashes over education in Texas throughout the decade. In 2022, Republicans delayed a vote over a proposed curriculum featuring critical race theory, claiming it was essentially left-wing indoctrination. Now, a little more than four years later, they attempt their own indoctrination by suppressing actual history in favor of religious and white nationalist propaganda.
The Texas educational system has been faltering for years. Children, especially in low income areas, are deprived of access to proper education across the state. Texas has redistributed money from public schools to vouchers for private, religious institutions. These vouchers were disproportionately awarded to white students, who already attended private schools. The program excluded some Islamic private schools, which sparked a lawsuit from parents this year.
Texas Democrats attempted to pause the overhaul. Not because of the potential harm the new content could bring, but because of suspicious donations to historical advisor Donald Fraizer’s private institution: the Texas Center. Texas Public Policy Foundation, a right-wing think tank that has lobbied Texas policy for the past thirty years, recently awarded a $70,000 grant to the Texas Center at Schreiner University in Kerrville, Texas. The director of the Texas Center, Donald Frazier, was recently appointed as one of nine historians to advise the social studies overhaul. Clearly, there is a political influence on the overhaul.
After reports of the grant began to circulate, Democrats on the board wrote a strongly worded letter demanding further investigation. The letter did not mention any of the blatant whitewashing in the curriculum. Despite the grand heroics of Texas Democrats, it appears the new curriculum will be voted on in June. If passed, the lesson plans will go into effect in 2030.
Texas is riddled with educational inequality. Republicans on the BOE are exploiting this to rewrite history to further their Christian nationalist ideology. While the Democrats on the board grovel, refusing to take real action to protect history. The children of Texas will be subjected to daily, state funded propaganda if this curriculum is approved.
