WEBVTT - Textbooks and Holy Books feat. Steven Moncelli & Dr. Michael Phillips 0:00:01.680 --> 0:00:04.960 Cool Media. 0:00:05.080 --> 0:00:08.039 I'm Michael Phillips. I wrote a history of racism in 0:00:08.119 --> 0:00:11.680 Dallas called White Metropolis, and have co authored an upcoming 0:00:11.720 --> 0:00:14.680 book on the history of eugenics in Texas called The 0:00:14.760 --> 0:00:15.960 Purifying Knife. 0:00:16.320 --> 0:00:20.440 And I'm Stephen Monticelli, an investigative reporter and columnist who 0:00:20.480 --> 0:00:24.080 covers extremism and far right movements for a variety of publications, 0:00:24.440 --> 0:00:27.000 including The Texas Observer and The Barbed Wire. 0:00:27.640 --> 0:00:31.600 School board meetings used to be boring. Board members typically 0:00:31.600 --> 0:00:37.199 spend hours discussing financial reports, land purchases, plumbing contracts, and 0:00:37.280 --> 0:00:42.080 other tedious topics. But beginning in twenty twenty, Christopher Ruffo, 0:00:42.360 --> 0:00:45.800 a former documentary filmmaker and fellow at the right wing 0:00:45.840 --> 0:00:50.000 Heritage Foundation, the group responsible for Project twenty twenty five, 0:00:50.680 --> 0:00:54.320 launched a campaign to convince Americans that public schools have 0:00:54.400 --> 0:00:59.440 become communists and doctrination centers. RUFO falsely claimed that public 0:00:59.480 --> 0:01:03.600 school teachres were brainwashing school children with something called critical 0:01:03.680 --> 0:01:08.880 race theory or CRT for short. Adherents of critical race 0:01:08.920 --> 0:01:13.080 theory argue that racism has become so intrinsically entwined in 0:01:13.120 --> 0:01:17.640 American politics, law, and culture that anti discrimination laws typically 0:01:17.680 --> 0:01:22.080 fail While CRT is studied in some graduate schools and 0:01:22.160 --> 0:01:25.559 law programs, it hasn't been taught at the grade school level, 0:01:25.760 --> 0:01:27.440 where the outrage has been directed. 0:01:28.280 --> 0:01:31.920 That's certainly not the case in Texas, which influences curriculums 0:01:31.920 --> 0:01:35.120 across the nation due to its large population and purchasing 0:01:35.160 --> 0:01:41.160 power of textbooks. But precision wasn't the point of Rufo's campaign. Rather, 0:01:41.680 --> 0:01:45.760 it was to refashion CRT into a sort of political cudgel, 0:01:46.160 --> 0:01:48.880 something that Rufo admitted to in a series of tweets 0:01:48.960 --> 0:01:52.400 in twenty twenty one. The goal is to have the 0:01:52.440 --> 0:01:57.240 public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think critical. 0:01:56.880 --> 0:01:58.360 Race theory, Rufo wrote. 0:01:58.840 --> 0:02:02.600 We have decotify the term and will recodify it to 0:02:02.680 --> 0:02:06.680 annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular 0:02:06.720 --> 0:02:07.680 with Americans. 0:02:08.240 --> 0:02:08.760 End quote. 0:02:09.639 --> 0:02:13.359 On Fox News, Newsmax and other right wing media outlets, 0:02:13.840 --> 0:02:17.320 Rufo convinced parents that instead of teaching kids reading, writing, 0:02:17.360 --> 0:02:22.840 and arithmetic, public school teachers were using CRT to brainwash 0:02:22.880 --> 0:02:26.639 white children into hating themselves and goading black children into 0:02:26.680 --> 0:02:30.760 hating white people. Radical teachers and professors, Rufo warned, had 0:02:30.840 --> 0:02:36.320 launched a sinister campaign to destroy the American way of life. 0:02:36.360 --> 0:02:39.840 In a foundational paper called Whiteness's Property, the critical race 0:02:39.880 --> 0:02:44.080 theorist Cheryl Harris has proposed suspending private property rights, seizing 0:02:44.160 --> 0:02:46.640 land and wealth from the rich and redistributing it along 0:02:46.720 --> 0:02:47.440 racial lines. 0:02:48.480 --> 0:02:52.280 Rufa's timing could not have been more perfect. The artificial 0:02:52.360 --> 0:02:57.120 CRT panic broke out during the COVID pandemic. Parents already 0:02:57.120 --> 0:03:02.000 felt frustration and fury about the hard ships of campus closings, 0:03:02.040 --> 0:03:06.240 remote learning, and mass mandates, now convinced that their children 0:03:06.280 --> 0:03:08.920 were being taught to scapegoat white people for all the 0:03:08.919 --> 0:03:13.639 country's problems. Parents across the country exploded in rage at 0:03:13.639 --> 0:03:17.600 local school boards. Reuters reported on one meaning that turned 0:03:17.680 --> 0:03:22.680 violent in Loudon County, Virginia. 