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Loading...Tenn. Tea Party Demands Slavery Removed From Textbooks
The Tea Party of Tennessee wants to remove from history textbooks any incidents of slavery and genocide linked to the founders of the U.S. for fear those references would tarnish the image of the Founding Fathers.
Members of Tennessee tea parties presented state legislators with five priorities for action Wednesday January 11, including “rejecting” the federal health reform act, establishing an elected “chief litigator” for the state and “educating students the truth about America.”
What Do They Mean By This?
From The Memphis Commercial Appeal:
Regarding education, the material they distributed said, “Neglect and outright ill will have distorted the teaching of the history and character of the United States. We seek to compel the teaching of students in Tennessee the truth regarding the history of our nation and the nature of its government.”
That would include, the documents say, that “the Constitution created a Republic, not a Democracy.”
The material calls for lawmakers to amend state laws governing school curriculums, and for textbook selection criteria to say that “No portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens, including those who reached positions of leadership.”
Fayette County attorney Hal Rounds, the group’s lead spokesman during the news conference, said the group wants to address “an awful lot of made-up criticism about, for instance, the founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another.
Demand To Remove All References To Slavery Or Genocide
In other words, the request is to remove all references to slavery or genocide from American history textbooks, so as not to besmirch the reputation and standing of the Founding Fathers.
This sounds similar to moves made in other states, notably Texas.
The Texas Textbook War
As I wrote here, last March the Texas Board of Education approved a social studies curriculum for its textbooks that puts a conservative stamp on history and economics, stresses the superiority of American capitalism, questions the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a separation of church and state, emphasizes the role of Christianity in the nation’s founding, and generally presents Republican political philosophies in a positive light.
This a dangerous trend, and needs to be stopped.
Teaching should not be about presenting children with a biased viewpoint and not allowing them to question it. For me, the joy of teaching lies in giving my students all the available information and letting them make up their own minds about what they think is right.
What do you think?
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Read more: founding fathers, history textbooks, social studies curriculum, tennessee tea party, texas textbook wars, texas textbooks
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371 comments
+ add your ownIt is a mistake to "whitewash" history. Some of the acts by the early European settlers did some terrible things. This did not mean that all were bad but that by acknowledging their actions it allows people to understand how things happened and if they were shameful not to repeat them.
Life should not be viewed through filters of bias as it will distort decisions about the future. People paid for the mistakes of the past. We have to learn these lessons. Not to learn only further wastes the lessons learned but opens us up for more and worse problems to come.
Remember the politicians that want to rewrite history for their own reasons and VOTE THEM OUT!
Kansas Republican speaker O'Neal is the lowest form of creature on the planet. He should resign and his office should be fumigated to eliminate any trace of his racist, bigoted, hateful self.
Vote DEMOCRAT IN 2012, with a DEMOCRAT HOUSE AND SENATE. Get rid of the slime that was elected in 2012 through CITIZENS UNITED and the BILLIONAIRES who BOUGHT our Elections. THEY MUST BE STOPPED!!
Thanksgiving is a holiday based on a myth.
The Pilgrims where forced to leave Europe because of their tyrranic ruling of the same.
Native Americans where murdered, enslaved, poisoned, raped, robbed and inprisoned.
Africans were kidnapped, enslaved, raped, murdered, tortured.
The Founding Fathers had slave owners among themselves.
Anything else you want to remove from the history books?
Stephen B,
I rad you post; nice tongue in cheek piece. If someone didn't get to your last sentence, they would think you were a Tennessee Republican. Good post.
Stephan B.
As Truth, history is inviolate. But, like religion and mythology, it is subject to 'editing' by the embellishers and the embarrassed, leaving the mirror image of the true history distorted.
History without truth would be irrelevant if it didn't serve someone's agenda. Cleaning up embarrassing truths seen in today's context it at work in these case. Enough history slides into the forgotten without the necessity of making it debatable or irrelevant.
History without truth has not context with which to study and comprehend any future advancements of social, political and moral precepts. We can't get better.
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
George Santayana, who, in his Reason in Common Sense.
You could go the Henry Ford route, and say"History is bunk." But then you would belong in Tennessee.
do is give them all the information we can, and encourage them to draw their own conclusions.
I was taught in school that the founding fathers owned slaves, considering that at that time in history it was very common for men of wealth to. Thomas Jefferson didn't free his slaves after the Constitution was signed, but that never made me question his brilliance. I believe history is not something we should omit facts from, that defeats the entire purpose in studying it. Winston Churchill said, "history is written by the victors." He did not believe that it was right, but he knew it happens. Think of all the great knowledge that was destroyed because it didn't fit the policy of the ruling faction. If their is one thing I could say the founding fathers would have wanted, in fact almost all men of philosophy wanted, was for the freedom of knowledge to never be undermined for political gains. History should be an account of what happened, told by all the literature or media from the time, it should not be censored. If you think that talking about the founding fathers owning slaves will make children question the integrity and motives of the American government, try telling them why it is ok for the current government to pass legislation to keep the truth of our history subdued in their classroom. Then tell them that you voted for it. No history is perfect, man is not perfect, people do terrible things but it is important to hear the whole story so that we know how to avoid those things in the future. Children are going to think for themselves no matter what. The best we can
dum dum-de-dum
I think you are badly misrepresenting the views of the people you criticize. Simply reading what you quote from them, they are clearly not demanding that all references to slavery and genocide be removed from the textbooks, merely that such things not be used to obscure "the experience or contributions" of the founding fathers.
I agree that "Teaching should not be about presenting children with a biased viewpoint," but in this article that is precisely what you are doing, save that you are targeting adults, not children.
So far as "questioning the founders commitment to separation of church and state" (Texas textbook comment), an honest description of the relevant history would include the fact that a number of states had established churches, and that their doing so was entirely consistent with the First Amendment until the post-Civil war amendments, and their interpretation, resulted in making at least some of the Bill of Rights applicable to the states. That's a bit of history in which it is the conventional account, pretending that the founders supported the current interpretation of the First Amendment, that is biased and dishonest history.
This is more than the usual right-wing nonsense; this is an attempt to rewrite history, and, as such, is despicable.Sure, Republicans may find some aspects of their country's history hard to stomach(I certainly know that here in the UK many of our great cities became great only through massive human suffering, ie, slavery), but that is something that needs to be recognised and dealt with, not brushed under the carpet like some unpleasant truth that can be ignored if we choose to. "History is what I say it is" is the cry of the fascist.
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