TESTIMONY I GAVE IN 1996 BEFORE A TEA COMMITTE ON SOCIAL STUDIES TEXTS:
Testimony I gave in 1996 before a TEA committee of social studies teachers on a proposed American history text for fifth graders. I print it here so that anyone can see how really ignorant the people who write books for students are!
REVIEW OF OXFORD TEXTS FOR 5TH GRADE STUDENTS
Texts and Teacher’s
Manuals reviewed include The First Americans, Making Thirteen
Colonies, From Colonies to Country, The New Nation, Liberty
for All?, War, Terrible War, Reconstruction and Reform,
An Age of Extremes, War, Peace, and All That Jazz, and All
the People written by Joy Hakim and published by Oxford University Press.
I appreciate the
opportunity to testify provided to us by
the Commissioner of Education, Dr. Moses, and the State Textbook
Social Studies Committee.
My name is Mary McGarr.
I am a product of a Texas public education, from first grade through
graduate studies at Texas Tech. I
was a high school teacher of English, American history, economics, and sociology
at Irvin High School in El Paso for nine years.
I was also a teacher at Booker T. Washington High School in Houston ISD
for two years and taught at Waltrip High School in Houston ISD for one year.
During those three years in Houston ISD, I taught English and government.
My husband and I have two sons, and both of them
have electrical engineering degrees from Rice University.
For the past five years I have been a member of the Board of Trustees of
the Katy Independent School District.
I have recently
resigned my position on the Katy ISD board in protest of the dumbing down
directives that have been coming to the Katy
schools compliments of the DOE, the TEA, the regional service centers and
board members who fail to educate themselves about the restructured education
initiatives that are so harmful to the true academic education of children.
In reading the ten booklets put forward by the Oxford University Press
(and their accompanying teacher’s manuals) I am greatly dismayed by the
faddish intent of the author. These
booklets are prime examples of the dumbing down template that is daily being put
in place in our Texas public schools.
Using a thematic
approach, which creates confusion for students, historical narratives are strung
together haphazardly in a fashion that belies comprehension!
Only at the end of each text where a timeline finally appears, is one
able to visualize historical continuity.
Even with that afterthought
of an aid, I cannot imagine that an average ten year old will be able to grasp
any concrete knowledge in any meaningful manner.
Of course, that lack of knowledge is the purpose of these texts, and that
purpose is the one to which I object the most.
Stringing together anecdotal tales before the student learns the lessons
of a chronologically based history is a backward approach.
The English teacher in
me cringed each time I had to stop in my reading to discern the topic of
discussion. I have never seen so
many examples of faulty pronoun reference.
I fear that Ms. Hakim knows not what constitutes a one word antecedent of
a pronoun! On the first page of
The First Americans (page 11) I found ten examples of faulty pronoun
reference. The use of pronouns as
subjects without reference to a concrete noun continues to the very last
paragraph in the last book of the series, All the People.
(“The information age demands thinking citizens--not rote
memorizers.[sic] That means new
kinds of schooling.) Does anyone here believe the meaning of “that” in the
previous sentence is clear? Does
anyone here believe a ten year old child will be able to figure out the meaning
of “that”?
The effect of this
faulty usage combined with the constant use of
the familiar “you” in place of the proper
“one,” as well as the
improper use of contractions throughout the text
relegates these texts to comic book levels of literary effort.
Have I not heard at least a thousand times lately the expressions
“literature rich environment” or
“quality literature” or “rich literature” or
some other seemly phrase to indicate the desired level of reading
material for Texas students?
Those desired levels of quality prose do not appear in these texts.
I must tell you that I fell asleep four times during the first hour that
I committed to the review of these texts!
What will such mishmash do for our fifth grade students?
Facundity is not Ms. Hakim’s forte.
My other major
objection centers on the efforts of the author to inject at every opportunity
her personal bias with regard to race and ethnicity.
Textbooks, especially, history textbooks must deal solely in fact.
There can be no quarter given
to social engineering efforts. SBOE
rules suggest that history texts must present positive aspects of America’s
heritage and must be fair to all groups.
For Ms. Hakim to decide that the minority point of view is the one to be
proffered to all children as correct, superior, moral, and without question
constitutes a disservice to Texas children and is not in keeping with the SBOE
rules. Ms. Hakim portrays America as
a place where opportunity does not exist for all of its citizens. She paints the
Indians as total victims of civilized Europeans.
She undermines the Mormon religion by printing a cartoon showing thirteen
women in a large bed crying for the recently deceased Brigham Young.
Hakim suggests that there is something inherently wrong with children
working for their families on farms.
The list is endless with regard to the author’s attempts to depict the
unfortunate circumstances of minorities
as somehow always someone else’s fault.
With regard to minority
coverage in these texts, Ms. Hakim
in my mind does not have the authority, unless of course this committee
and the State Board of Education give it to her, to foist upon innocent ten year
old fifth graders the collective blame of all the ages for the suffering endured
by the ancestors of the black community when they were enslaved.
That placement of blame is not her right or anyone else’s, and certainly
that blame should not emanate from a textbook!
Depending on how far back one wants to go, all Americans had ancestors
who were enslaved. Who is going to
decide that one group’s enslavement was more terrible than that of any other
group or necessarily must be discussed at length in a fifth grade history text?
To continue to dwell on the subject, especially with children, serves no useful
purpose. The purpose can only be to
manipulate personal beliefs, and that is not the purview of a governmental
entity. The Texas Education Code
stipulates that the curriculum must include an emphasis on the free enterprise
system. Ms. Hakim’s advocacy for one
worldism (The First Americans, page 13), redistribution of wealth (War,
Peace, and All That Jazz page 84 and 85), responsibility for the welfare of
others (A History of Us, page 199), and other socialist doctrines are
inextricably intertwined with her pro-minority narrative, and in my opinion
constitute good cause for rejecting her texts.
On a more mundane
level, (and from a teacher’s point of view) I cannot imagine the
logistics of disbursing and
collecting ten texts for one subject area during a one year time span, but
perhaps part of the plan is to take up students’ time with worthless activity.
I also am concerned with Ms. Hakim’s efforts to make her series fit the
“Happy History” mold. The study of history is not necessarily entertaining.
Why should anyone think that it would be?
Hakim’s use of rhetorical questions for effect, tasteless cartoons, and
silly riddles detracts from the seriousness of the subject matter.
Ten year old students are old enough to begin to study American history
in earnest. The consequences of our
past behavior and activity weigh heavily and need to be presented and understood
in a realistic manner if our future as a nation is to be as bright as our past.
Fifth grade students should not be forced to dwell upon irrelevant
minutiae to the exclusion of meaningful and important historical events.
Please reject this
series.