(From forbes.com):
By Tom Lindsay
When I moved from Illinois to Texas, years ago, my children were still at the K-12 level. Helping my seventh-grader with her homework, I was struck by my new state’s commitment to teaching the history of Texas. Earlier this month, that commitment appeared to be wavering. But today, thanks to a mobilized citizenry, Texas students will continue to remember the Alamo.
Two weeks ago, it was reported that “a panel advising the State Board of Education on what seventh-graders should learn in their social studies courses has urged deleting the label ‘heroic’ from a curriculum standard about the Alamo’s defenders.” Another of the recommendations from this panel would have reduced the prior, mandated focus on Colonel Travis’s “Victory or Death” letter, written two weeks before the Alamo fell on March 6, 1836. In the letter, Travis, knowing he and his men faced certain death, vowed, “I shall never surrender or retreat.” It is the most revered correspondence in Lone Star State history. CONTINUE READING HERE