This blog on Texas education contains posts on higher education, as well as preK-12 policy accountability, testing, bilingual education, immigration, school finance, race, class, and gender issues at both the state and national level. It also represents my digital footprint, of life and career, as a community-engaged scholar in Texas.
Great op-ed by Michael Gerson on just how extreme Texas' Senate Bill 3 is, particularly in light of the inherent and inescapable discomforts that come with the teaching and learning of U.S. history, a discipline that is not easily "tamed."
My only amendment to this piece by Gerson is that it's incorrect to refer to our entire state as the "laboratory of idiocracy" when actually, Senate Bill 3 is in great part a reaction to the positive success that we have had within the Ethnic Studies Movement in our state and about which I have blogged continuously. [Note: Senate Bill 3—passed during the second-called special session of the legislature—supersedes House Bill 3979 that was similarly anti-CRT, but limited to the social studies curriculum. SB 3 applies to the entirety of the K-12 curriculum.]
As evidence of racial animus against Ethnic Studies I point to the fact that during the regular legislative session , anti-CRT House Bill 3979 was scheduled side-by-side with HB 1504, Rep. Cristina Morales' Ethnic Studies bill. If passed, the bill would have created a pathway to high school graduation via the taking of Ethnic Studies high school courses. Though shy of the governor's desk, HB 3979 got heard while HB 1504 was left to die quietly in the night despite many pleas to the Senate by members of our anti-HB 3979 coalition that had formed in response.
That said, by denying Texas students a quality education that prepares them for an ethnically and racially diverse world, we are certainly at risk of becoming a laboratory of idiocracy. Simultaneously, our coalition is a strong and worthy opponent to these forces of extremism.
America’s cresting conflict over how to deal with racism in the teaching of history makes sense as a matter of ideology, but not as a matter of pedagogy.
As a matter of ideology, conservative parents’ fear that their children are being indoctrinated by progressive textbooks and teachers is an endemic feature of education in America. What is different this time around is the speed and vigor of Republicans at the state level in turning their hyperventilation into legislation. Over the summer, at least 12 states restricted how teachers can discuss race or racism in the classroom.
The state of Texas — confirming its status as the laboratory of idiocracy — did the most damage. It has forbidden the teaching of any “concept” that causes an individual to “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of the individual’s race or sex.”
The consequences for violating this law are unspecified. But the vagueness is the point. White children — really the White parents of White children — have been given an open invitation to protest any teaching on U.S. racial history that triggers their “discomfort.” Which for some parents will mean any teaching on racism at all. This will inevitably lead to self-censorship by teachers who want to avoid trouble.
A history curriculum designed to ensure the comfort of White people would have more than a few gaps. And teaching down to such a standard undermines one of the main purposes of historical education, which is to foster a useful discomfort with injustice.
The attempted declawing of historical studies may be politically useful for Republicans in some places. But it bears little relationship to the way history is actually learned. All good history teaching involves layering the perspectives of a period’s participants. For this reason, the great debates of U.S. history cannot be held within polite, nonoffensive boundaries.
Consider the case of David Walker’s “Appeal, to the Coloured Citizens of the World,” written in the late 1820s. Walker, a Black anti-slavery activist, argued that American slavery was far worse than the servitude the Egyptians imposed on the children of Israel. By depicting America as a place of exile and cruelty, Walker was completely subverting the Puritan self-conception of America as the “promised land.”
Walker argued that the list of grievances against the British contained in the Declaration of Independence was trivial compared with the “catalogue of cruelties” committed by White Americans against Black people. And he drew the logical conclusion that, if violent rebellion was justified against England, it was also justified against slaveholders and their enablers. “See your Declaration Americans!!! Do you understand your own language?”
Walker was clear about who had imposed slavery on his people. “The whites,” he said, “have always been an unjust, jealous, unmerciful, avaricious and blood-thirsty set of beings, always seeking after power and authority.” He argued that slavery had structural roots in an economy based on stolen labor. “The greatest riches in all America,” he wrote, “have arisen from our blood and tears.” And he diagnosed, not only the abject failure of America, but of American Christianity. “Can any thing be a greater mockery of religion than the way in which it is conducted by the Americans?”
Walker thought that Whites’ repentance might be possible, and that America could exist as a multiracial democracy. But still he warned: “The whites want slaves, and want us for their slaves, but some of them will curse the day they ever saw us. As true as the sun ever shone in its meridian splendor, my colour will root some of them out of the very face of the earth.”
