Texas Idiot Wants Kids to Be as Dumb as She Is

Pat Hardy, a member of the Texas State Board of Education, is a clueless clod when it comes to the Civil War, and she wants to make sure school children in that state remain as ignorant as she is about history. According to this doofus, slavery was a “side issue to the Civil War.” She claims, “There would be those who would say the reason for the Civil War was over slavery. No. It was over states’ rights.” This story details the benighted attempt to keep Texas school children as dumb as rocks. She and her equally dim cronies have been at this since 2010, when they revised the Texas state learning standards downward. They require Texas students to read Jefferson Davis’ inaugural address while ignoring Alexander Stephens’ Cornerstone speech in which he identified the cornerstone of the confederacy as slavery and the preservation of white supremacy. They apparently also fail to read the Texas Declaration of Causes, which spells out the reasons why Texas seceded. That document tells us, “Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated States to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility [sic] and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery–the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits–a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association.” After a litany of complaints regarding threats to slavery, the authors of that document say clearly, “We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable. That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding States. By the secession of six of the slave-holding States, and the certainty that others will speedily do likewise, Texas has no alternative but to remain in an isolated connection with the North, or unite her destinies with the South.”

James Grossman of the American Historical Association wrote, “The War happened only because of the determination of the leadership of eleven states to defend the right of their residents to own other human beings. The Civil War was fought over the issue of slavery.”

Texas has the most politicized social studies education standards in the country, which goes to show once again that politicians can’t be trusted when it comes to education. According to the Washington Post article, “For decades, some Southerners have emphasized states’ rights as the cause of the war. Nearly half of Americans — 48 percent — believe that states’ rights was the main cause of the war, compared to 38 percent who said the main cause was slavery, according to a 2011 Pew Research Center survey.”

Raul Cevallos, who graduated from Texas Tech University in 2015, founded a group to increase political awareness, and his group surveyed Texas students on their historical knowledge. “The group asked students three simple questions about the United States, including ‘Who won the Civil War?’ for a video that later went viral online. ‘The Confederates,’ answered one student. ‘The South,’ said another. Others said they’re weren’t sure. But the same students answered questions about pop culture — ‘Who is married to Brad Pitt?’ — correctly. ‘If you don’t know about the Civil War, and you don’t know about things like slavery, then you wouldn’t really be able to understand why our society is the way it is today,’ Cevallos said.”

While Hardy and her ilk no doubt will have some success in keeping Texas schoolchildren ignorant, dedicated teachers will still be in the classroom teaching the truth. “Stephen Wright, an eighth-grade teacher in Nacogdoches, a small and conservative East Texas town, said some Texas students undoubtedly leave their classrooms believing that slavery was not the primary cause of the Civil War. But not his students. Wright said he has his students read the Southern state declarations of secession to learn for themselves what the war was about. He deals with the Civil War standards — he has to teach the standards, because they might show up on the state’s history test — by explaining the reasons that ‘some people believe’ the war happened. ‘Man, it’s all about slavery,’ he said. ‘The students know that.’ “