0:03:23.000 --> 0:03:25.520 What had been planned as a typical school board meeting 0:03:25.560 --> 0:03:34.080 in Virginia's wealthy Louden County this week devolved into pandemonium, 0:03:34.240 --> 0:03:37.560 with hundreds of parents flooding an auditorium to accuse the 0:03:37.560 --> 0:03:41.280 school system of teaching their kids that racism in America 0:03:41.440 --> 0:03:45.280 is structural and systemic, something the school board denies as 0:03:45.360 --> 0:03:48.480 part of the curriculum. Things got so heated that the 0:03:48.520 --> 0:03:52.240 board members eventually walked out leaving the police to deal 0:03:52.280 --> 0:04:00.920 with the unruly crowd. Two people left in handcuffs. Louden 0:04:01.000 --> 0:04:04.560 County School Board has been roiled for months by accusations 0:04:04.640 --> 0:04:08.000 that it has embraced critical race theory, a school of 0:04:08.040 --> 0:04:11.560 thought that maintains that racism is ingrained in US law 0:04:11.640 --> 0:04:15.960 and institutions, and that legacies of slavery and segregation have 0:04:16.080 --> 0:04:20.600 created an uneven playing field for black Americans. The idea 0:04:20.640 --> 0:04:24.920 that CRT, as it's known, is infiltrating public schools has 0:04:24.960 --> 0:04:29.080 become a rallying cry for conservatives, who, like many in Louden, 0:04:29.400 --> 0:04:32.640 say it is being used to indoctrinate children that America 0:04:32.680 --> 0:04:34.000 is a racist country. 0:04:34.240 --> 0:04:38.320 Critical race theory is anti white, and it's not American. 0:04:39.320 --> 0:04:42.120 Those within a year for historical rhymes may find this 0:04:42.240 --> 0:04:47.119 outcry familiar. Resistance to racial integration and the Civil rights 0:04:47.120 --> 0:04:50.560 era movements drew similar accusations of being hostile to whites 0:04:50.880 --> 0:04:54.640 and being a product of anti American communism, and those 0:04:54.680 --> 0:04:58.240 with experienced teaching students might chuckle at the accusations of 0:04:58.240 --> 0:05:03.640 ideologically motivated brainwas an indoctrination. A common joke posted by 0:05:03.680 --> 0:05:07.560 teachers online is that quote, if we could indoctrinate students. 0:05:07.560 --> 0:05:11.440 Students would always read the syllabus, but that didn't stop 0:05:11.480 --> 0:05:16.679 panic over CRT expanding to include anti LGBTQ sentiment as well, 0:05:17.080 --> 0:05:20.359 with queer students and teachers who supported them being placed 0:05:20.400 --> 0:05:23.479 squarely in the crosshairs of a well funded national hate 0:05:23.560 --> 0:05:28.000 machine dedicated to ginning up fear among local parents. Here's 0:05:28.040 --> 0:05:31.600 a clip from one speech I personally witnessed at the 0:05:31.640 --> 0:05:35.440 school board meeting of my hometown school district, grape Vine Kullyville, 0:05:35.720 --> 0:05:38.800 from August twenty twenty two, and very simple truths. 0:05:38.839 --> 0:05:41.840 There's only two genders, and boys should go to boys rooms, 0:05:41.960 --> 0:05:45.800 girls should go to girls' restrooms. And guess what teachers 0:05:45.800 --> 0:05:49.599 should be forced to use Your freaking made up fantasy. 0:05:49.240 --> 0:05:53.840 Pronouns find like hall hold the line against the LGBT 0:05:53.960 --> 0:05:59.880 mafia and their dang pedo fans hate winning. You know what, 0:06:00.240 --> 0:06:03.240 keep the wing they you keep the monkey cocks. 