Read This Now!

8/17/2013 07:35:00 PM
Andrew Joseph Pegoda, an historian at University of Houston, has a fascinating look at STAAR, which is a standardized test in Texas. You can read his long-form critique here, or a short summary here. But at the very least, you should read a few examples from the long-form piece.

The problem that Pegoda points out is that Texas is using STAAR to push its highly ideological--perhaps some would say "revisionist"--views on US history on students. Read the post. But just to provide one example:

In the first question STAAR asks students to identify from a list of four options a common trait between California and Texas. But choosing the "correct" answer, "former Mexican territory" requires that the student reject "dependent on slavery" as a possible answer. That is problematic on many counts. First off, as Pegoda notes, Texas's succession from Mexico was entirely about slavery--by rejecting this option, the test is attempting to white-wash (in more ways than one) the history of Texas. Moreover, even in the context of a comparison with California, "dependent on slavery" a valid answer because, in fact, California was only admitted to the union as a free state in order to balance out the addition of Texas as a slave-holding state. Hence, the statehood of both was largely "dependent on slavery." The reality is that antebellum politics centered in a big way on the single issue of slavery, and that is something history courses need to acknowledge, an issue that should still trouble us, but instead Texas is trying to banish it from memory. Such ignorance only perpetuates the oppression of minorities that still reverberates throughout history into present day.

Are you still here? Click over to Pegoda's piece!