Image : via Getty The Texas Board of Education has voted to cut Hillary Clinton from the K- 12 curriculum, deeming the first woman to be nominated for U.S. president by a major political party unworthy of young Texans’ brain space. Helen Keller, Also on the chopping block: Helen Keller. Billy Graham gets to stay, though, lucky kids. Advertisement According to the Dallas Morning News, on Friday the board made a preliminary vote to cut a handful of historical figures from the curriculum, arguing that students were stuffing too many of them in their impressionable little heads. The figures sentenced to educational death were voted on by a 15-member work group, which created a rubric to help deem which figures weren’t “essential” enough for students to study. It appears Clinton didn’t quite crack the rubric’s questions, which included items like, “Did the person trigger a watershed change,” “Was the person from an underrepresented group,” and “Will their impact stand the test of time.” In fairness, the change Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump triggered is maybe not something to brag about, but it is sort of chilling to strike someone from the his tory books who did manage to accomplish a slew of important firsts. Though Clinton and Keller didn’t make the (preliminary) cut, a number of highly questionable references and figures did, including “multiple references to ‘ Judeo-Christian’ values,” and “ a requirement that students explain how the ‘ Arab rejection of the State of Israel has led to ongoing conflict’ in the Middle East,” according to the Dallas Morning News. The curriculum will also continue to include historical figures like Civil Rights leader Barbara Jordan, Texan soldier/politician Sam Houston, and, inexplicably, evangelist Billy Graham, who apparently sparked more watershed change than the first major woman presidential nominee . Texas has had some trouble with their curriculum in the past— as the Washington Post points out, controversy has abounded over the curriculum’s former description of the American slave trade as the “Atlantic triangular trade”; references to Jews considering Jesus an important prophet; and information “ that in the era of segregation only ‘ sometimes’ were schools for black children ‘ lower in quality’” ; all of which are factually incorrect and harmfully misleading. Children are the (very under- informed) future!<doc-sep>The Texas State Board of Education voted to remove several historical figures, including Hillary Clinton and Helen Keller, from the state’s social studies curriculum on Friday, reported the Dallas Morning News. High school students had formerly been required to learn about Clinton as the first woman to become the presidential nominee of a major political party. Keller, an icon in the disabled community who became an activist and author despite being deaf and blind, was taught as a part of the state’s third grade social studies curriculum, reported the Morning News. The precursory decision doesn’t ban teachers from using the historical figures in class, it only means it is not mandatory. The board called the changes an effort to “streamline” Texas public schools’ curriculum. Some officials like Democratic Texas state legislator Chris Turner spoke out against the board’s decision. “If Helen Keller was an important historical figure when I was in school (and she was), then she still is today,” he tweeted. “Clinton is the first and only woman to be the presidential nominee of a major party in U.S. history. Enough said.” Among other changes, the board also voted to remove Thomas Hobbes and reinserted the Old Testament figure of Moses in a high school government unit on “individuals whose principles of laws and government institutions informed the American founding,” reported the Morning News. The vote also reinserted the phrase “Judeo-Christian (especially biblical law)” in a section on political, philosophical and religious traditions that influenced the founding of the United States. Friday’s vote was preliminary, and the board will be able to amend the changes before the final vote in November. Get The Brief. 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Write to Alejandro de la Garza at alejandro.delagarza@time.com.<doc-sep>Hillary Clinton was the first woman to become the nominee of a major United States political party for president. She served as first lady, secretary of state, and US senator. The Texas State Board of Education thinks she should be dropped from their history classes. The Texas education board has raised eyebrows recently after the Dallas Morning News reported a vote it took on Friday to “streamline” social studies curriculum in public schools. The board took a preliminary vote to make a number of changes, including scrapping mentions of Clinton and Hellen Keller from sections on citizenship and removing a phrase referring to the “optimism of the many immigrants who sought a better life in America.” They also voted to reinsert references to “Judeo-Christian” law, Moses’s influence on the writing of the US’s founding documents, and a reference to the “heroism” of the Alamo’s defenders. Teachers won’t be barred from discussing the figures scrapped, they just won’t be part of the required curriculum. A final vote on the changes will take place in November. The decision will affect Texas’s 5.4 million public school students, though it won’t change the state’s textbooks at this time. Two teachers from the group of board-nominated volunteers who recommended the changes told the Dallas Morning News that the state required students to learn about so many historical figures “it resulted in rote memorization of dates and names instead of real learning.” To decide whom to eliminate, they ranked “essential” figures by asking questions such as whether the person “triggered a watershed change,” was from an “underrepresented group,” or had an impact that would “stand the test of time.” They were ranked on a 20-point scale: Clinton got a 5. Keller, a deaf-blind woman who was a political activist and author and graduated from college, got a 7. The group who recommended dropping the activist from the third-grade curriculum, saying she “does not best represent the concept of citizenship,” and instead military and first responders do. Scrapping Keller will save teachers 40 minutes and Clinton 30 minutes, according to the Dallas Morning News. You’ll probably keep hearing about Texas education policy There’s long been a spotlight on Texas education policy. It’s a populous state and a large market, meaning decisions made there affect a lot of children’s learning. It’s also not new to controversy. Per the Dallas Morning News: Its textbooks have been a specific point of focus. As CBS News notes, in 2013, Christian groups fiercely opposed the approval of textbooks that included evolution and not creationism. Thanks to the size of Texas’s schoolbook market, publishers often sell books prepared for publication there in other states as well. But, as mentioned, Friday’s decision won’t affect textbooks or educational materials, the Dallas Morning News reports. So if the changes are confirmed come November, they wouldn’t have the same nationwide ripple effects as a change to students’ history books. It’s not clear whether the decision might affect what textbook publishers decide to include down the road. The Texas State Education Board didn’t accept all of the recommendations — for example, the working groups had also recommended getting rid of multiple references to “Judeo-Christian,” including in a section on influences of America’s founding, and the board rejected that. The board also disregarded the recommendation Moses be dropped as a figure who influenced the country’s foundations. Instead, it dropped English philosopher Thomas Hobbes.