I didn't see this on the page; forgive me if a thread has already been started about this.In an article written by the AP's April Castro, the new chair of the State Board of Education, Gail Lowe, recently made this comment:
"Figures we use to represent those character ideals (citizenship, patriotism and community involvement) and the type of persons we want your students to emulate should be
politically neutral."
The phrase "politically neutral" is what troubles me in that statement and article. In my mind, there are two possible meanings to the phrase "politically neutral," and neither are very comforting: 1) the models are not politically involved
or 2) the models are people who are not politically controversial. Whether either of these meanings is correct, they are not at all what I would want to hear from some one who is chair of the board that determines social studies curriculum. I've done some searching on the internet to discover what the possible meaning of the phrase is (even looking through the expert panel's reviews), but haven't been able to find anything enlightening, so I'll just deal with these one by one.
1. Surely this cannot be what Mrs. Lowe meant, because it is just so ludicrous. Any model of citizenship, patriotism or community involvement, regardless of who is choosing the particular model, is going to be politically involved.
2. This meaning seems more likely, but it is an incorrect understanding of the feelings invoked by the various people who might be chosen as a role model for citizenship, patriotism or community involvement. Let's take Abraham Lincoln as an example (specifically listed in the draft of the 8th grade TEKS on citizenship <113.24 (23)(B)>). People in the South have strong feelings about the Civil War in general and Lincoln in particular, and the feelings are generally negative. Any debate about Lincoln can become quite heated depending on the people involved, and some would argue that his actions (e.g., suspending habeas corpus) were not exemplar of patriotism or good citizenship. This was not a man who brings to mind political neutrality, so according to Lowe's statement, we would have to avoid any discussion of Abraham Lincoln. I would even go so far as to suggest that most U.S. historical figures are not politically neutral; if they were politically neutral, why would we even bother talking about them?
It concerns me that a person charged with developing social studies curriculum would make a statement which would logically require teachers not discuss important historical figures.
As an aside, according the article, there has been some controversy about some of the names listed in the citizenship portion of the TEKS: Caesar Chavez and Thurgood Marshall. I have some trouble understanding now a Supreme Court Justice is not a model of citizenship, but I think that people are nitpicking, rather than expressing a serious complaint, since the persons listed in the TEKS only serve as examples (hence the frequent use of the phrase "such as"). You're not required to discuss those persons listed; you're supposed to use them as a launching point for choosing people to discuss in your classroom.
http://wanderingreveries.blogspot.com/2009/08/politically-neutral-role-models_15.html
After reading Barton's review of the Social Studies curriculum, I think I need write a post about it, some of it was just patently ridiculous.
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