Teaching Race and Abbott’s Lost Cause
To the Editor:
Gov. Abbott’s agenda for the special session includes bills to restrict the teaching of slavery. History is meant to be knowledge learned through scientific investigation. It should be based on the accumulation of credible evidence gathered from written and oral memories, art and artifacts. The telling of history is open to the interpretation of the evidence and is subject to bias, points of view and political motives.
Currently, some of the history being taught in our public schools is not based on science. The lesson of Betsy Ross and the origin of the American Flag is a legendary story that has been passed down by tradition, but is unverifiable because of lack of credible evidence. Some of the curriculum is based on outright lies and omissions. An organization formed after the American Civil War, called the Lost Cause Movement, set out to suppress the role of slavery as the cause of the war. Their goal was to glorify the Confederate participants and are the ones responsible for the numerous statues erected during the 1920’s -1950’s.
The Lost Cause Movement was very successful in controlling the textbook narration of the Civil War and still is today as is evident by their fight against Critical Race Theory and other curriculum that addresses slavery; going so far as to ban teachers from addressing the topic in their classrooms. Part of the Lost Cause Movement’s argument is that there is an attempt to erase history by those wanting the facts about slavery to be included in the story. When new scientific evidence is discovered, or brought to light, the story will change.
Get ready for history to undergo a major change because of the recent discovery of about 1,000 unmarked graves where the Canadian government run schools buried indigenous children taken from their families. I wonder if Gov. Abbott, and his Lost Cause buddies, will also be able to suppress this change in the way history will remember the Native American’s treatment in our country after similar U.S. government school sites are investigated?
David McCall
Waldeck