Let’s Hear It for Tex Avery

Warner Brothers

Austin

The nationwide uproar over the Texas State Board of Education’s (SBOE) decision to reform the history curriculum began with the release, last July, of proposed new standards for the writing and production of textbooks, and for student understanding. With a school enrollment closing in on five million, Texas practices “statewide adoption” of textbooks, which makes it a leading force in educational publishing. And the state board of education, which has a conservative majority, had chosen a new direction, emphasizing pro-capitalist values and the role of Christian principles in the foundation of the American republic. 

Predictably, liberal-left political interests, and the mainstream media, in Texas and across the country, went berserk. The board was accused of removing Thomas Jefferson from the curriculum, of promoting the Confederacy (to which Texas belonged), and of justifying McCarthyism. All such claims were wrong—as anybody who consulted the online draft of the standards could discern. Jefferson had not been removed from consideration as a major participant in the creation of the republic; the Confederacy had not been favored over the Union.

The critical howls over the treatment of McCarthyism were particularly interesting. The board’s new language called on students to be able to explain how the activities of Senator Joseph McCarthy, as well as those of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, the arms race, and the space race, “increased Cold War tensions.” But the board of education further mandated for study “how the later release of the Venona Papers confirmed suspicions of communist infiltration in U.S. government.” 

This appeared to strike Texas liberals as an outrageous intrusion of right-wing ideology. Yet the role of the Venona decryptions of Soviet secret intelligence by American code-breakers, in identifying Soviet agents at work in official institutions, has never been questioned by historians of any political sympathy since Venona was released beginning in 1995. Discussed many times in these pages, the importance and veracity of the Venona documentation is almost never challenged—although some recusant leftists still try to deny its evidence on Alger Hiss, or submit it to an “anti-anti-Communist” interpretation.

Critics were even more exercised by the proposed inclusion of previously unmentioned people and institutions. These include “the causes, key organizations, and individuals of the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority, and the National Rifle Association.” The Houston Chronicle editorialized against “too much mention of figures such as former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and conservative organizations such as the Moral Majority and none (or not nearly enough) of influential individuals and groups on the political left.” In fact, Newt Gingrich was never mentioned in any draft of the standards.

The board of education held a public hearing on the new standards in March, and a second hearing in May. On both occasions, supporters and opponents could present their views: Conservatives hoped that the board would deliver a final vote on adoption or rejection; leftists and race politicians sought delay. On May 19, I watched as more than 200 witnesses showed up in the hearing room in the state capitol. Two examples, among the presentations offered by opponents, are especially illustrative of the drive-by political manners employed against the board.

Benjamin Jealous, president of the NAACP, had come from his headquarters in Baltimore to complain about the downgrading of the human debasement of African slaves. According to Jealous, language referring to the “triangular trade” among the English colonies on the eastern seaboard, the Caribbean, and Britain had excised the horrors of slavery. 

Of course, the “triangular trade” has been taught in American public schools at least since I was in California’s system a half-century ago, as the import of slaves to the New World, their harvesting of sugar, tobacco, and other commodities, and the sale of these or their by-products (such as molasses and rum) in Europe. Jealous was caught by the gimlet-eyed Terri Leo, secretary of the board. She asked him if he had, in fact, read the proposed curriculum changes and could cite the language he found unacceptable. He was compelled to admit that he had not, and could not. Whereupon she pointed out that the new language summons students to explain “the plantation system, the Atlantic triangular trade, and the spread of slavery.” Jealous had been caught in a criticism by inference—or, more bluntly, by dependence on second-hand talking points.