TX Lawmakers Belatedly Include MLK And Others In Teaching History

DALLAS, TX —Here's a new puzzle piece in the jigsaw of what post-Trump era education will look like in the Lone Star State.

If Texas legislators get their way, children in open-enrollment charter schools and K-12 public school districts will receive instruction on "informed American patriotism" beginning this fall.

The guidelines are included in Friendswood GOP state Rep. Greg Bonnen's House Bill 4509. Yet to come: another vote before passage shifts to the state Senate where a bill with similarities (and sponsorship from another Friendswood Republican, state Senator Larry Taylor) has already found approval.

Taken as a whole, the bill(s) intend to promote a grasp of the underpinnings of American democracy by examining documents considered foundational, including not only the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, but the Federalist Papers as well.

Bonnen's amendment would add as required texts both Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s seminal "I Have A Dream" speech and public remarks made by one of the country's earliest equality advocates, Frederick Douglass.

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The addition comes after it became clear that the initial documents were written by America's white founders. Does it go without saying that all of the founding documents were written while slavery was still the law of the land, and contains the signatures of many forefathers who owned other human beings?

Bonnen preferred to dwell on the loftier aspects of their work at last month's Public Education Committee hearing in the House. Singling out the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, he described each as emblematic of the “firsthand struggles, triumphs, challenges and beliefs” that provided a framework for American government.

At the time, there was no mention of anyone else helping to found the democratic republic that became the United Sates.

Rather, Bonnen told the committee members assembled precisely what his bill meant to do. “To ensure Texas students gain access to receive exposure to these founding documents," he said, "we must ensure these primary historic sources are incorporated into the state education curriculum across all grade levels."

It fell to Children's Defense Fund youth civic engagement and education coordinator Maggie Stern to suggest that the proposed curriculum might consider shedding some light on what was contributed by people of color and other cultures.

It remains to be seen how, or if, Texas teachers are able to educate students about events like the Tuskegee Experiment, the 40-year study that looked at African American syphilis patients and treated them only with placebos in order to study the disease's effects over time, the Japanese Internment Camps of World War II or the systematic extermination of Native Americans.

At the moment, legislators and educators are still battling that out — to say nothing about such matters as BLM and the recent Insurrection.

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