0:06:03.279 --> 0:06:04.080 How's that work? 0:06:04.120 --> 0:06:04.200 It? 0:06:05.000 --> 0:06:07.440 The keep wrings so much, We'll keep come. 0:06:07.640 --> 0:06:08.679 You know what, We're. 0:06:08.520 --> 0:06:09.839 Gonna keeck come so hard. 0:06:10.080 --> 0:06:12.640 The only thing these bullcards have to figure out is 0:06:12.680 --> 0:06:22.000 whiler tell their face back one thighs. Wow, it's all. 0:06:19.640 --> 0:06:22.400 As absurd as all this may seem there was something 0:06:22.520 --> 0:06:26.080 to this national phenomenon that was rooted in reality. As 0:06:26.120 --> 0:06:29.599 of twenty twenty, the United States had become more culturally diverse, 0:06:30.000 --> 0:06:34.280 racially integrated, and accepting of LGBTQ people than ever before, 0:06:34.880 --> 0:06:39.000 and our education systems have increasingly reflected that reality. There's 0:06:39.000 --> 0:06:42.560 also a deep irony to this reaction. Prior to the 0:06:42.600 --> 0:06:45.560 advances of the Civil Rights era and beyond, schools in 0:06:45.560 --> 0:06:49.560 the United States have often been the centers of ideologically 0:06:49.600 --> 0:06:54.040 motivated education, but not the fantasy Bolshevik propaganda that outrages 0:06:54.040 --> 0:06:57.279 the right. In fact, it's usually been the opposite. For 0:06:57.400 --> 0:07:01.400 most of its history, American public schools have effectively advanced 0:07:01.400 --> 0:07:07.040 white supremacy, female subordination, and submission to capitalism. In this episode, 0:07:07.040 --> 0:07:09.320 we're going to look at what has actually been taught 0:07:09.640 --> 0:07:12.400 in American schools over the years, with a particular focus 0:07:12.440 --> 0:07:15.720 in Texas, and how what you learn about American history 0:07:15.760 --> 0:07:19.360 depends on where you live and how Christian supremacists are 0:07:19.400 --> 0:07:23.240 successfully inserting their theology into school curriculums in much of 0:07:23.280 --> 0:07:26.080 the country, with Texas playing a leading role. 0:07:27.040 --> 0:07:30.800 Textbooks before the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties Civil Rights 0:07:30.840 --> 0:07:36.920 era were explicitly and astonishingly white supremacists. Schoolbooks in the South, 0:07:36.960 --> 0:07:40.640 for instance, portrayed Confederates as gallant gentlemen fighting for a 0:07:40.680 --> 0:07:44.800 noble loss cause. This influenced popular culture, as we see 0:07:44.840 --> 0:07:48.320 in films like Gone with the Wind. Meanwhile, school kids 0:07:48.320 --> 0:07:51.040 were taught that abolitionists who wanted to end slavery before 0:07:51.120 --> 0:07:54.840 the Civil War were terrorists who needlessly plunged the country 0:07:54.880 --> 0:07:58.240 into civil war, and this too steeped into the public 0:07:58.280 --> 0:08:02.560 imagination of movies like NFA Trail starring Van Heflin. 0:08:04.120 --> 0:08:06.040 The time is coming when the rest of us are 0:08:06.040 --> 0:08:08.320 going to wipe you, and you're kind off the face 0:08:08.360 --> 0:08:08.920 of the earth. 0:08:13.640 --> 0:08:16.560 According to the myths promoted first in schools then echoed 0:08:16.600 --> 0:08:20.440 in mass entertainment, slavery would have gone away eventually if 0:08:20.440 --> 0:08:23.320 only white slave owning Southerners had been left alone to 0:08:23.360 --> 0:08:27.560 figure it out themselves. Screenplaywriters have often echoed what they 0:08:27.560 --> 0:08:29.800 heard in the classroom is we see In this scene 0:08:30.160 --> 0:08:33.959 from the nineteen forty film Santa Fe Trail. Here Raymond 0:08:33.960 --> 0:08:37.360 Massey plays John Brown, a white abolitionist who tried to 0:08:37.360 --> 0:08:41.920 start a slave rebellion Harper's Ferry Virginia in eighteen fifty nine. 0:08:42.000 --> 0:08:46.840 Massey portrays him as a thoroughly crazed maniac, while Aero 0:08:46.920 --> 0:08:50.800 Flynn depicts future Confederate General J. E. B. Stewart as 0:08:50.880 --> 0:08:52.000 sweetly rational. 0:08:52.360 --> 0:08:54.360 Half of the people in America believe in your theory, 0:08:54.880 --> 0:08:57.560 A lot of them, even Condonia methods that'll guarantee you 0:08:57.600 --> 0:08:58.360 a public trial. 0:09:00.600 --> 0:09:02.640 I'm not on trial, but the nation itself? 0:09:04.000 --> 0:09:06.000 Are you too stupid and blinded by. 0:09:05.920 --> 0:09:07.640 A uniform to see what I see? 0:09:08.400 --> 0:09:11.200 A dark and evil curse laying all over this land? 0:09:12.200 --> 0:09:16.120 A kind will sin against God can only be wiped 0:09:16.120 --> 0:09:16.760 out in blood? 