This morning, the El Paso Times reported that the far-right radical dentist, Don McLeroy, who lost his election for the State Board of Education, but who remains on the board until January, is planning on proposing “at least” nine more amendments to the history curriculum standards. Some of the changes he wants are to cast several civil rights icons who fought for women’s suffrage and equal rights, as “figures espousing negatives views of America.” It’s worth reading this whole article. http://www.elpasotimes.com/education/ci_15100145
Figures that Don McLeroy says espoused negative views of America:
· Upton Sinclair – Pulitzer prize winning author who wrote more than 90 books. Wrote the muckraking novel “The Jungle” about the conditions in the U.S. meat packing industry which contributed to the passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. [Wikipedia]
· Susan B. Anthony – (182-1906) Played a pivotal role in the 19th century women’s rights movement to introduce women’s suffrage in the U.S. On November 18, 1872, Anthony was arrested by a U.S. Deputy Marshal for voting illegally in the 1872 Presidential Election two weeks earlier. She had written to [Cady] Stanton on the night of the election that she had "positively voted the Republican ticket – straight…" Susan B. Anthony, who died 14 years before passage of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote, was honored as the first real (non-allegorical) American woman on circulating U.S. coinage with her appearance on the Susan B. Anthony dollar. [Wikipedia]
· Ida B. Wells – Ida Bell Wells-Barnett (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931) was an African American journalist, newspaper editor and, with her husband, newspaper owner Ferdinand L. Barnett, an early leader in the civil rights movement. She documented the extent of lynching in the United States, and was also active in the women’s rights movement and the women’s suffrage movement. [Wikipedia]
· W.E.B. Dubois — William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (pronounced /duːˈbɔɪs/ doo-BOYSS;[1] February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) was an American civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, sociologist, historian, author, and editor. Historian David Levering Lewis wrote, "In the course of his long, turbulent career, W. E. B. Du Bois attempted virtually every possible solution to the problem of twentieth-century racism— scholarship, propaganda, integration, national self-determination, human rights, cultural and economic separatism, politics, international communism, expatriation, third world solidarity."[2] The first African-American graduate of Harvard University, where he earned his Ph.D in History, Du Bois later became a professor of history and economics at Atlanta University. He became the head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1910, becoming founder and editor of the NAACP’s journal The Crisis. Du Bois rose to national attention in his opposition of Booker T. Washington’s ideas of social integration between whites and blacks, campaigning instead for increased political representation for blacks in order to guarantee civil rights, and the formation of a Black elite that would work for the progress of the African American race [Wikipedia]
We need to keep the partisan politics out of the classroom. See the attached document for the other changes proposed by the SBOE.