Texas School Board Revises History By Removing Helen Keller And Hillary Clinton
Removing Helen Keller and Hillary Clinton from history curriculum is erasure, plain and simple
A Texas school board is proactively pursuing their own version of revisionist history by removing all mentions of Helen Keller and Hillary Clinton from the school’s history curriculum for 5.4 million school children. But don’t worry! They’re keeping Moses (yes, that Moses) in the books.
The changes are apparently part of an effort to “streamline” information in history classes for children across the state. Here’s how the board determined the importance of historical figures: each figure was given a rating of 1-20. Clinton, the first woman in U.S. history to win a presidential nomination by a major political party, ranked a five.
Helen Keller, a writer and activist (a pearl-clutching, triggering word, to be sure), was the first deaf and blind American to earn a college degree. She earned a seven. But…Moses. Moses. He made the cut. As did 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. The board, while cutting these prominent female figures from the state’s curriculum, also seeks to focus more on military and first-responders instead.
Is it surprising that an influential group of people in Texas don’t find the contributions of two women who changed the educational and political landscape of our entire country more worthy than those of lesser men? Not entirely. But to completely re-write history, literally, as though these women didn’t exist? Get it together, Texas board. It’s insulting to all women, and especially to the impressionable minds who will be subject to the “revised” curriculum.
Plenty of people weighed in on the proposed changes and erasure of Keller and Clinton.
The specific recommendations — and that’s all they are for now, recommendations — are for Helen Keller to be removed from a third-grade history lesson on “citizenship” and for Hillary Clinton to be removed from high school curriculum surrounding significant political and social leaders in the United States, according to the Dallas Morning News. Interestingly, those who received a “perfect” score of 20 were local members of the Texas legislature, Barbara Jordan did too, so that’s something. A very singular something.
The recommendations mean that these subjects aren’t forbidden to be taught, but they’re no longer mandatory. A final vote on the curriculum will happen in November.
