Remember the Alamo - everything about it

History textbook reforming efforts intensify in Texas

Throughout her education, the lessons Stephanie Guerrero learned about the Alamo left her confused.

The story, as recounted by her teachers and in her textbooks, told of a battle for Texas between the small rebel army of Texans led by William Barret Travis and the much larger Mexican army led by Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. The lesson taught much about the traditional heroes of Texan independence such as Travis and James Bowie, while villianizing the Mexicans as the enemy.

"I wasn't sure how I should feel about it," said Guerrero, 35, who now teaches Spanish at Miller High School.

After telling her father of what she'd learned in school about the battle, Guerrero knew there was something missing.

"He told me 'Just wait till you get to college, you'll get the rest of the story there,' " she said.

She did.

There she learned about the Mexicans who fought alongside the Texan heroes defending the Alamo against Santa Anna's forces.

But students shouldn't have to wait until college to get those lessons of cultural pride and the Hispanics' contributions, said Manuel Flores, president of the Mexican-American School Board Association.

A survey of school textbooks conducted by MASBA discovered little mention of Hispanics' impact on both U.S. and Texas history.

Flores said Texas history books should include information about the role Tejanos played in the battle of the Alamo, the U.S. Civil War and the colonization of Texas. U.S. history books, he said, should include information about the struggle waged by Hispanics in the name of civil rights and the impact of that struggle on providing equal education for Hispanic children.

"It's important for Hispanic children to know that people like them have had a stake in the development of this nation and state from the very start," Flores said.

Mary Helen Berlanga, who serves on the Texas State Board of Education, said while some advances have been made in the information included in textbooks in recent years, much more needs to be done.

In addition to more information on Hispanic heroes, Berlanga said even the uglier parts of history need to be mentioned in books, including discrimination.

"We need to acknowledge that, face it and hope it never happens again," she said. "You're not changing history. You're just making it more accurate and correcting things that never should have been left out."

Berlanga said the State Board of Education likely will adopt history books within the next few years and encourages people who'd like to see change in the books to attend the board's meetings in support of more accurate representations of Hispanics in textbooks.

For the students in Guerrero's advanced Spanish 4 class, history has left out far too much and many feel cheated out of their past.

Miller senior Christian Parra was raised in North Texas, where she hadn't ever heard of Hispanic civil rights leader Cesar Chavez before Guerrero's class.

Chavez wasn't the only thing Parra didn't learn about in school.

"I'd never heard of Mexicans being punished because they spoke Spanish," Parra said.

In Guerrero's class, students watch documentaries about the Chicano struggle for education in the 1960s and


It's through film and some of the supplemental literature the students read that they have insight into their history and heritage. Through the lessons they learn about themselves and their past, they learn "the other side of the story" that history books overlook, Parra said.

Miller senior Alfredo Castro said history teachers typically don't have time to teach material that isn't in the book or part of preparation for the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, the state mandated assessment test.

"Why should we have to wait to

college to hear about all this?" he


Contact Adriana Garza at 886-3618 or HYPERLINK