Who knew textbooks could cause such a flap?

Last year, a panel of teachers submitted a proposed social studies curriculum for Texas schools. Since then, the state board of education has made a number of changes to that outline, mainly to tailor it to a more conservative outlook. Liberal groups, educators and the media have since charged the board with playing politics with education.

I can see both sides of this issue. My reading of history is slightly to the right of the standard high school narrative, and I’d like to see more attention paid to the Reagan resurgence, the constitutional right to bear arms and other historic conservative values that have gotten short shrift in classrooms over the years.

On the other hand, the board members seem more intent on rewriting history than on providing a more balanced, accurate account of it. For instance, they want to downplay the role Thomas Jefferson played in the American Revolution, presumably due to his ambivalence towards the role of religion in public life. This is the guy who authored the official document of our independence, so I’m thinking we might want to put him front-and-center in the study of early American history.

I don’t know what will happen when Texas schools finally order their new textbooks. I don’t think anyone’s civic education will be ruined one way or the other. But there’s an important lesson to be learned here.

History is political. Everyone sees things differently. Even people present at important moments can’t agree on what they witnessed; imagine how hard it is for historians to sift through conflicting accounts to recreate these events centuries later.

Students of history—from schoolchildren to grown adults—should look to as many sources as possible as they attempt to reconstruct the past. They should read Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” and William Bennett’s “America: The Last Best Hope.” They should check out historical fiction and the artwork turned out in each time period. They should question everything, including their teachers.

Only then will they have gotten a real education in history.

Nathaniel French is a junior theater major. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].