This makes for bracing reading, even at a historical distance. And it demonstrates that history is not an easily tamed discipline. Walker’s voice in the classroom may trigger some parents in Texas. Who the hell cares. Walker made a Christian critique of an oppressive country headed toward self-destruction. And he was correct in just about every detail.
Because Walker’s perspective was justified does not make it comprehensive. Frederick Douglass looked at the same crimes, expressed the same anger, but eventually took the position that slavery could be ended through activism and political engagement. For all the U.S. Constitution’s flaws, Douglass saw it as a “glorious liberty document” that could be employed on behalf of abolition. Still other Black leaders of the era felt the American experiment beyond redemption and recommended a return to Africa.
Struggling to understand these layered perspectives is practice in critical thinking and mature citizenship. The discipline of history teaches us to engage with discomforting, distressing ideas without fearing them. This is something Texas (and just about everywhere else) could use more of.
Ok, for those of you keeping up with Texas' K-12 censorship policy (a.k.a. its "anti-CRT bill"), as documented below by CNN's Nicole Chavez in a piece that just appeared today, do understand that this is a dynamic and fluid situation.
That is, House Bill 3979, about which Chavez writes, is what was passed and became law during the regular legislative session that ended in June, 2021. Since then, we have had two special sessions where largely House and Senate Republicans have worked to pass Senate Bill 3, a bill that would supersede—or take the place of—HB 3979. (Talk about "confusion!")
These Republicans clearly believe that House Bill 3979 does not go far enough in its prohibitions. Whereas HB 3979 "only" applies to the social studies curriculum, SB 3 applies to the entirety of the public school curriculum in Texas, establishing a chilling effect on discussions of race, controversial topics, and conceivably, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives, generally.
Yesterday, the House Committee on Public Education voted to send SB 3 to the full house for final vote and approval tomorrow (September 2, 2021). If you have contact with any member of the House Committee on Public Education—particularly if they represent you, now is the time to reach out to them about your concerns regarding SB 3. Time is of the essence.
Note: Go to this link to find out who represents you.
Many of us are calling in and asking that this legislation not apply to Ethnic Studies courses that were only recently approved in 2018 by the Texas State Board of Education. By Ethnic Studies, we refer to Mexican American Studies, African American Studies, Native American Studies, and Asian American Studies.
Lawmakers in Texas passed HB 3979 earlier this year in hopes to overhaul how concepts linked to critical race theory are being taught in K-12 schools.
Updated 1:02 PM ET, Wed September 1, 2021
CNN—A new Texas law aimed at restricting discussions of race and history in schools has some educators second guessing themselves and forgoing civics-related activities to avoid running afoul of it.
HB3979, one of the legislative efforts to ban critical race theory in American classrooms, went into effect Wednesday as schools in the Lone Star State continue to be embroiled in debates over mask mandates. While some school districts are waiting for official guidance on what the law means for them, others are making curriculum changes "out of caution."
The law states that social studies teachers can't "require" or include in their courses, the concept that "one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex" or the concept that "an individual, by virtue of the individual's race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously."
It also notes that "a teacher may not be compelled to discuss a particular current event or widely debated and currently controversial issue of public policy or social affairs." Teachers, according to the bill, can't require or give extra credit for a student's political activism.
CNN spoke to nearly two dozen school districts across the state of Texas about how HB 3979 already was impacting their plans for the school year. In College Station, some government teachers won't be asking students to take notes at city public meetings for a grade. Elementary school students in Leander won't be asking students to write letters addressing lawmakers anymore. In Keller, some resources offered online to students, including ebooks and news articles have been temporarily removed.
Officials at a school district about 30 miles north of Dallas decided to stop offering course credit to middle school students participating in a renowned nationwide civil engagement program "out of an abundance of caution." The change was first reported by the Texas Tribune.
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For the past couple of years, students in two middle schools at the McKinney Independent School District were enrolled in an elective course that allowed them to spend several days a week researching and writing legislative bills that could fix issues in their communities. They would then present and debate their bills in a mock legislature and election process organized by the YMCA's Youth and Government program.
After HB3979 passed this summer, school officials decided the schools should only offer the Youth and Government program as an extracurricular activity as five other campuses in the district have been doing, said Cody Cunningham, the district's chief communications officer.
"The decision was made based upon legal counsel after receiving an interpretation of HB 3979 that would restrict offering the course," the district said in a statement. "The law was overly vague and the district chose to follow the legal advice of our attorneys out of an abundance of caution."
Cunningham said the program's enrollment has not been impacted by the change. Last year, about 50 students were enrolled in the elective course and the same number of students joined the program but as a club, he said.
