Why is it Always Texas

By BJ Bjornson

It has been a few months since the Texas State Board of Education made the news for rewriting history to promote right-wing ideology, but they are at it again now, with their target being everyone�s favourite bogeyman du jour, Muslims.

Leaders of an interfaith group that includes Christians, Jews and Muslims urged the State Board of Education on Monday to abandon what they called an "inflammatory" resolution that purportedly documents an anti-Christian, pro-Islamic bias in world history textbooks.

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Written by an unsuccessful school board candidate, the resolution would seek to restrain publishers from printing textbooks that display a favorable tilt toward Islam and a bias against Christianity. Citing examples, the resolution contends that world history textbooks once used in Texas classrooms gave more favorable attention to Islam and comparatively less to Christianity.

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The resolution was presented to the board by Randy Rives, an Odessa businessman who ran unsuccessfully against board member Bob Craig of Lubbock in the GOP primary. The resolution cites several examples in claiming that textbooks tend to play up Christianity brutality and Muslim loss of life while playing down Islamic cruelty and Christian deaths.

A review by the Texas Freedom Network, which opposes the resolution, disputed the findings, saying the resolution ignores whole sections of textbooks that discuss Christianity. Nearly all world history textbooks used in Texas classroom discuss conquests and atrocities committed by Muslim leaders, the group said.

The selective reading of said textbooks doesn�t surprise me too much. From the sounds of it, the plan is mainly to get rid of anything that puts Christianity in a bad light along with anything that puts Islam in a favourable one, the better to indoctrinate Texan youths in the evils of the �other�. As such, I do have to disagree with this point:

Kathy Miller, who heads the Freedom Network, called the resolution "a political ploy" that "has nothing to do with the quality of education."

It may be a political ploy, but much as with the previous rewriting of history in the state, it is also about ensuring that schools are reduced to merely reinforcing a specific worldview, and as such, the quality of that education will suffer considerably.