Yesterday, in a 9-5 vote, the Texas Board of Education has replaced the “Slave Trade” with the “Atlantic Triangular trade” for its textbooks and social studies standards over the next ten years.

And the United States is no longer a “democracy” but a “constitutional republic.”

Thomas Jefferson has nothing over John Calvin, a French theologian from the 16th century. No more Jefferson in Paris. What happened to “freedom fries”? “In God We Trust” supersedes “We the People.”

Barack Obama will be the only president referenced by his full name, Barack Hussein Obama. William Jefferson Clinton will stay Bill, James Earl Carter will stay Jimmy, and Richard Millhouse Nixon will remain innocent. John F. Kennedy gets to keep his middle initial, but will Texas still claim him? Does anyone know George Washington’s middle name? Oh, the burdens of being a first.

CBS News reports (online):
The board rejected an effort to add former San Antonio mayor and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros to a fourth-grade example of notable Texans and spent much time debating which Civil War battles and heroes from Texas should be added to a seventh-grade class.

To be honest, what Texas proposes resembles what school textbooks and curricula gave school children in the 1970s where there was more focus on the Civil War generals and battles than the slavery issue. How many students are fortunate to have siblings who frequent the library and bookstores and plop titles on the dining room table with information way beyond what you were getting in school. Or parents who were descended from free people of color whose story didn’t fit what was taught in the school textbook about slavory. As people have been saying “You may want your country back, but I want mine to go forward.”

Nothing is above critical analysis if analysis is involved or even critical thinking. Sure McCarthyism got out of control fingering Americans in a kangaroo court like spectacle. Some people who got burned were card carrying Communists, some were not. But why did it happen? What makes Communism a threat? In school we didn’t even know what Communism was. In fact, I don’t think we spent 1 paragraph on McCarthyism.

With the Texas School Board’s decision which will affect over 4 million students, will textbook publishers go for the sale or come up with a new business plan especially if other states aren’t buying in?

Texas is also considering accepting nuclear waste from over 30 states.