Bill Bigelow: Bash Texas' curriculum, but is Oregon's much better?

[marmar]

from Oregon Live:



Rewriting social studies: Bash Texas' curriculum, but is Oregon's much better?
By Guest Columnist
June 05, 2010, 6:15AM

By BILL BIGELOW


You've probably read the horror stories coming out of Texas about its new social studies standards. The Texas Board of Education has rehabilitated Sen. Joe McCarthy, erased the 1848 Seneca Falls women's rights declaration, and required that the inaugural address of Confederate President Jefferson Davis be taught alongside Lincoln's.

No doubt, the victory of right-wingers on the Texas Board of Education is troubling. With 4.7 million students, the Texas market is huge and the Lone Star State's standards exert a powerful influence on the nation's textbook industry.

But all this Texas-bashing implies that standards everywhere else are good and fair and true. In fact, other states have their own conservative biases and deserve the same critical scrutiny that Texas' new standards are receiving. Oregon's social studies standards -- adopted by the Oregon State Board of Education in 2001 and currently being revised by the state's Department of Education -- are no exception.

Oregon's standards reveal no recognition of the social emergency that we confront: a deeply unequal and unsustainable world, hurtling toward an ecological crisis without parallel in human history. They fail to explore issues of race, social class, gender, or the impact of human activity on the environment. And they deal in only a token manner with the social movements that have made this a more decent world. Instead, the social studies standards portray U.S. society as fundamentally harmonious, with laws designed to promote fairness and progress.

The first benchmark in Oregon's standards requires that third-graders begin a nationalistic curricular journey as they learn to "identify essential ideas and values expressed in national symbols, heroes, and patriotic songs of the United States." By the time third-graders reach high school they'll "understand how laws are developed and applied to provide order, set limits, protect basic rights and promote the common good."

Capitalism is presented as a well-oiled machine. Eighth-graders learn "how supply and demand respond predictably to changes in economic circumstances." The economics standards include not a single mention of social class. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2010/06/rewriting_social_studies_bash.html

[and-justice-for-all]

1. Oregon is not trying to rewrite history...nt

[depakid]

2. Well, that's bound to bring every whining right wing nutcase onto the comment sections