Christine M. Flowers: A textbook case of hysteria

FOR YEARS, liberal activists and historians have engaged in an all-out effort to redefine our country's narrative by attacking the so-called "white and patriarchal" interpretation of history found in most pre-1960s textbooks.

They spent a lot of time, effort and money revamping our history to include the experiences, accomplishments and perspectives of women and minorities.

Nothing wrong with that, in theory. The more information a student is exposed to, the better.

Assuming, that is, that there's balance in the mix. Unfortunately, for decades, there's been a concerted move to replace the original three "R's" of much of the traditional curriculum - "readin', 'ritin' and 'rithmatic" - with something more along the lines of "racism, reproductive rights and revolution."

This ideological shift has occurred most obviously at the college level, with the burgeoning of "womyn's studies" and majors devoted to the oppression of sexual and ethnic minorities.

It's not that I have a problem with classes like "Cross-Cultural Narratives of Desire," "Witchcraft in Colonial America," "Mythology and Community in Twentieth Century Queer Literature," "Spike Lee" and "New York Mambo: Microcosm of Black Creativity." If Yale University thinks these are valuable topics, far be it for me to question the Ivies.

And anyway, that's college. If you're willing to pay 200 grand for an education, you can study pretty much what you darn well please, regardless of its utility in keeping you out of the soup line.

But I do question the wisdom of adopting that "anything goes" philosophy for elementary- and secondary-school curriculums.

Trying to convince teens and tweens that the magnificent Constitution crafted by our Founding Fathers is simply a footnote to the greater fact that they were slaveholders might make us feel all righteous. But it's counterproductive.

Sure, it's important to talk about a past that involved slavery. But when you do that without putting it in context, manipulating what children absorb in an attempt at social engineering, and when you keep beating people over the head about how racist and sexist and bigoted this country - including most ordinary Americans - has been over the last 200 years, you're likely to find yourself on a dangerous two-way street.

That's exactly what is happening in the Lone Star State. Last Friday, the Texas Board of Education approved a social-studies curriculum that, according to the New York Times, "will put a conservative stamp on history and economic textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers' commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light."

Liberals are up in arms about what they perceive to be the hijacking of American education. As Mavis Knight, a Democratic member of the school board, noted when her proposal emphasizing the absolute separation of church and state was defeated, "the social conservatives have perverted accurate history to fulfill their own agenda."

That's a nice rhetorical flourish, even though "accurate" is often in the eye of the specific academic. As noted by Jon Meacham in "American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation," while the Founders didn't intend for us to be a strictly Christian nation, they clearly didn't envision the Secular Nirvana pushed on us by those who think the "wall" between church and state is as long and steep as the one in China.

But Ms. Knight, despite herself, makes a good point.

It's a very bad thing when people start "perverting" history.

While we shouldn't continue the charade that American greatness derives only from the blood, sweat and tears of valiant white men, why would we ever want to go whole hog in the other direction and vilify traditional values (not to mention facts) in an attempt to make it up to the institutionally aggrieved?

For example, it's OK to have Black History Month and inform school kids that it encompasses a lot more than Harriet Tubman, George Washington Carver and Martin Luther King Jr.

AND IT'S OK to have Women's History Month to make sure the wee ones know that it wasn't just the men who made that difficult trip along the Oregon Trail, and that some of the most courageous warriors in the fight for civil and human rights were Catholic nuns.

And it's also good to hear about Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta to remind us that there's a lot more to being Latino than salsa and immigration.

But if you advance an agenda that tears down conservative values in order to empower the traditionally ignored, you get what happened in Texas: special-interest education.

Same textbook, new cover.

Christine M. Flowers is a lawyer. Listen to her Thursdays on WPHT/1210 AM, 10-midnight.

E-mail cflowers1961@yahoo.com.