<doc-sep>The State Board of Education in Texas has voted to drop several historical figures, including Hillary Clinton, Barry Goldwater and Helen Keller, from the state’s required social studies curriculum to "streamline" the material for millions of public school students. The decision to remove such figures would not prevent teaching about them, only that it would not be mandatory. Members of the volunteer work groups that made such recommendations to the board said the state requires children to learn about too many historical figures. Eliminating Clinton from the required curriculum will save teachers 30 minutes of instructional time, one work group estimated, and eliminating Keller will save 40 minutes, the The Dallas Morning News reports. The board's tentative decision on Friday, which faces a final vote in November after a period of public response, affects 5.4 million Texas public school students. The elected board members represent specific geographical areas of the state. Barbara Cargill, a Texas Republican and member of the 15-person board, told The Dallas Morning News that "the recommendation to eliminate Helen Keller and Hillary Clinton was made by (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills) work groups.” “However the board did vote to agree with the work groups' recommendations,” she noted. "In speaking to teachers and testifiers, they did not mention these specific deletions." The Republican-dominated board also tentatively approved restoring language, eliminated by one committee, referring to Moses in lessons about America’s founding. After an outcry from conservatives and Gov. Gregg Abbott, the board also voted to reinstate references to "heroism” in studies about the Battle of the Alamo, a hallowed event in Texas history. The committee's had called “heroic," in reference to the battle, a “value-charged” term, according to the Texas Tribune. After Texas Monthly magazine published an article on the debate, however, Abbott called on Texans to contact their education members members to “stop political correctness in our schools.” In addition, the board voted to keep a requirement that students explain how the "Arab rejection of the State of Israel has led to ongoing conflict" in the Middle East. Texas high school students have been required to learn about Hillary Clinton after the former first lady made history in 2016 as the first female presidential nominee of a major political party. Third-graders have been required to learn about Keller, a disability rights activist and the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. Goldwater, the 1964 Republican presidential nominee, has been singled out as the first ethnically Jewish presidential candidate from a major party and primary architect of the modern conservative movement. Regarding which historical figures to include in the mandatory curriculum, a key consideration was whether the individual was from an underrepresented group or triggered a watershed change. Clinton reportedly scored a five on the 20-point grading scale, and Keller scored a seven. In June, one committee, following direction from the board, reversed a recommendation by a different committee to remove the late evangelist Billy Graham from the mandatory list, according to the Austin American-Statesman reports. Graham had scored a four on the grading scale. The board also softened language on slavery as a cause of the Civil War, the newspaper reports. Although multiple Democrats wanted slavery singled out as the cause of the Civil War, the board voted to retain listing sectionalism and states’ rights as “contributing factors” for the conflict. The board, however, added language that the expansion of slavery was the central cause of the Civil War.<doc-sep>
The Texas Board of Education voted last week (Sept. 14) to cut a slew of historical figures from the state’s social studies curriculum—and by their calculations, Christian evangelist Billy Graham is more important than deaf-blind activist Helen Keller, English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, and Hillary Clinton, the former US secretary of state and first major-party female nominee to run for president. The Dallas Morning News first reported that the vote was part of an effort to “streamline” the state’s curriculum, arguing that asking students to learn about so many historical figures “resulted in rote memorization of dates and names instead of real learning.” The 15-person, board-nominated volunteer group created a scale to grade historical figures, determining which were “essential” for children to learn. The group’s proposals will be put to a final vote in November. Clinton scored a five on the 20-point scale. Helen Keller earned a seven. The board also voted in favor of several other changes: To remove a phrase referring to the “optimism of the many immigrants who sought a better life in America.” To keep existing references to Billy Graham. To cut Republican senator and presidential nominee Barry Goldwater. To reinsert a reference to “Judeo-Christian” law. To reinsert a reference to the influence of the Biblical figure Moses on the founding US documents. To reinsert a reference to the “heroism” of the Alamo’s defenders. To add a prompt asking students to explain how “Arab rejection of the State of Israel has led to ongoing conflict” in the Middle East. This is far from the first time that Texas’s board of education has come under scrutiny for its curriculum decisions. The board also requires students to learn theories that challenge evolution and previously debated whether a Mexican-American studies course should be approved. (The course was ultimately green-lit.) The latest vote is proving equally controversial. Governor Greg Abbott threw his support behind those who argued that the state curriculum should more closely align with Judeo-Christian values: Chris Turner, Democratic caucus chairman in the Texas legislature, had the opposite viewpoint: The Dallas Morning News said that the board’s decision won’t affect the state’s textbooks or educational materials, and teachers won’t be barred from discussing the historical figures who were voted out. But they will no longer be part of the required curriculum.