What’s most disturbing about the crude politicization of Texas textbooks and curricula by the Texas State Board of Education?
[a] The removal of United Farm Workers c0-founder Dolores Huerta from Texas social studies textbooks because she is a democratic socialist, despite the fact that even the Ladies Home Journal has recognized her as one of the 100 most important American women in the 2oth century?
[b] The defense of this exclusion through a comparison of Huerta with Helen Keller, who “exemplifies good citizenship.” [Keller was a life-long socialist.]
[c] Pulling the children’s literature classic “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?” from the literature standards because its author, Bill Martin, has the same name as the author of a text Ethical Marxism. [The Board must have been worried about all of the possible MLA papers. Just imagine it: "The Bear As Other: The Fetishism of Commodity Relations in Bare/Bear Racial Identity."]
[d] The influence of the Texas State Board of Education “know nothingism” on textbooks across the country. [Texas authorizes textbooks centrally to create a large market which then shapes how textbooks are written and published across the United States.]
