New Deal Raw

Ron Isaac - 8.31.09
Columnist EducationNews.org

According to a proposed update of the Texas high school his tory standards curriculum, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who brought us such programs as social security, does not qualify as a “significant political and social leader in the United States. “ Accordingly they have done their duty as they see it and eliminated FDR from their list of such notables. They have, however, added Henry B. Gonzalez.

This tragic/comical lopping off of FDR’s legacy, as reported by Mary Ann Zehr in an August 17 post on Curriculum Matters, illustrates the fallen state of historical truth when its presentation is entrusted to ideologues or ignorant patsies of one “wing” or another.

Striking FDR from the rolls of significant political and social leaders in American history is like dropping earth from the registry of inhabited planets or Queen Victoria from the rolodex of nineteenth century European female monarchs.

The legacies of great people should not be political footballs in the hands of a broad spectrum of potentia l bigots who have insinuated themselves on school boards, “sensitivity committees” or other bands with axes to grind or patrons to pay off. Who knows who these shadowy forces are, in some cases?

When history is reduced to silly putty in the grubby hands of revisionists of one stripe or another who are bent on furthering their own careers and agenda, then nobody and nothing is safe.

Major personalities of history should be included or excluded from texts and the rolls of honor based on the merits of their contributions ( in terms of undeniable significance rather than arguable decency) rather than whether they fit into the scheme of some favored political movement or vogue of attitude.

Otherwise, what will continue to happen is that in one set of annals, Senator Joseph McCarthy may be revered and Martin Luther King reviled and in a different lot of chronicles, Joanne Chesimard might be v enerated and Douglas MacArthur loathed.

A pox on the houses of all revisionists!

What bizarre curriculum mock “truths”, if any, have you, reader, been coerced into panning off as the real thing?