0:09:16.880 --> 0:09:20.000 But why in blood? The people of Virginia are considered 0:09:20.000 --> 0:09:23.040 a resolution to abolic slavery for a long time. They 0:09:23.080 --> 0:09:25.840 sense that the tomorrow wrong, and the rest of the 0:09:25.880 --> 0:09:29.200 South will follow Virginia's example. All I ask is time. 0:09:30.160 --> 0:09:34.240 From the eighteen eighties until the nineteen sixties, school books 0:09:34.240 --> 0:09:38.439 depicted the country's only brief experiment with multiracial democracy at 0:09:38.440 --> 0:09:42.080 the time, the Reconstruction period from eighteen sixty five to 0:09:42.120 --> 0:09:46.360 eighteen seventy seven, as a time of rampant corruption. These 0:09:46.360 --> 0:09:51.160 books often described emancipated African Americans as ignorant lazy and 0:09:51.280 --> 0:09:56.240 expecting government handouts, while their white allies were portrayed as crooks. 0:09:57.000 --> 0:10:00.559 American school children furthermore learned from their teacher that so 0:10:00.640 --> 0:10:04.760 called radical democracy was not a good idea, and sometimes 0:10:04.800 --> 0:10:09.040 dictatorship was the better option. The nineteen twenty four textbook 0:10:09.120 --> 0:10:12.920 Are World Today and Yesterday, a History of Modern Civilization, 0:10:13.520 --> 0:10:17.600 published two years after Mussolini's fascist government took over Italy, 0:10:18.040 --> 0:10:21.880 had nothing but praise for that nation's new dictator. The 0:10:22.000 --> 0:10:25.480 authors told the impressionable high school students the following about 0:10:25.480 --> 0:10:27.199 the world's first fascist leader. 0:10:27.679 --> 0:10:31.320 Mussolini has chosen a ministry made up of capable men 0:10:31.520 --> 0:10:35.360 and has straightened up the badly demoralized finances of the country. 0:10:35.800 --> 0:10:39.240 He and his followers are accused of suppressing liberty and 0:10:39.360 --> 0:10:44.600 downing the communists by violence. Nevertheless, he has done much 0:10:44.760 --> 0:10:48.280 to do away with strikes and to re establish conditions 0:10:48.360 --> 0:10:53.000 as they were before the economic demoralization of World War 0:10:53.080 --> 0:10:55.560 One set in again. 0:10:55.679 --> 0:10:58.880 School books reinforced an American culture in the nineteen twenties 0:10:58.880 --> 0:11:02.199 that responded to the horror of World War One, labor unrest, 0:11:02.520 --> 0:11:05.240 and the impact of immigration by becoming not only more 0:11:05.280 --> 0:11:08.440 intolerant but also more anti democratic. 0:11:09.600 --> 0:11:13.120 All the while, Mussolini's propaganda machine churned out images of 0:11:13.120 --> 0:11:16.840 a thriving country and a via leader Iluch stripped down 0:11:16.880 --> 0:11:20.120 for the camera bok side by side with the peasants 0:11:20.640 --> 0:11:23.920 and wrestled wild animals. Never mind that this one had 0:11:23.960 --> 0:11:29.760 no teeth. Nonetheless, it was working. Mussolini attracted fans worldwide, 0:11:30.080 --> 0:11:35.120 including Thomas Edison, Sigmund Freud, and Mohandas Gandhi. Here he 0:11:35.200 --> 0:11:39.840 speaks to his many supporters among Italian Americans, I. 0:11:39.920 --> 0:11:44.520 Tell it the Italians of America, who I want to 0:11:44.640 --> 0:11:45.880 make America greed. 0:11:46.960 --> 0:11:50.880 Another textbook, published in nineteen thirty five, The Record of America, 0:11:51.400 --> 0:11:54.559 told stins that the so called Founding fathers like Alexander 0:11:54.600 --> 0:11:58.640 Hamilton were not big believers in democracy, an attitude the 0:11:58.720 --> 0:12:02.319 authors seemed to endorse. As the Record of America put it. 0:12:02.520 --> 0:12:05.800 The Founders had little faith in the ability of people 0:12:05.920 --> 0:12:09.720 as a whole to maintain self control and wisdom in government. 0:12:10.760 --> 0:12:14.440 They had no confidence in the man without property. A 0:12:14.480 --> 0:12:18.280 man who had failed to accumulate property would be regarded 0:12:18.320 --> 0:12:23.199 as shiftless, lazy, or incompetent, and not deserving a voice 0:12:23.440 --> 0:12:28.120 in the government of others. The Constitution was written to 0:12:28.240 --> 0:12:32.200 retain power in the hands of those who release radical 0:12:32.559 --> 0:12:36.240 and to set obstacles in the way of radical mob action. 