Vivienne Garner, 18, was part of the program for seven years and was elected governor at the Texas Youth and Government state conference in 2020. She said the students who were part of the class were "a lot stronger" delegates compared to those who were members of a school club. They would get a deeper understanding of "the importance of civil discourse and how to debate something civilly, especially in the world today."
Garner, who is now a freshman at Ohio State University, couldn't speak to somebody and look them in the eyes when she started the program.
"It forced me to come out of my shell," she said. "It gave me a chance to make myself heard even by people who were older than me."
Garner said she's concerned about how HB 3979 could further impact the future of Youth and Government across the state. While there will be students interested in joining clubs, she says, the fear surrounding civil discourse activities may prevent teachers from sponsoring the clubs.
At her former high school, students needed a new teacher sponsor for this school year and finding one was "very, very difficult" in recent weeks, she says.
Fear and a chilling effect among teachers
There has been confusion and fear for weeks as teachers have been discussing any potential changes to their lessons with curriculum coordinators and among themselves.
At a Tuesday webinar organized by the Association of Texas Professional Educators, the largest teacher union in the state, members asked whether they will be allowed to discuss redlining in the classroom or let their students listen to clips from Martin Luther King Jr.'s iconic "I Have a Dream" speech and his famous "Letter from the Birmingham Jail."
Renee Blackmon, president of the Texas Council for the Social Studies, said some teachers are fearful of what will happen to them if a lesson "touches tangentially on racism" and they are second guessing their lesson plans.
"Am I doing the right thing or not?," Blackmon said teachers are constantly asking themselves.
She says they are wondering whether some people would think that a lesson about slavery, which is a part of the state's standard curriculum, is about critical race theory.
"We do teach current events and present both sides, our teachers weren't teaching critical race theory in their classrooms," Blackmon said. "There are people who believe they were probably because we do not have the public nor our state leaders in agreement about what really critical race theory is and what it encompasses. There's this misinformation that has clouded things."
Parents in Fort Worth, Texas, held protests and spoke at school board meetings
earlier this year demanding that teachers don't include critical race theory in the
curriculum.
Alejandra Lopez, 35, the president of the San Antonio teachers' union, said the law is meant to have a chilling effect on educators who have been pursuing a more culturally relevant curriculum and broader conversations about race and equity.
Growing up in San Antonio and attending public schools, Lopez says she didn't feel that her "community was reflected back at me in a way that was valued, and in a way that allowed me to feel dignity."
Years later, Lopez became a second grade teacher and along with other colleagues founded PODER, a social justice caucus of the San Antonio teachers' union. The group now offers training every year to help educators reflect on how their lessons approach students' identities and allow them to explore them.
Lopez says the union will continue offering those trainings because it is "right for our students and our communities" and the union will defend educators who may be accused of running afoul of the law.
As of Wednesday, the Texas Education Agency had not yet issued guidance on the law. Several school districts, including some of the 10 largest in the state, told CNN they were not planning any adjustments due to HB 3979 and plan to continue following the curriculum standards given to them by the state.
Those standards, known as Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), are reviewed by the State Board of Education once every eight years. The review of the social studies curriculum will begin this fall but won't be implemented until the 2025-2026 school year, which will give publishers time to update their textbooks and instruction materials.
The new law shows a lack of understanding from lawmakers about how education standards are created in the state and the absence of teachers' input, Blackmon said.
For now, Blackmon says her organization is focusing on reassuring teachers they will be out of trouble if they teach the standard curriculum and use "sound instructional practices."
"That's all you can do. You cannot anticipate what parents are going to be misinformed of," she said.
I am pleased to see Nicole Chavez, a reporter from CNN, cover what is happening right now in the Texas State Legislature with respect to Senate Bill 3 and connecting to a painful part of Texas history that all of our K-12 and higher education students need to know about.
When we speak of institutionalized racism or oppression, this is not an abstraction. Nor is it about "victimology" or making white children feel badly. It's about peace, reconciliation, and providing students with an analysis that fills a vacuum in understanding, an already existing gaping hole in knowledge that HB 3979 is attempting to institutionalize.
While there's no enforcement component to it, absent effective leadership on this, it will do its part to create a chilling effect, as I mention in the CNN report below.
Humility and open-mindedness to our stories, histories, cultures, and languages are what those of us in Ethnic Studies seek and not a shying away from acknowledging historical facts together with frameworks like Critical Race Theory, class, and intersectional analyses that help students learn about others' lived experiences foreign to our own. That is a just and virtuous education.
