Outer Limits

 There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture…We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical…We can change the focus to a soft blur, or sharpen it to crystal clarity. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. – Opening narration of the 1960’s TV Show – The Outer Limits.

Davy Crockett

When  I was a student in public school in the 1960’s and early 70’s, I took for granted that the Texas War of Independence, with the battles at the Alamo and San Jacinto, was a major part of American history.  After all, they got a whole chapter in our textbook, a third of the space of the Civil War and World War II, but the same amount as World War I.  

By sheer volume of paper, Sam Houston, Davy Crockett and the boys got more space than the entire Labor Union movement of the late 19^th and early 20^th century.  The book had more than twice as much about them than the Abolitionist movement before the Civil War.  And, add to that we all grew up with our “raccoon-skin” Davy Crockett hats (more than a little old to actually wear them), and could still sing the theme from the Disney Show of the early sixties; “Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier!!”.  

Fighting for Slavery

We never, ever, were taught that those “Texians” were fighting for their “right” to own slaves in a nation, Mexico, that abolished slavery in 1829.  Instead,  we were taught they were fighting for their “right” to self-government, rebelling against the central power in Mexico City and the “tyrant”, General Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón, otherwise known as Santa Anna.  

It wasn’t until I was in college that I learned differently.  That’s when I found that John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry was more than just a crazed man that the US military, led by Colonel Robert E. Lee and Lieutenant JEB Stuart, had to “put down”.  He was trying to lead slaves to freedom:  maybe not such a crazy idea after all.  For that – he was executed at the end of a rope.

Selling Books

And it wasn’t until I was getting my Master’s Degree in Education that I discovered why I was taught that way.  It wasn’t that the teachers I had in Cincinnati and Dayton and Wyoming (a little city bordering Cincinnati) were “racists” or even necessarily biased towards Davy Crockett.  They were simply teaching from the textbook.  The textbook was their “manual”.  It established the topics, the subject matter.  In “educationese”, the textbook was the course of study and the curriculum, determining the “facts” that were important and those that didn’t need to be discussed.

At the time, the state of Texas determined the single textbooks to be used by the entire state for American History, both in eighth grade and in high school.   Unlike Ohio, where curriculum was set by the state but textbooks chosen by individual school districts, in Texas – one book fit all.

Textbook publishers wrote their books to the specifications of the Texas Board of Education and the Texas Education Agency.  It was the biggest single market sale they could make.  Since every publisher was trying to sell in Texas, we all got Texas curriculum from Texas-oriented books, like it or not.   “Davy, Davy Crockett” was a Congressman from Tennessee, an ally of Andrew Jackson who broke with him on the Cherokee Removal.  He lost his Congressional seat and left his home to start anew in Texas. That was “important”.  Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, even nearby Ohioan John Rankin; all heroes of Abolitionism, were ignored.

Hidden History

There was a whole  American history hidden.  Sure, we learned about the Irish and the Chinese immigrants building the transcontinental railroad. But who built the White House, the Capitol, and the entire structure of the Southern economy?  We were never taught the plain fact that enslaved people, Black people, people working for masters not for dollars; toiled, bled, and died to build those things.

Education was controlled, by the Texas Department of Education.  They controlled the “horizontal”, they controlled the “vertical”; they kept American History in a “soft blur” when it came to the “peculiar institution”.   Your teacher learned history that way, and if they didn’t go beyond their original  high school studies, that’s what they thought was “history”.  

White-Wash

It’s no surprise that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is taking control of Florida’s education curriculum.  He’s found a political tool to unify his base.  What’s surprising is that now, sixty years after the “I Have a Dream” speech, there are still Americans who buy DeSantis’s assertion that “woke” ideas like cultural diversity and inherent racial bias don’t belong in the classroom, at least in Florida.  But perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise – it fits right in with what education did for generations.  It’s likely what many Florida citizens learned in school themselves.

DeSantis controls Florida’s horizontal, vertical and focus.  He is taking Florida education to the outer limits of denial:  a quite literal “white-washing” of the American story.  Unlike the 1960’s and 70’s, it isn’t economic forces driving the curriculum, it’s political control.  And other Republican dominated states in our bifurcated nation are following suit.  The legislative plan is in the Ohio House of Representatives today.  

Yesterday was February 1^st, Groundhog Day and the beginning of Black History month.  As the depressing “education joke” goes; “Why is there a ‘black’ history month?  Because all the other months are ‘white’ history.”  Ron DeSantis has a vision of America as a nation of all twelve months for “white” history, just like the old times.   Those are his “Outer Limits”.  On this day after Groundhog Day, the day after they buried Tyri Nichols in Memphis, we have to decide whether to sit quietly — or change the channel.