UPDATE, Nov. 19, 3:38 p.m.: On Tuesday, most members of the Texas State Board of Education expressed their support for the new curriculum, the Texas Tribune reported. With an official vote scheduled for Friday, eight out of the 15 board members gave their initial approval to Bluebonnet Learning, the elementary school curriculum proposed by the Texas Education Agency earlier this year.
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The Texas State Board of Education is set to vote on an elementary school curriculum that critics say would focus on Christianity over other religions and glosses over slavery and racism.
The curriculum is optional for schools, but there’s a financial incentive: $60 per student, making it a lucrative proposition for budget-strapped districts. However, critics say the lessons prioritize Christianity, oversimplify American history, and occasionally veer into the bizarre.
The Texas Education Agency, which oversees public education in the state, released the new curriculum in the spring after the state enacted a law directing the agency to develop its own free textbooks.
In the new curriculum, kindergartners will learn about the “Golden Rule,” focusing heavily on Jesus, natch. Meanwhile, first-graders will explore the architectural wonders of Founding Father Thomas Jefferson’s plantation Monticello — but without all that pesky slavery stuff.
By fifth grade, students will study Leonardo da Vinci’s painting “The Last Supper” — presented with excerpts from the Gospel of Matthew.
One of the standout features of the curriculum is its tendency to gloss over the complexities of history. Founding fathers like George Washington and Jefferson are depicted as men who bravely fought for freedom (but don’t mention the enslaved people they owned).
In a lesson on the Civil War, Confederate general Robert E. Lee is described as a man of “excellent abilities” who wanted to peacefully resolve differences. If you’re waiting for the part where he fought to preserve slavery and harbored racist beliefs, keep waiting — it’s not in the curriculum.
As for Martin Luther King Jr., the curriculum emphasizes his “nonviolent advocacy” but conveniently skips his critiques of systemic racism and white complacency.
But the weirdest part is how selectively detailed the curriculum can be. A fifth-grade lesson on the Holocaust describes it as “the systematic persecution and murder of six million Jewish people.” Yet, when it comes to American slavery, the curriculum barely scratches the surface, calling it a “practice common throughout history” and skipping over the race-based brutality that defined it in the U.S.
A fifth-grade lesson on World War II explains how Nazi Germany’s Nuremberg Laws “were created to dehumanize and target Jewish people.” However, it omits any discussion of how those laws were influenced by Jim Crow policies and the dehumanization of Black people in America.
One early draft of the curriculum even included a dice game for second-graders based on the story of Esther. In the biblical story, a high-ranking official in the Persian Empire cast lots to determine the date for a planned annihilation of all Jews in the land, but Esther intervened to prevent the massacre.
Students were asked to roll dice to simulate casting lots—much like the biblical villain Haman did when plotting to kill all the Jews. Parents were not amused.
“Do we ask kids to play ‘Pretend to Be Hitler’ next?” Sharyn Vane, a Jewish parent, told the New York Times. The dice game has since been removed.
Critics argue the curriculum’s heavy Christian emphasis risks alienating non-Christian students and blurs the line between education and evangelism. Democratic State Rep. James Talarico, a Christian seminarian himself, told the Times that the plan is a “testing ground for extreme ideas.”
Republican Governor Greg Abbott and other proponents of the new program assert that the Bible is a cornerstone of American history. They argue that a classical education, enriched by a strong understanding of Bible stories, is essential for students to gain a complete perspective on the world.
But even those values come with selective memory. The curriculum highlights abolitionists’ Christian faith while ignoring how the same religion was used to justify slavery.
Historians worry about the long-term impact of teaching a whitewashed, oversimplified version of history. Mark Chancey, a religious studies professor, described the curriculum as working against the goal of educating a citizenry prepared to function in a pluralistic democracy.
“Public schools are educating for civic purposes. We’re developing our citizenry. We’re preparing students to function in a pluralistic democracy and to deliberate about different ideas,” Chancey told the Texas Tribune. “Students need to have an accurate understanding of history to do that, and many of these lessons work against that goal by oversimplifying American history to the point of distortion.”