0:12:36.920 --> 0:12:40.160 After the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties civil rights movements, 0:12:40.640 --> 0:12:43.880 history textbooks for the first time covered the horrors of slavery, 0:12:44.120 --> 0:12:48.000 the heroism of African American abolitionists like Surgeon or truth 0:12:48.000 --> 0:12:50.520 in Frederick Douglas, and the evils of the Ku Klux 0:12:50.559 --> 0:12:56.400 Klan with clarity. But the backlash was swift, particularly after 0:12:56.440 --> 0:12:59.920 the election of the first African American president, Barack Obama 0:13:00.280 --> 0:13:02.800 and the rise of the hyper conservative Tea Party. 0:13:02.840 --> 0:13:14.520 In response, in twenty ten. 0:13:14.800 --> 0:13:18.280 Tea Party supporters took control of the Texas State school Board, 0:13:18.800 --> 0:13:23.240 which has control over Texas school book curriculums. They felt 0:13:23.240 --> 0:13:27.440 that this reckoning with America's racist past undermined patriotism and 0:13:27.480 --> 0:13:29.840 demanded a rewrite of school lesson plans. 0:13:30.320 --> 0:13:33.760 In twenty fifteen, Ronnie Dean Baron got a text from 0:13:33.760 --> 0:13:37.960 her son Kobe, who was glancing at a ninth grade geography 0:13:37.960 --> 0:13:40.800 textbook published by McGraw hill signed him by his high 0:13:40.800 --> 0:13:45.000 school in Perilyn, Texas, near Houston. He sent her a 0:13:45.080 --> 0:13:50.000 video highlighting a map in its shocking caption. Soon Burn 0:13:50.400 --> 0:13:55.640 posted her son's video online. That video, as KPRC reported, 0:13:55.720 --> 0:13:57.600 spread outrage across the nation. 0:13:57.880 --> 0:14:01.040 A video post on Ronnie Dean Buren's face book page. 0:14:01.160 --> 0:14:02.560 So I'm going to show you the book and then 0:14:02.559 --> 0:14:04.160 there's just an interesting. 0:14:04.000 --> 0:14:07.280 Section, went viral. Her video has been viewed more than 0:14:07.400 --> 0:14:10.800 one point eight million times and has forty eight thousand shares. 0:14:11.160 --> 0:14:14.440 To get to the topic of conversation, you literally have 0:14:14.559 --> 0:14:18.160 to turn through the pages of her son's geography textbook. 0:14:18.360 --> 0:14:20.320 The immigration in the United States can be divided in 0:14:20.440 --> 0:14:21.600 four district periods. 0:14:21.880 --> 0:14:24.280 Kobe, who's in the ninth grade at Perlin High School, 0:14:24.280 --> 0:14:26.880 was studying immigration when he read this in his textbook, 0:14:27.040 --> 0:14:31.040 a comment that referenced African slaves as workers. 0:14:30.840 --> 0:14:33.360 As if we worked our way up in America, as 0:14:33.400 --> 0:14:36.840 if we came here by choice for a better life. 0:14:37.240 --> 0:14:41.240 The offensive caption read, in full quote, the Atlantic slave 0:14:41.320 --> 0:14:44.480 trade between the fifteen hundreds and the eighteen hundreds brought 0:14:44.520 --> 0:14:48.640 millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States 0:14:48.720 --> 0:14:49.440 to work. 0:14:49.400 --> 0:14:51.080 On agricultural plantations. 0:14:51.760 --> 0:14:55.680 The publisher of the book, simply titled World Geography later 0:14:55.720 --> 0:14:59.600 apologized for the euphemism, noting that it did not adequately 0:14:59.600 --> 0:15:03.200 convey that Africans were both forced into migration and to 0:15:03.320 --> 0:15:06.800 labor against their will as slaves. The company said it 0:15:06.800 --> 0:15:09.760 would revise the digital version of the text and future 0:15:09.920 --> 0:15:12.600 print versions, but it was unclear at the time when 0:15:12.600 --> 0:15:14.600 the new edition would be in students' hands. 0:15:15.160 --> 0:15:18.680 The caption wasnt an accident. McGraw hill had given the 0:15:18.680 --> 0:15:22.000 Stay of Texas what it wanted, rather than anything like 0:15:22.040 --> 0:15:25.520 critical race theory. The State Board of Education twenty ten 0:15:25.560 --> 0:15:29.880 adopted changes in Texas curriculum standards for public schools, known 0:15:29.920 --> 0:15:34.400 as Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills that imposed a whitewash 0:15:34.480 --> 0:15:39.160 of American slavery, raised doubts about human caused climate change, 0:15:39.520 --> 0:15:43.440 and imposed other right wing content to be sold in 0:15:43.520 --> 0:15:46.720 Texas school textbooks had to meet the board's standards. 