History is How We Write It

A few weeks ago there was a lengthy article in the New York Time Sunday Magazine about the Texas Board of Education and its influence on textbook publishers.  The debates and hearings are now over, and the new Texas standards are now in place.
Publishers will now respond to the new standards by publishing textbooks that align to them - Texas is a huge market and the publishers need to sell their books.

I hope this will encourage educators to seek sources for their students that reflect appropriate perspectives, even if those are not reflected in the available textbooks.  That is one of the advantages (and yes, challenges as well) of the enormous amount and diversity of information available to us today.  Please click on this blog from the ASCD Smartbrief about learning in today's world.  What is true about students in the general educational world is true in the Jewish educational world as well.

And to remember that - as I wrote on February 24, 2010 in a post about Purim -the lens through which we understand history is even more important than the accumulated facts that we have about it.