How some Texas parents and historians say a new state curriculum glosses over slavery and racism

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A new Texas curriculum seeks to captivate first-grade students with a lesson on Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s historic estate long revered for its French neoclassical architecture and as a symbol of the founding father’s genius.

The lesson teaches about the Virginia property’s pulley system that opened doors, the mechanical clock that kept track of the days and the dumbwaiter that transported dinner from the kitchen to the dining room.

However, if the State Board of Education approves the curriculum when it meets this week, children could miss out on a more crucial aspect of Monticello’s history: It was built using the labor of enslaved people and occupied by hundreds of humans whom Jefferson enslaved.

Since it was proposed by the Texas Education Agency earlier this year, the elementary school reading and language arts curriculum has faced strong opposition from parents, advocates and faith leaders for its heavy use of biblical teachings, which critics say could lead to the bullying and isolation of non-Christian students, undermine church-state separation and grant the state far-reaching control over how children learn about religion.

But less attention has been given to how the curriculum teaches America’s history of racism, slavery and civil rights.

Some parents, academics and concerned Texans argue that the lessons strip key historical figures of their complexities and flaws while omitting certain context they say would offer children a more accurate understanding of America’s past and present.

A Texas Tribune analysis of the public input Texans have provided to the Texas Education Agency as feedback to the curriculum and its sections on American history raises questions about why certain historical information was excluded and the impact the omissions could have on elementary school kids’ education.

“The lack of specificity is striking,” said Julia Brookins, senior program analyst of teaching and learning for the American Historical Association with whom the Tribune shared several of the curriculum’s excerpts.

A kindergarten lesson titled “Our Great Country,” for example, instructs teachers to tell students that founding fathers like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson “realized that slavery was wrong and founded the country so that Americans could be free.” The passage omits the fact that many of them enslaved people.

A second grade lesson called “Fighting for a Cause” notes that “slavery was wrong, but it was practiced in most nations throughout history.” It does not detail the race-based nature of slavery in America that made it distinct from other parts of the world.

Another second grade lesson covering the U.S. Civil War focuses heavily on Robert E. Lee’s “excellent abilities” as general of the Confederate Army, which fought to maintain slavery, and his desire to find “a peaceful way to end the disagreement” with the North. It does not teach that Lee enslaved people or highlight his racist views that Black people were neither intelligent nor qualified to hold political power.

A lesson on Martin Luther King Jr. mostly emphasizes his nonviolent advocacy without acknowledging his swift criticism and recognition of the conditions that pushed people to violence or his belief that “large segments of white society” were more concerned about “tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity,” according to one of his speeches.

Moreover, a fifth grade lesson on World War II describes how Nazi Germany’s Nuremberg laws “were created to dehumanize and target Jewish people.” But it does not teach how those laws drew inspiration from Jim Crow and the dehumanization of Black people in America.

Texas school districts have the freedom to choose their own lesson plans. If the state-authored curriculum receives approval this week, the choice to adopt the materials will remain with districts. But the state will offer an incentive of $60 per student to districts that choose to adopt the lessons, which could appeal to some as schools struggle financially after several years without a significant raise in state funding.

The Texas Education Agency has told the Tribune that many of the curriculum’s historical references are meant to build “a strong foundation for students to understand the more complex concepts” as they get older.

The curriculum was designed with a cross-disciplinary approach that uses reading and language arts lessons to advance or cement concepts in other disciplines, such as history and social studies. While the curriculum makes it clear that the state does not intend for these materials to replace grade-level social studies instruction, it also states that certain specifics about American history are necessary “so that students can understand and retell the story of our nation’s birth.”

In response to concerns Texans shared through public input about vague and inaccurate historical references, the Texas Education Agency made minor revisions to certain texts but largely defended its choices by saying that “the content in these instructional materials is written in an age-appropriate and suitable manner.”

Several of the nearly a dozen parents, historians and educators whom the Tribune interviewed about the curriculum agree that age appropriateness is an important factor to consider when teaching history.

Teaching elementary school kids about slavery in a meaningful way “can build on children’s instincts and help students apply them to their classrooms, communities and study of the United States,” according to Learning for Justice, a community education program of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which created a guide for history teachers.

Rather than poring over the gruesome details of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, for instance, the organization recommends intentionally building instruction “that prepares students to understand the long, multidimensional history of slavery and its enduring consequences,” similar to how math instructors teach the basics of addition and subtraction long before students learn algebra.

That includes teaching that many of the founding fathers enslaved people, that enslavers often separated entire families for profit and as a form of punishment, and that the forced labor of enslaved people built many important buildings and institutions, according to Learning for Justice.

Historians interviewed by the Tribune also say that if the state is unwilling to use the materials it designed as a vehicle to provide students a more comprehensive picture of the country’s history, then education officials should reconsider its cross-disciplinary approach and whether the proposed reading and language arts curriculum is the appropriate venue for such lessons.

“I would just start, as a basic premise, that you not lie to kids,” said Michael Oberg, a history professor at the State University of New York College at Geneseo who previously taught in Texas and followed debates over the state’s social studies standards. Oberg pointed to excerpts of the state curriculum about the founding fathers’ desire for liberty and equality and Robert E. Lee’s leadership as lessons he believes leave out significant historical context.

How the curriculum covers other major historical chapters also calls into question why lessons on some events are considered age appropriate and others are not.