0:15:47.440 --> 0:15:50.440 Texas State Board of Education members are elected from districts 0:15:50.480 --> 0:15:53.000 that tilt the body towards rural parts of the state 0:15:53.480 --> 0:15:56.800 and serve four year terms, while the governor appoints the 0:15:56.880 --> 0:15:59.200 chair of the board. Since the beginning of the twenty 0:15:59.240 --> 0:16:03.080 first century, the board has been dominated by Christian right activists. 0:16:03.480 --> 0:16:05.800 As a twenty thirteen PBS report. 0:16:05.600 --> 0:16:09.640 Deaths Don McElroy has three jobs and he loves them all. 0:16:10.360 --> 0:16:11.880 Good morning got to mclary's office. 0:16:12.280 --> 0:16:17.200 Job number one dentist, job number two Sunday school teacher, 0:16:18.360 --> 0:16:21.920 and job number three member of the Texas State Board 0:16:21.920 --> 0:16:25.680 of Education, a seat he's held for the last twelve years. 0:16:27.080 --> 0:16:29.800 But it's that third job which has put this dentist 0:16:29.800 --> 0:16:33.360 and Sunday school teacher from Brian, Texas into a national 0:16:33.400 --> 0:16:36.720 debate over what kids are taught in school. Critics have 0:16:36.760 --> 0:16:42.040 accused McLeroy of injecting his religious conservative beliefs into the curriculum. 0:16:42.480 --> 0:16:46.000 About every ten years, the board revises the textbook standards 0:16:46.000 --> 0:16:49.440 for different subjects. Any books bought by the state must 0:16:49.520 --> 0:16:53.480 conform to these guidelines. The last big battle was over 0:16:53.640 --> 0:16:58.520 the science standards. This year he's tackling social studies. 0:16:59.360 --> 0:17:03.359 The demands Texas makes of textbook publishers matter, as PBS 0:17:03.400 --> 0:17:04.720 reported a decade ago. 0:17:05.160 --> 0:17:09.120 According to publishing insiders, textbooks are often tailored to fit 0:17:09.320 --> 0:17:14.080 Texas's standards. Because Texas is the largest buyer of textbooks. 0:17:14.359 --> 0:17:17.639 That means the choices made here could determine books that 0:17:17.720 --> 0:17:20.639 other states will buy, and that's led to a school 0:17:20.640 --> 0:17:23.040 fight that has the entire country looking on. 0:17:24.520 --> 0:17:27.120 This is how Kobe Burn ended up with the World 0:17:27.200 --> 0:17:31.360 Geography textbook that used the word workers to describe chattel slaves. 0:17:32.359 --> 0:17:37.280 Kathy Miller of the anti censorship group Texas Freedom Network said, quote, 0:17:37.359 --> 0:17:40.679 it's no accident that this happened in Texas. We have 0:17:40.720 --> 0:17:44.600 a textbook adoption process that's so politicized and so flawed 0:17:44.920 --> 0:17:49.040 that's become almost a punchline for comedians. Those serious about 0:17:49.119 --> 0:17:52.960 education aren't laughing. However, in twenty eighteen, the state board 0:17:53.080 --> 0:17:56.879 removed Hillary Clinton, the first woman to be presidential nominee 0:17:56.920 --> 0:17:59.560 of a major political party, from the list of major 0:17:59.640 --> 0:18:03.720 historic figures Texas students must learn about, a decision later 0:18:03.800 --> 0:18:08.639 reversed after embarrassing news coverage. In twenty ten, that board 0:18:08.760 --> 0:18:12.520 mandated that textbooks depict the Civil War as primarily a 0:18:12.640 --> 0:18:16.520 struggle over states' rights and not slavery, a choice that 0:18:16.600 --> 0:18:20.720 was later modified in twenty eighteen to return slavery as 0:18:20.760 --> 0:18:24.240 the primary cause, but still maintained that quote states rights 0:18:24.240 --> 0:18:29.080 and sexualism were key contributing factors. Approved books still tell 0:18:29.200 --> 0:18:32.200 students that segregated black schools and the Jim Crow Eric 0:18:32.320 --> 0:18:36.720 quote had similar buildings, buses, and teachers as white schools, 0:18:37.280 --> 0:18:40.359 maintaining a hint of these separate but equal logics that 0:18:40.480 --> 0:18:45.399 upheld segregation. One textbook included cartoon in which a space 0:18:45.440 --> 0:18:48.159 alien lands on Earth and asks if he's eligible for 0:18:48.240 --> 0:18:52.920 affirmative action programs. Texas standards also misled students into thinking 0:18:53.000 --> 0:18:56.240 there was controversy about whether human activity has led to 0:18:56.280 --> 0:19:00.000 climate change and to quote consider all sides of scientist 0:19:00.320 --> 0:19:04.960 evidence regarding