Texas education board keeps Helen Keller, Hillary Clinton in recommended teachings

Gabrielle Caldwell, who is partially deaf and blind, returns to her seat after she testified before the Texas School Board during public testimony as they prepares to vote on history curriculum, Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018, in Austin, Texas. The Republican-controlled board is hearing from activists and academics who are defending or decrying proposed edits meant to streamline academic standards for history. (AP Photo/Eric Gay) less Gabrielle Caldwell, who is partially deaf and blind, returns to her seat after she testified before the Texas School Board during public testimony as they prepares to vote on history curriculum, Tuesday, Nov. ... more Photo: Eric Gay, STF / Associated Press Photo: Eric Gay, STF / Associated Press Image 1 of / 11 Caption Close Texas education board keeps Helen Keller, Hillary Clinton in recommended teachings 1 / 11 Back to Gallery

AUSTIN — At the end of the day, Helen Keller prevailed. So did the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots who stepped up to run flight and service missions in World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Amid public criticism, the Texas Board of Education tentatively voted Tuesday to keep Keller’s story, and that of the female WWII pilots, on a list of topics that are covered by teachers in public schools. Both historic figures had been deemed nonessential by an advisory committee tasked with trimming the number of requirements.

The Republican-dominated board also voted to keep requiring Texas school teachers to examine states’ rights as a contributing factor of the Civil War, and discuss how Moses influenced the nation's Founding Fathers.

Lessons about Hillary Clinton are also still required, at least for now, as the board voted that students should examine the contributions of the former presidential candidate in a lesson about effective leadership.

A final board vote is set for Friday.

The state education board, which sets the curriculum for about 5.4 million students, often wades into culture war issues that delve into hot-button political perspectives on immigrants, evolution and history. Since 2016, the board has debated the merits of a textbook that referred to Mexican-Americans as “lazy” and dumped language that would have undermined creationism. Earlier this year, the board pushed back against a recommendation to pull a reference to “heroic” Alamo defenders from social studies lessons.

The Texas Freedom Network, a left-leaning watchdog group that monitors the board, condemned its choice on state’s rights and the Civil War.

“Once again, board members simply don’t care what countless historians and teachers have told them is factually true,” said the group’s political director, Carisa Lopez. “Instead of teaching students the truth, they’re shamefully coddling the Confederacy and those who have used the ‘states’ rights’ lie as a rallying cry to justify and defend discrimination in this country.”

The latest revisions come as the board streamlines its social studies standards because teachers complained that covering the required topics takes more than one school year.

For subscribers: Board signals that ‘heroic’ Alamo defenders will stay in Texas history curriculum

Helen Keller was out, but now she’s back in. The board's 10 Republicans and five Democrats approved in September a plan to eliminate teaching about the iconic advocate for the deaf and blind as they worked to condense Texas academic standards for history.

Tuesday's reversal came after the board heard hours of testimony, much of it critical, about proposed changes. That included parents of deaf and blind children who said Keller’s inclusion is vital for students to understand disabilities. A 17-year-old visually- and hearing-impaired student, Gabrielle Caldwell, urged the board to reconsider, calling Keller a hero.

"Helen Keller is the only point of reference for deaf-blindness,” said Robbie Caldwell, Gabrielle’s mother. “It is unlikely an educator, a government worker, a doctor would have any other interaction with any other person who was deaf-blind.”

Hours later, the board voted to restore Keller to the third grade curriculum. There was little discussion and the lone objection came from David Bradley, a Beaumont Republican, who noted that Keller later in life voiced public support for eugenics, the science of improving a human population by controlled breeding.

Teachers are not required to teach about Keller, who lost her sight and vision at 19 months old due to illness and later become an author and an influential advocate for workers’ rights and women’s suffrage. Instead, teachers are given the option to teach about Keller in third grade in a section about good citizenship.

One woman traveled from Maine to rail against proposed a move to strike lessons about Women’s Airforce Service Pilots from a list of required teachings.

Erin Miller said her grandmother was one of the 1,074 women who flew in military combat or on service missions during the war. The women trained in Houston and later Springwater, Texas. Decades later, Miller convinced Congress to allow her to place her grandmother’s ashes in Arlington Cemetery. Miller now has that bill number, “H.R. 4336,” tattooed on her forearm.

Though teaching board-approved lessons aren't always mandatory, board-sanctioned curriculum affects what's published in textbooks. Texas is a large enough market that the state's academic standards sometimes influence what's published in materials used elsewhere as well — though that's less true in recent years as technology allows for tailoring what's taught to different states and even individual school districts.

Gabriel Rivas, a 17-year-old senior from Chavez High School in Houston, told board members to keep their political opinions to themselves when setting curriculum.

“We need all of the facts to create an educated opinion and it seems like you are trying not to let us make our own opinions based on pure facts,” said Rivas. “It does not do us, the students, any service if we are being taught a partial truth.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.