In stark contrast to the state curriculum’s lack of detail when covering American slavery, for example, a fifth-grade lesson on World War II is clear and precise about the horrors of the Holocaust, which it defines as “the state-sponsored and systematic persecution and murder of six million Jewish people by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.” The lesson further highlights how Jewish people “were dehumanized, imprisoned, attacked and murdered” and “stripped of their rights, dignity and lives.”

How Texas schools teach U.S. history to children has been the focus of intense political conflict in recent years. The state passed legislation in 2021 making it illegal for schools to teach slavery and racism as part of the “true founding” of the country.

The legislation came about after the summer of mass protests for racial justice in response to the murder of George Floyd, a Black man killed by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020. In the years that followed, Republican state lawmakers across the country pushed for legislation outlawing what Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick once described as “woke philosophies” maintaining that people, by virtue of their race or sex, are either oppressed or inherently racist. Many State Board of Education members have successfully campaigned on similar ideas in recent years.

Now, the 2021 law prompts Texas schools to teach children that slavery and racism are “deviations from, betrayals of, or failures to live up to the authentic founding principles of the United States, which include liberty and equality.”

The law has sowed fear and confusion about what teachers are allowed to teach, while causing others to stray away or move quickly past certain topics like slavery and civil rights, said Jerrica Liggins, secondary education curriculum director for the Paris school district. Students are the ones who ultimately suffer, she said.

“Left out of the curriculum, I would say it would be anyone of color. But if you think about left out in the classroom, it's everyone. Because we're not giving them everything the way it happened,” Liggins said. “I'd say we were kind of sugar-coating it to make it seem to be more pleasant when it was really horrific.”

Caleb McDaniel, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian who teaches at Rice University, worries the state curriculum’s framing of American slavery could diminish its significance and make it difficult for students to understand. The Civil War lesson he reviewed, for instance, doesn't detail the legal mechanisms built into the Constitution that enabled slavery to expand in the decades leading up to the war. The lessons about the founding fathers, he said, also fail to provide students a full picture of who the men were.

George Washington is quoted in the curriculum, for example, as saying “there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition” of slavery. But the quote is cherry-picked from a longer letter in which Washington criticizes Quaker abolitionists in Philadelphia who are working to free enslaved people, McDaniel noted.

McDaniel added that the materials he reviewed reflect how history curricula have come a long way from a time when some would question whether slavery was the cause of the Civil War. But he said their evolution has not quite “reached its ending point.”

“I think the serious study of the American past reveals a lot of inequality and a lot of failures to live up to the ideals of democracy, and racial injustice is a key example of that,” McDaniel said. “I would challenge the idea that calling attention to that and helping students understand that part of our history is ideological in some way.”

Mark Chancey, a religious studies professor at Southern Methodist University, was one of several people who provided public input about how the curriculum addresses slavery and religion.

Chancey said the materials’ whitewashing of the nation's founders stood out to him, as did the repeated insistence that they sought freedom for all Americans. He also pointed out that for a curriculum that its defenders claim will teach children about the role Christianity played in the nation’s founding, it fails to address the fact that many people used the religion to justify their support of slavery.

“Public schools are educating for civic purposes. We're developing our citizenry. We're preparing students to function in a pluralistic democracy and to deliberate about different ideas,” Chancey said. “Students need to have an accurate understanding of history to do that, and many of these lessons work against that goal by oversimplifying American history to the point of distortion.”

The state cannot afford to produce another generation of children who don’t have an accurate understanding of history, added Susan Nayak, a mother of an Austin school district graduate who provided public input to the Texas Education Agency on the curriculum.

“You can't just, ‘Oh, this person is just a hero, and we're just going to talk about their good parts, and that's it.’ I just don’t think that’s helpful for kids,” Nayak said. “They understand that they are not all good and all bad. And experiencing these people, historical figures, as true, complex humans, is actually helpful for them.”

Public education advocates plan to continue calling on the State Board of Education to reject the materials, said Emily Witt, senior communications and media strategist for the Texas Freedom Network, which produced a report on the curriculum and raised concerns about the religious emphasis and whitewashing of American history.

Board members have also raised concerns about the curriculum, though some of their worries are different.

Patricia Hardy, a Fort Worth Republican serving on the board, said she’s still reviewing the materials. But thus far, she doesn't think they do an adequate job of merging reading and social studies lessons. The history lessons are scattered and not in chronological order, she said, which could make it difficult for students to retain the information. Nor does she find the history lessons — like a second grader learning about the Emancipation Proclamation — age appropriate.

“It does need to be taught, but it's got to be taught at the right place,” said Hardy, a former history teacher and social studies coordinator.

Some parents told the Tribune it’s crucial that their children see themselves accurately reflected in the state’s history lessons.

Keiawnna Pitts, a Round Rock community activist and mother of four, who is Black, acknowledged that kids are impressionable but said they’re exposed early in their lives to topics like race outside of their homes and classrooms. She also said children start asking questions from a young age. Glossing over the difficult parts of history, she said, does not help them to make sense of the world around them.

“Why do we need to introduce it to our kids early? Because I need them to think critically past what is being told to them,” Pitts said. “We're gonna have to be the ones teaching our kids, because this is what we're gonna always get — what they're comfortable with.”

Disclosure: Rice University, Southern Methodist University, Southern Poverty Law Center and Texas Freedom Network have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.