Pete Peterson’s Anti-Social Security Talking Points: Coming Soon to Texas Textbooks?

By Nathan Tabak

Created 05/22/2010 - 10:25am

Over the last few months, Texas’ far-right Board of Education has been in the national spotlight as they prepare to debate new, highly ideological textbook standards [1] for high school. These proposed changes – which could affect textbooks all over the country, since Texas is the country’s second-largest textbook market [2]– would mandate the inclusion of a section on “causes and key organizations and individuals of the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s,” a section defending McCarthyism, and criticisms of the civil rights movement, among other changes.

Unsurprisingly, even more changes along these lines are afoot, in advance of a final vote [3] on May 21. But amongst the many radical distortions of American history along right-wing ideological lines, one finds a change with disturbingly mainstream support.