Grading Texas

Before announcing his parental “bill of rights” for public education at a charter school in Lewisville, Gov. Greg Abbott reminded everyone of a parental right he already had issued – his order giving parents the right to potentially expose their children and their children’s teachers and classmates to a deadly disease every time they go to school.

Of course, he didn’t use those words exactly, but that was the effect of what he was talking about when he touted his order, still in effect during the current COVID surge, prohibiting school districts from requiring students and employees to wear protective masks.

A fairly large audience of adults and students applauded. Best I could tell from my livestream view, no one, including the governor, was wearing a mask, and no one was social distancing. The event, it should be noted, occurred during a record-breaking week for new confirmed COVID cases in Denton County, where Lewisville is located. Nearby Dallas County also was being hammered with a COVID surge.

For all the fanfare, the governor’s parental “bill of rights” was little more than a clip job of rights that public school parents already enjoy under current law.

More importantly to Abbott, though, the event was another campaign stop on the way to a Republican primary, where blind ideology trumps not only good government but also common-sense health concerns — except, maybe, the health concerns of the governor himself.

Abbott already has tested positive for COVID at least once, and I am sure he is fully vaccinated and boosted. I also am sure he and his handlers aren’t foolhardy enough not to take some precautions with his health when he is on the road. Maybe members of his security detail have to be vaccinated and/or tested regularly. Maybe similar requirements had even been imposed on the crowd in Lewisville, although that seems more doubtful.

But caution and selfless personal restraint are not the message that the governor wants Republican primary voters to hear as he continues to brag about his orders banning mask and vaccine mandates. His message to his voters – his pandemic “bill of rights,” you could say – is that someone’s right to get sick and infect others, even in a public school classroom or on a school bus, is more important than someone else’s right to try to stay healthy.

Clay Robison

From the beginning, the legislative proposal to create an 1836 Project to promote “patriotic education” seemed little more than an effort to put a politically engineered public face on Texas, cleansed of the nagging blemishes that some people find uncomfortable or want to deny.

That, folks, is not education. It is propaganda.

Now that Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Speaker Dade Phelan have appointed the nine members of the 1836 Project Advisory Committee, the early misgivings seem valid, particularly if the panel is favorably influenced, as its chairman is, by Donald Trump’s ill-conceived 1776 Commission, which also allegedly was created to promote “patriotic education.”

What the new state committee does is important because it will be working with state agencies on ways to promote Texas history for visitors at state parks, monuments, museums and other landmarks. The panel also will create a pamphlet to be given to people receiving Texas driver’s licenses, and it can make recommendations for future legislation.

In truth, Trump created the 1776 Commission to try to whitewash the impact of slavery and racism in American history and culture and to push back during the 2020 election year against Black Lives Matter activism over the killings of Black people by police officers. The then-president wrongly claimed that some educators were trying to divide Americans on race and slavery and were teaching students to “hate their own country.”

Ideology, not scholarship, guided Trump’s appointments to his commission, and its report, issued during the closing days of his administration, reflected that fact. Instead of valid academic input from professional historians, the report was largely a compilation of right-wing talking points and ideologically slanted theories that, among other things, cast doubts on the value of multiculturalism and excused the hypocrisy in the fact that several of our nation’s prominent founders, while advocating for equality, were slave owners.

The report had no scholarly footnotes or citations, and James Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association, said it was not a work of history but a display of “cynical politics.”

“They’re using something they call history to stoke culture wars,” he told The New York Times.

President Joe Biden promptly killed the 1776 Commission and its report after taking office.

Nevertheless, at the first meeting last week of the 1836 Project Advisory Committee, the chairman, Kevin Roberts, an Abbott appointee, called the 1776 report an “excellent piece of scholarship” and urged his fellow committee members, future invited witnesses and anyone else following the committee’s work to read it. He said the Trump commission’s report would help them get a sense of what the 1836 committee is trying to accomplish.

Roberts, who has a Ph.D. in American History from the University of Texas at Austin, is former president of a small Catholic college in Wyoming and founder and former headmaster of a Catholic school in Louisiana. Now, he is CEO of the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), a conservative think tank in Austin, whose main interest in education is privatizing it and cutting funding to public schools. His group has a lot of influence over Abbott and many legislators.

Another advisory committee member, Sherry Sylvester, a former senior adviser to Lt. Gov. Patrick, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at TPPF. One member of the 1776 Commission was Brooke Rollins, domestic policy adviser under Trump and TPPF’s former president and CEO. She since has returned to TPPF as a senior adviser and board member.

Five of the nine members have backgrounds in history and/or education, including Roberts. They also include Robert Edison, a former Dallas ISD Teacher of the Year, who has spent his career and now retirement on educating the public on Black history. Another member is former state Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, who got the Alamo transferred to state oversight.

