Roughly 17 hours into a four-day marathon of meetings, the State Board of Education turned to a discussion of broad historical topics, prompting several board members to present an itemized wish list for Texas' social studies curriculum.
The elected board members began overhauling social studies last year, with final decisions due by summer. But several of the five Democrats on the 15-member board began diving into the minutiae during Thursday’s meeting, fearing they may not have a better opportunity in the future.
They pressed for major changes and minor tweaks to the proposed list of topics:
Include lessons on the transatlantic slave trade. Incorporate the story of Crispus Attucks, the Black American patriot killed during the Boston Massacre. On the list of ancient civilizations, recognize those from Africa. Consider the role of formerly enslaved people who settled Texas’ Freedom Colonies. Strike a section named for Martin Luther King Jr. and just label it the Civil Rights Movement.
As the Democrats’ requests piled up, Florence Republican Tom Maynard issued a friendly reminder. “This is just an outline,” he said.
Still, the requests kept coming. Add Chief John Horse, a prominent Black Seminole warrior. Add Robert Smalls, the Black Civil War hero turned Republican congressman. Teach second graders more about Harriet Tubman, and that the Underground Railroad was not a train.
“This is an outline,” Maynard again reminded them. "If we have Harriet Tubman in there, we're going to have the Underground Railroad.”
“We’re micromanaging,” he added, about 90 minutes into a discussion that would last two hours.
State Board of Education meetings, held quarterly over multiple days in Austin, are frequently exercises in stamina and patience. The decisions made by board members, elected to staggered four-year terms, echo for years in classrooms and curricula across Texas — and the nation.
During Thursday’s discussion, Republicans and Democrats sought changes to a list of historical topics proposed by a panel of advisers they had appointed — including several who have criticized diversity efforts, promoted disputed beliefs that America was founded as a Christian nation, and questioned school lessons highlighting the historical contributions of people of color.
Students, Democrats argued, need to see themselves reflected in their education and learn that beautiful and ugly aspects of history hold significance. But truth and clarity, they suggested, should come first.
“Where it says ‘slavery denied liberty and was the main cause of the Civil War,’” said Houston Democrat Staci Childs, “it is of my humble opinion that that is kind of tricky for a second-grader to understand. It doesn't get at the actual thing that was happening during slavery.”
Childs and Tiffany Clark — two Black women on the board — suggested a different description:
Slavery took away people’s freedom and treated Africans as property instead of human beings. The Civil War happened because some states wanted to keep slavery, while others wanted it to end. The war was fought to decide whether slavery would continue in the United States.
“Is there any debate?” Republican Board Chair Aaron Kinsey asked, with the new description shining on a projector screen.
Pearland Republican Julie Pickren spoke up, saying Africans were not the only group to have endured slavery.
“I mean, we have white Europeans that were enslaved as indentured servants. We had Native Americans, Chinese,” Pickren said. “So to me, it's too heavy — the way this verbiage reads. It's too heavy for a little 7-year-old.”
Childs was granted permission from the board chair to respond.
“We keep hearing the rhetoric that it’s too heavy when there were the equivalent of second graders enduring this — there were 6- and 7- and 8-year-olds actually enduring being enslaved,” Childs said. “So I understand how precious our children are and how they should be protected, but ‘slavery denied liberty’ is almost insulting to the descendants of people that had to endure this.”
Childs found support from Democrat Rebecca Bell-Metereau, who called it “naive” to suggest children cannot stomach the horrors of slavery. An 8-5 majority of the board agreed. Five of 10 Republicans, including Pickren, voted against the change.
As the social studies process drives forward, other concessions may not come as easily. The list of historical topics that board members approved Friday will next go to work groups of Texas educators responsible for crafting more specific learning standards.
The State Board of Education plans to revise and vote on those standards this summer, detailing what Texas wants its students to know by the time they graduate. The new curriculum will appear in classrooms at the start of the 2030-31 school year.
Kinsey, the board chair, said Thursday that he expects the teacher work groups to treat the list of historical topics as guidance when developing the standards. The direction worried some board members who fear politics may influence a process they feel teachers should lead.
“Our work groups need to convene to do the actual work, and they are the ones who provide guidance to us,” San Antonio Democrat Marisa B. Pérez-Díaz said. “I'm incredibly frustrated at this point. I feel like the wool just got pulled over my eyes.”
The Democrats’ frustration with the process propelled many of their efforts to provide input at last week’s meeting.
During Thursday’s debate, Childs recommended that the list of historical topics recognize Claudette Colvin as a mother of the Civil Rights Movement. Colvin, who died in Texas last month, in 1955 refused to give up her bus seat to a white woman in Montgomery, Alabama. But Colvin did not attract the fame that Rosa Parks did, which Colvin attributed to her youth, her darker skin complexion and her lower socioeconomic status.
Pickren, the Pearland Republican who voted against the more detailed description of slavery, was visibly amazed to learn about Colvin’s story for the first time Thursday and voted in favor of the recommendation.
“Very cool,” Pickren said. “Thank you.”
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.
