Calling all college history professors and instructors. It is time to use our clout as history professors to make a statement. According to the New York Times article the Texas Board of Education is making significant changes to the history curriculum for high schools students. We need to come to the aid of Mary Helen Berlanga and use our clout as academics to boycott the rewriting of history for political purposes. If it were just Texas, I may not suggest such a boycott. However, because publishers have become so economical in the past years, the book published according to the Texas guidelines will be used by other states for their classes. It is time to say ENOUGH to this blatant attempt at censorship and academic political correctness. Censorship on the part of the publisher and censorship on the part of the Texas School Board of Education who did not even have, according to the CBC news broadcast on March, 23, 2010, The Current, an academic historian suggesting changes. We need to show our support for Mary Helen Berlanga by emailing her our support at this email address here.I am proposing to spread the word to all historians who teach at the college and public school level. If they we have the power to choose our textbooks, we need to boycott the publisher, and their subsidiaries, of the textbook for Texas public schools. Show them that we will not accept the rewriting of history. These are not just changes to a curriculum these are calculated extractions of American history. The claim by many is that history is some leftist tool to twist facts. I am sorry but both VanRanke and Droysen would argue with that. What qualification does a dentist and a preacher have to determine historical standards? I will need your help here academics and graduate students. Boycott the publisher of this book and their subsidiaries. Let’s illustrate that historians can use their clout to stop the abuse of history by agenda seeking loons who think that history is merely interpretation. It is not just interpretation. It is an informed analysis determined by factual evidence. I shutter to think what they will want to exclude next, the holocaust? That will be the next step if we do not take a stand now. All those who support this issue can make a comment below and I will respond. Let me know what more we as historians can do to prevent this gross malfeasance of history on the part of the Texas Board of Education.
It must be stated that censorship is NOT academic freedom. Academic freedom means that one should be able to choose resources for inclusion within an academic setting. What the Texas School Board is doing is excluding, that is censorship.
VanRanke and Droysen 