evolution, even though the scientific consensus in favor 0:19:05.000 --> 0:19:08.480 of fossil fuels trinking climate change and also the scientific 0:19:08.520 --> 0:19:14.360 consensus regarding evolution is nearly unanimous. Students can get dramatically 0:19:14.440 --> 0:19:18.120 different versions of American history based on which state they 0:19:18.160 --> 0:19:22.320 attend schools. A New York Times comparison textbooks used at 0:19:22.359 --> 0:19:26.200 California Texas show that both versions of the same history 0:19:26.280 --> 0:19:30.679 textbook include an annotated Bill of rights in reference to 0:19:30.720 --> 0:19:34.680 the Second Amendment. However, the California textbook notes that several 0:19:34.720 --> 0:19:39.040 federal court rulings have allowed regulation of gun sales and ownership. 0:19:39.920 --> 0:19:42.879 The Texas version of the same book replaces US commentary 0:19:42.920 --> 0:19:47.160 with a quote blank white space. As The New York Times. 0:19:46.920 --> 0:19:51.760 Reported, Texas and California textbooks both introduced students to African 0:19:51.760 --> 0:19:55.760 American authors during the Harlem Renaissance, but only Texas students 0:19:55.800 --> 0:19:59.840 are told that quote. Some dismissed the quality of the 0:20:00.040 --> 0:20:03.920 literature produced by the Harlem Renaissance. 0:20:03.920 --> 0:20:06.359 As The New York Times reported. The California version of 0:20:06.359 --> 0:20:09.639 the history textbook addressed the issue of white flight, the 0:20:09.640 --> 0:20:14.240 phenomena whereby parents moved from cities when schools became integrated 0:20:14.480 --> 0:20:19.600 and moved to overwhelmingly Anglo suburbs. The California textbooks said this. 0:20:20.040 --> 0:20:23.119 Some people wished to escape the crime and the congestion 0:20:23.240 --> 0:20:27.000 of the city. Movement of some white people from cities 0:20:27.080 --> 0:20:30.920 to suburbs was driven by a desire to get away 0:20:30.960 --> 0:20:36.080 from more culturally diverse neighborhoods. Others believed the suburbs offered 0:20:36.119 --> 0:20:38.359 better and more affordable living. 0:20:39.080 --> 0:20:42.119 The Texas version of the same textbook deleted the sentence 0:20:42.119 --> 0:20:45.040 referring to racism as a motive for white flight, but 0:20:45.200 --> 0:20:48.800 left the reference to a fear of crime, reframing what 0:20:48.880 --> 0:20:52.280 students learned about why suburbs grew so rapidly after World 0:20:52.359 --> 0:20:56.440 War Two. The Texas State Board also specifically asked one 0:20:56.480 --> 0:21:00.679 textbook publisher demphasized how many clergies signed the Declaration of 0:21:00.720 --> 0:21:04.919 Independence and to underscore the supposed importance of religion to 0:21:05.000 --> 0:21:09.040 the founders. These particular demands were the result of intense 0:21:09.160 --> 0:21:13.080 lobbying by Texas Christian nationalist David Barton. 0:21:13.760 --> 0:21:18.119 Barton, a seventy year old lifelong resident of Aledo, Texas, 0:21:18.640 --> 0:21:21.399 which is a small town just southwest of Fort Worth, 0:21:22.000 --> 0:21:25.199 has become a major influence on the Republican Party and 0:21:25.240 --> 0:21:29.000 its attitudes towards education, not just in the Lone Star State, 0:21:29.320 --> 0:21:33.560 but across the nation. While reporting on the Conservative Political 0:21:33.600 --> 0:21:36.679 Action Conference for Rolling Stone, I recall being given a 0:21:36.680 --> 0:21:40.600 copy of one of Barton's books. He calls himself a historian, 0:21:41.000 --> 0:21:44.880 although his only credential is a bachelor's degree in religious 0:21:44.960 --> 0:21:49.920 education from Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma. A one 0:21:49.960 --> 0:21:52.760 time science and math teacher at a Christian academy in 0:21:52.760 --> 0:21:56.280 his hometown, Barton plunged into politics in nineteen eighty eight 0:21:56.560 --> 0:21:59.879 as a Republican activist with a penchant for homophobia. He 0:22:00.080 --> 0:22:03.600 declared that homosexuality is as evil as any deed Adolf 0:22:03.680 --> 0:22:07.080 Hitler committed and said that the lack of cure for 0:22:07.160 --> 0:22:11.640 AIDS was God's punishment for a wicked community. Quote, your 0:22:11.640 --> 0:22:13.880 sexual choice is not a God given right, he said 0:22:13.920 --> 0:22:14.680 on one occasion. 