The State Board of Education is working to identify and remove from the state's mandatory high school curriculum which are in fact not true, but were placed there for political reasons during the past several years, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
When social conservatives took control of the SBOE fifteen years ago, they moved to 'update' the state's school curriculum, largely along Biblical lines, and included some items involving the Civil War.One of the items which was ordered to be imposed in public school curriculum was that Moses was the father of America's Constitution and modern democratic system.
"Moses would have strongly objected to our Bill of Rights, and to almost every aspect of our secular democratic republic," said Aaron Rawl, who was one of the experts gathered by the SBOE to review the curriculum.
"About the Civil War, I have concerns about the idea that slavery was not central to it," UT El Paso historian Jose Hererra said. "Every other issue that comes around in the Civil War has slavery involved in it."
But the SBOE also heard testimony that Moses as the father of American democracy is not off base.
"Chief Justice Warren Burger states that the Ten Commandments form the very basis of American civil law," Mary Jo Baker told the board.
But Rawl said that's nor true.
"The Ten Commandments have no appreciable connection with American law," he said. "Many of them are unenforceable violations of our constitutional rights."
A final vote on removing the items from the curriculum is expected before the end of the year.