A great start is with Trinity University Professor Dr. Enrique Aleman, whose poignant, highly personal story is captured in this video titled, "Stolen Education," about which CNN reporter Nicole Chavez writes.
I show it every year to my masters and doctoral students in our Department of Educational Leadership and Policy and Dr. Alemán has, on occasion, spoken to our students. You can learn more about the Hernandez v. Driscoll CISD court case from the Texas State Historical Association online. Dr. Alemán is, in fact, a graduate of our department. He is a fine scholar with a national reputation and wonderful human being.
Hernandez v. Driscoll CISD is a very important part of Texas history. It illuminates the present context.
Following any showing is a predictable silence combined with tears, muffled sounds of grief and sorrow regarding a terribly sad and regretful part of our history that has been of enduring consequence, as you yourselves can learn from the film.
This is not a distant past. My aunt, Tonie Alejandro, read the CNN news clip and we spoke last night. She shared a flood of memories about how horribly they were treated just for being Mexican in my hometown of San Angelo, Texas. It didn't matter back then, by the way, whether you were Mexican or Mexican American. All were treated in the schools with contempt. I plan on sharing in another post what she shared.
It's noteworthy that the perpetrators in Hernandez v. Driscoll, both in the film, and in this CNN new report, don't want to talk to filmmakers or CNN reporters, respectively. When I shared this with Aunt Tonie, she said, "Well, they (white people) don't want to know who they were." "Or who they are," I said, in the context of House Bill 3979 that we were also discussing.
The amazing irony is that Texas republican legislators are reinscribing whiteness itself, a basic idea within CRT, through their passage of House Bill 3979—yet again manifesting who they are.
Systematically failing Mexican American elementary school students is a shameful and tragic part of Texas history. If we are to make any progress in our society, this story, among so many others, needs and deserves the light of day in our K-12 and higher education curriculum.
And we'll all be the better for it. It's not that big a deal, I promise. I've taught this stuff for decades. What I and others teach and offer is good medicine for a troubled world. Folks just need to want to heal, rather than deepen, our divides.
San Antonio, Texas (CNN) Decades afterLupe Alemán was forced to repeat the first grade three times, her son is making it his life's work to reverse racial inequity in schools.
Enrique Alemán Jr., 50, has spent the past few years talking with numerous students in Texas and across the United States about how his mother and other Mexican American children in Driscoll, Texas, were treated in the 1950s by school officials who claimed they couldn't speak or understand English.
But a controversial law that goes into effect on September 1 will restrict how social studies teachers in the Lone Star State discuss race. The law could also make it potentially difficult to discuss why Lupe Alemán and at least seven other children went to federal court in the year after the landmark US Supreme Court ruling Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.
"I think it's very bad for students of all races to not talk about the uncomfortable aspects of our history. And it's especially bad for Latino youth to not understand that Texas has been a violent, racist, discriminatory place to live," Alemán Jr. told CNN.
While Texas lawmakers have been embroiled in a battle over election laws in recent months, "critical race theory" legislation has been another priority for Republicans in the state. In June, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law HB3979, and an expanded version of that bill is currently being considered by the state Senate in a second special legislative session that began on August 7.
HB3979 states that social studies teachers can't "require" or include in their courses, the concept that "one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex" or the concept that "an individual, by virtue of the individual's race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously."
It also notes that "a teacher may not be compelled to discuss a particular current event or widely debated and currently controversial issue of public policy or social affairs." Teachers, according to the bill, also can't require or give extra credit for a student's political activism.
The legislation proposed by Senate Republicans, SB3, intends to extend the restrictions to all teachers, regardless of subject or grade level.
Mexican American children sued their school and won
In 1955, a group of children and their parents sued the Driscoll Consolidated Independent School District for placing Mexican American children in the first grade for a period of three years solely because they were of Mexican descent, according to the federal lawsuit.
The school district in Driscoll, a town of nearly 800 people about two hours south of San Antonio, said in court that students were only placed in separate classrooms because of their lack of English proficiency. School officials said it deprived other students from teachers' attention and instruction, and not because of their country of origin, court documents show.
After several students appeared in court to testify that they were fluent in English, US District Judge James V. Allred ruled in 1957 that it was unreasonable to place students in separate classrooms based their race or origin.
Lupe Alemán was a fourth generation Texan and was fluent in English when she and her sisters enrolled in first grade at a Driscoll, Texas, school.
CNN reached out to the current superintendent and board members of the Driscoll Independent School District for comment multiple times.