Some critics also find the name, “1836 Project,” problematic. It marks the year Texas won its independence from Mexico. The advisory committee is charged with promoting the state’s “history of prosperity and democratic freedom.” But the Constitution of the Republic of Texas, adopted in 1836, legalized slavery and excluded indigenous groups from any rights as citizens.

The committee will hear testimony from the Texas Education Agency, but so far it is not empowered to change public school curricula. It is, however, empowered to recommend legislation, which could lead to more partisan or ideological tampering with what teachers can or cannot teach. It could open up another front in the political war against public education.

Clay Robison

Former state Education Commissioner Michael Williams recently offered some advice to the State Board of Education, which soon will begin rewriting new social studies curriculum standards to conform to the new anti-critical race theory law.

“Just tell the truth. Just put the truth in the standards, and you will be just fine,” Williams said. “Kids will be able to handle the truth.”

According to an item in Texas Education News, the former commissioner, an appointee of then-Gov. Rick Perry, addressed the board at his portrait unveiling ceremony in the board’s meeting room.

His advice was sound. Telling the truth is always the right choice for educators, and it is what teachers do in their classrooms every day.

But Williams was talking about a law designed to make Texas education less truthful by whitewashing what teachers can tell their students about racism, past and present, in America. And he was speaking to an elected board with a history of trying to rewrite parts of our history to downplay the important contributions of people of color.

There are different members on the board now. But some members have shown they are still reluctant for students to be taught some important truths, including the obvious impact of humans on climate change, something, like racism, that these children will have to learn to address or suffer tragic consequences from as adults.

Williams is correct. Children want the truth and, as long as the lessons and educational materials are age appropriate, can handle the truth.

The political effort to whitewash the teaching of racism obviously is not being driven by children. It is being driven by adults. These include a governor, many legislators and a growing number of school board members at the local level, who are seeking short-term political gain that risks our children’s future.

They are stirring up a vocal minority of parents who are uncomfortable with the truth of our growing diversity and the issue of racism and don’t want it discussed in their children’s classrooms.

But the kids are ready to learn. And if they don’t learn the truth, the whole truth, about our critical issues and problems, how can they be prepared to develop the potential path to an equitable, tolerant society that their parents and so-called government leaders refuse to pursue?

Clay Robison

First, voting rights came under attack by the political powers that be in Texas. Now, another crucial element of our democracy – public education – has become a major target of Gov. Greg Abbott and the extreme right wing of the Republican Party.

Why? Because Abbott and his allies are more narrowly focused on their own political preservation than they are on the future of our state or the futures of Texas’ 5.4 million public school children. Instead of protecting and promoting democracy, they seek to tear it down.

The attack on public education began in earnest with the enactment of the so-called critical race theory law to whitewash the teaching of racism and discourage classroom discussions of other issues that make many conservative voters uncomfortable.

It is bad enough to interfere with teachers’ efforts to teach the whole truth about our history. But the law’s deliberate vagueness makes it even worse. Already, some parents and school officials have misinterpreted the law to absurd and hurtful extremes. In a handful of instances, well-regarded books by Black authors have been removed from school libraries and classrooms, and one school administrator even told teachers to have books in their classrooms offering “opposing” views of the Holocaust.

These misinterpretations, deliberate or not, will increase. In some districts, teachers work in fear that one of their lessons or classroom discussions could come under attack by a parent or would-be school board candidate, placing their careers in jeopardy.

Does Abbott care? No, not as long as the law wins him votes in next year’s Republican primary.

Republican Rep. Matt Krause of Fort Worth continued the attack on public education by threatening a witch hunt for several hundred listed books in school libraries and classrooms, mainly books dealing with race relations, diversity, LGBTQ issues and sexuality.

Not to be left behind, Abbott then took Krause’s threat to another extreme by writing to the Texas Association of School Boards to complain about alleged “pornography” in schools. He didn’t identify any specific books, because he was simply playing to parents who may misuse the term, “pornographic,” to refer to any book they don’t like. The governor’s letter was another attack on public education.

Local school districts already have procedures in place for investigating parental complaints about books or other instructional materials they find objectionable.

Krause, a largely unknown legislator, is trying to increase his name identification for a statewide race for attorney general. Abbott is competing with two right-wing extremist challengers to see who can make the most outrageous comments or take the most extreme positions before the March GOP primary, where extremism may go a long way toward determining the party’s nominees.

In the process, they are disrespecting educators, undermining public schools and shortchanging students. They are doing serious harm to the institution of public education, which is far more important to our state’s future than anyone’s political career. And it may take a long time to repair the damage.

Clay Robison