[DallasNews] "GREAT NEWS," he tweeted. "State Board signals it will keep reference to 'heroic' Alamo defenders in Texas history curriculum. They died fighting for Texas independence. That is the epitome of heroic. Thanks to all Texas patriots who weighed in."Commissioner Bush balked at the possibility that he overestimated the issue's importance.
"I hardly think that the Commissioner, as Guardian of the Alamo, has overblown the issue," Texas General Land Office press secretary Karina Erickson told The News. "Bush's quote speaks best: 'The Alamo defenders and their highest values must stay in the Texas history curriculum. Period.' "
MOSES AND MORE
While the Alamo and Travis letter took up much of the debate Tuesday, members of the public also weighed in on the thousands of other proposed changes to the state's social studies standards.
The State Board of Education last updated the standards in 2010, approving several requirements pushed by the board's most conservative members, including teaching Texas high schoolers that Moses "informed the American founding documents."
The board also decided that students should have to "compare and contrast" the First Amendment clause barring establishment of a state religion with the doctrine of the separation of church and state.
Now, the board will consider axing the 2010 standards and amending several others, like moving "slavery" to the head of a list of the causes of the Civil War. Currently, slavery comes in the middle of a the list that also includes states' rights, sectionalism and protective tariffs.
"I appreciate history is complicated," Emile Lester, a political science professor from the University of Mary Washington, told the board when he spoke in favor of removing the reference to Moses. "But sometimes right is right and wrong is wrong."