Ear Hustle

Texas Mom Wins Battle Against Textbook Giant McGraw-Hill; Company Will Change Printed Passage About Slavery

How interesting is it that this next post was not widely publicized?  Maybe it could be because it was a victory for the truth and the winner was not willing to allow the wool to be pulled over the eyes of our children who have to depend on an educational system that clearly is hell-bent on rewriting history and removing parts about blacks like nothing ever happened.  Well one Texas woman was not about to allow a change in a geography textbook to pass off slavery like it was some job they were “hired” for for over 400 years. 

You remember the story about McGraw-Hill changing their World Geography textbook to say that slaves were hire workers…really?  This company literally tried to erase slavery and one Texas mother was not going to let that happen.  She was outraged when her son sent her a Snapchat about the situation, this mom sprung into action.  Roni Dean-Burren took to social media with her objections to the “rewritten” language in the textbook and she wins her fight against the textbook giant. 

It’s a shame to say that a company has to be “outed, embarrassed and ridiculed” on social media to force them to do right by people.  Imagine what could have been has this mother not been adamant about her convictions.  Kudos to Roni Dean-Burren for sticking to what she believes in and pushing forward against McGraw-Hill. 

Read more as reported by MSN:

Roni Dean-Burren

Photo Credit: Pat Sullivan/AP Photo

A Texas mom shocked that her son’s textbook merely called African slaves “workers” is thrilled that publisher McGraw-Hill has promised revisions. But changing a single caption is hardly enough to combat what some educational experts call a wave of ideologically-fueled school standards that downplay the role of race and slavery in shaping America today.

Roni Dean-Burren was horrified when her son sent her a snapchat of his McGraw-Hill World Geography textbook, an edition created especially for Texas’ new state standards adopted in 2010. Opening up to a graphic titled “Patterns of Immigration,” he snapped a photo of the map’s caption. The caption reads:

The Atlantic Slave Trade between the 1500s and the 1800s brought millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations.

Examining his book more closely, Ms. Dean-Burren realized that although European indentured servants are described as working for “little or no pay,” there was no further mention of black slaves; their presence is simply portrayed as part of “immigration.”

“Erasure is real y’all!!! Teach your children the truth!!!” she commented alongside a video of the textbook, which has already been viewed more than 1.6 million times on Facebook.

It certainly got McGraw-Hill’s attention. The publishing giant maintains that “This program addresses slavery in several world lessons and meets the learning objectives of the course,” but promised to clarify the caption’s language about slavery. (A full Table of Contents for this edition is not available online.)

For many historians and educators, however, the learning objectives themselves are the problem.

Texas has been held up as a prime example of many states’ abysmal social studies standards, earning a “D” in one review done by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a right-leaning think tank, which awarded the nation 18 “F”s, 11 “D”s, 12 “C”s, and a single, shining “A”: South Carolina.

Citing students’ performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the Institute’s writers bemoaned that the US is creating a “generation of students who don’t understand or value our own nation’s history” by relying on overly ideological curricula, influenced by both the left and the right.

“Even as the left pushes stories of American perfidy, the right counters with triumphal accounts of American perfection,” the report says, arguing that either slant handicaps students’ ability to understand the world around them.

The criticism from a conservative organization may be particularly noteworthy, since the controversial standards gaining ground in Texas (and popping up in similar debates from Colorado to Virginia) are often pushed by Republican-dominated committees and school boards, particularly when it comes to interpretations of the Civil War.

Texas Board of Education member Patricia Hardy, a Republican, believes “States’ rights were the real issues behind the Civil War. Slavery was an after issue,” according to NPR – a view shared by 48 percent of Americans, according to the Pew Research Center, and held by more people under 30 than in any other age group.

Critics of the Texan standards say it’s also the view students are learning, despite most scholars’ conclusion that slavery was central to the Civil War, according to the Washington Post.

The gaps don’t stop there: as the Post reports, social studies classes in Texas today barely cover racial segregation, including Jim Crow and the Klu Klux Klan, defend the witch hunts of the McCarthy era, and portray the United Nations as a threat to national sovereignty. Moreover, the Fordham Institute lambasted board members for ignoring the separation of church and state and being “determined to inject their personal religious beliefs into history education.”

Former US Secretary of Education and Houston Superintendent Rod Paige argued against adopting the new standards, citing their political bent and thin coverage of race-related issues.

“We may not like our history, but it’s history, and it’s important to us today,” he told the Board.

Source: MSN

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