0:22:15.560 --> 0:22:19.920 In nineteen eighty eight, Barton founded Wall Builders, a nonprofit. 0:22:20.000 --> 0:22:24.440 The organization says dedicated to quote educating the nation concerning 0:22:24.520 --> 0:22:28.840 the godly founding of the nation. Barton believes that Americans 0:22:28.840 --> 0:22:31.160 have been deceived about the true meaning of the First 0:22:31.160 --> 0:22:35.200 Amendment to the United States Constitution, which declares, quote, Congress 0:22:35.200 --> 0:22:38.640 shall make no law respecting the establishment of a religion. 0:22:39.240 --> 0:22:43.320 The Founders, Barton claims, only meant that Congress should pick 0:22:43.359 --> 0:22:48.399 a particular Protestant denomination as the national faith. Barton also 0:22:48.520 --> 0:22:51.720 argues that Thomas Jefferson meant that the wall of separation 0:22:51.840 --> 0:22:55.600 between church and state should operate only in one direction, 0:22:56.240 --> 0:22:59.040 that the government should not interfere with a religion, but 0:22:59.119 --> 0:23:02.560 that Christians should dominate the government. As Barton said in 0:23:02.600 --> 0:23:03.800 an interview. 0:23:03.880 --> 0:23:06.240 So we've got to get away from being scared to 0:23:06.280 --> 0:23:08.239 say we're a Christian nation. What we've got to do 0:23:08.280 --> 0:23:09.879 is to find it the right way, define it the 0:23:10.000 --> 0:23:13.840 historical way. We can't let the left steal three hundred 0:23:13.880 --> 0:23:16.040 years of heritage. We can't let them wipe out three 0:23:16.160 --> 0:23:19.320 hundred core cases, wipe out what dozens of presents and 0:23:19.359 --> 0:23:22.160 governors have said, simply because they don't like the term, 0:23:22.520 --> 0:23:23.080 we are. 0:23:23.000 --> 0:23:23.760 A Christian nation. 0:23:24.080 --> 0:23:26.320 We have been a Christian nation, and that doesn't mean 0:23:26.359 --> 0:23:30.320 anything they think it does. We're not theocratic, we're not coercive. 0:23:30.640 --> 0:23:33.280 We believe in free choice. We don't believe in any 0:23:33.280 --> 0:23:35.080 of the others. And that's what we've got to get 0:23:35.080 --> 0:23:36.800 back to doing. We don't need to be ashamed at 0:23:36.840 --> 0:23:38.840 all that we're Christians and that we believe we have 0:23:38.880 --> 0:23:39.560 a Christian nation. 0:23:40.440 --> 0:23:43.399 The story is much more complicated than Barton says, and 0:23:43.480 --> 0:23:46.399 he gets the most important details wrong. Most of the 0:23:46.440 --> 0:23:50.120 generation that led the Revolution and wrote the Constitution agreed 0:23:50.200 --> 0:23:53.320 with Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, 0:23:53.880 --> 0:23:58.040 that when church and state mix, both are harmed. Jefferson 0:23:58.040 --> 0:24:00.960 successfully established separation of church and state in his home 0:24:00.960 --> 0:24:04.480 state of Virginia in seventeen eighty six when it adopted 0:24:04.520 --> 0:24:08.400 the Statute of Religious Freedom he authored. The first Amendment, 0:24:08.440 --> 0:24:11.480 adopted in seventeen eighty nine, also banned Congress from quote 0:24:11.560 --> 0:24:15.160 establishing a religion, and most states embraced, to varying degrees, 0:24:15.560 --> 0:24:17.400 the doctrine of church state separation. 0:24:18.040 --> 0:24:21.879 There were some states that objected to this notion. The 0:24:21.920 --> 0:24:26.240 state governments of Connecticut and Massachusetts, for instance, initially interpreted 0:24:26.280 --> 0:24:29.840 the First Amendment as meaning only Congress could not establish religion, 0:24:29.880 --> 0:24:33.920 but states could. Citizens of those two states paid taxes 0:24:33.960 --> 0:24:38.600 that supported the Congregationalist Church, respectively, until eighteen eighteen. In 0:24:38.680 --> 0:24:42.440 eighteen thirty three, for decades, some states had so called 0:24:42.520 --> 0:24:46.720 quote Jew laws that prohibited non Christians from holding office 0:24:47.200 --> 0:24:51.800 or had similar bands on Catholics. Such laws were the exception, however, 0:24:51.840 --> 0:24:53.800 and fell by the wayside by the end of the 0:24:53.880 --> 0:24:58.320