Wednesday, June 02, 2010
California’s state Senate wants no part of Texas’ new standards for history textbooks. Responding to changes adopted by Texas State Board of Education, the California Senate adopted legislation intended to prevent conservative revisions to American history from becoming part of the Golden State’s public-school curriculum.
The Texas education board wants textbooks, among other things, to emphasize the significance of Christianity in the nation’s founding, minimize Thomas Jefferson’s philosophy of separating church and state, play up the rise of conservatism in the 1980s and 1990s, and down play Latino history.
The Senate measure (S.B. 1451), adopted on a bipartisan 25-5 vote, requires California’s Board of Education to assess discrepancies between the new Texas standards and California’s existing ones.
“At that point,” the bill’s sponsor, Democratic Senator Leland Yee, told The Raw Story, “we will make it very, very clear that we won’t accept textbooks that minimize the contributions of minorities and propagate the close connection between church and state.”
The legislation now goes to the state Assembly for consideration.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
California Passes Bill to Counteract ‘Disturbing’ Texas Curriculum (by Sahil Kapur, Raw Story)
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