Alemán Jr. was about 10 years old when he picked up his mother's high school yearbook and his mother shared two details of her life that, at the time, he didn't comprehend.
As a young girl in Driscoll, Lupe Alemán was part of a court case, and by the time she graduated high school, she was nearly 21 years old, Alemán Jr. says his mother told him.
It was more than two decades later that Alemán Jr. realized what his mother was referring to.
Alemán Jr. was 33 years oldwhen he saw a documentary on TV about Hector P. Garcia, a Texas civil rights advocate who founded the American G.I. Forum, a group that helped Mexican American veterans fight discrimination. The documentary recounts Garcia's life and activism, including how the group filed a federal lawsuit in the mid-1950s against the school district in Driscoll.
Lupe Alemán was 20 years when she graduated high school in Bishop, Texas, her son says. She was the school's first Mexican American homecoming queen.
"I immediately had a flashback and remembered what my mother told me," he said.
His mother, who was born in Driscoll, lived there until she was a young adult and would have been about 9 years old when the lawsuit was filed, Alemán Jr. said.
But he couldn't just pick up the phone and ask his mother about the case. His mom had died a few months before he watched the documentary, he said.
"I was amazed and I was upset," Alemán Jr. said, adding that his mother and two of his aunts testified in court. "I didn't understand why nobody ever talked about it."
As Alemán Jr. continued his education and he focused his research on the inequities that Black and brown students face in school, he couldn't forget about his family's history.
In 2012, he traveled across Texas to meet several of the children who testified along with his mother for the Hernandez v Driscoll CISD case and produced a documentary called "Stolen Education."
He learned that some were punished for speaking Spanish in school or had seen classmates being paddled by teachers. Some graduated high school and others dropped out of school to work or join the military, he said.
They went on with their lives, Alemán Jr. says, but "there's still something in them that feels like they didn't reach their full potential because of the way that they started out."
Enrique Alemán Jr., center, stands next to his parents Lupe and Enrique Alemán Sr. during his 1997 graduation from Columbia University in New York City.
There's been a long fight for ethnic studies in Texas
Educators and advocates say they are concerned the new law will have negative implications for the decades-long effort to make the history being taught in Texas schools more inclusive.
More than 52% of the 5.3 million children enrolled in kindergarten to 12th grade across Texas in the last school year were Hispanic or Latino, Texas Education Agency (TEA) data shows.
Yet, curriculum standards to teach Mexican American studies, only as an elective high school course, were only approved in 2018 after years of debate.
Sonia Hernandez, an associate professor of history at Texas A&M University, who works with the nonprofit Refusing to Forget to shine light on the killings of Mexican Americans by Texas Rangers in the 1910s and 1920s, said she was saddened to see that an "unfounded idea" could become a set back for advocates and educators in the state.
"Just so many years of great effort are being pushed aside because of the unfounded idea that if we talk about issues of racial inequality, if we talk about how certain groups of people were marginalized and were treated as second- class citizens -- even if they were in fact US citizens -- that would lead to some kind of unpatriotic history," Hernandez said.
"We are doing our students a disservice, we are telling them that we think they're not intellectually equipped to understand a complex history of their own country," she added.
For Tony Diaz, an author and activist, the new law and efforts around the "critical race theory" legislation echoes the sentiment behind the Arizona law that banned Mexican American studies in public schools about a decade ago.
"Those same tendencies are back in a new form," said Diaz, who campaigned against the ban in Arizona schools by launching Librotraficante, a caravan to take books banned under the same law to Arizona.
The Texas law intends to intimidate teachers, Diaz says, and it will take similar "very profound grassroots campaign" to overturn it.
Weeks before the new law goes into effect, it's still unclear how schools will implement it. The TEA has not yet issued guidance for schools and the agency hasn't yet responded to CNN's request for comment.
Angela Valenzuela, an education policy professor at the University of Texas, said the law doesn't address how schools will implement or enforce it.
"I think ultimately it is intended to create division at the grassroots level to empower parents that feel their children are being hurt by either teaching concepts like white supremacy, white privilege, the history of racism and slavery," Valenzuela said.
For Alemán Jr., who is now a Lillian Radford endowed professor of education at Trinity University and teaches classes for education leaders, the educational system in the state has in part "never wanted Latinos, African Americans and women to even know their own part" in history.
Learning what happened to his mother and other Mexican American children in Driscoll changed the purpose of Alemán's work. It also made him feel close to his mom even decades after she passed away.
It's empowering to know where you come from and that feeling, he says, it's something he hopes more Latinos and students of color can feel while they are in school.
