Teaching Fiction Over Fact

This November, there's more than the candidates up for re-election in the midterms to worry about. There is also a vote on proposed changes to textbooks in Texas, which would be used in public classrooms for grades six through 12.
So, what's the problem? Change is good, right? Not when those changes distort history and teach our children fiction rather than facts.
There are more than 300 printed and electronic items up for approval by the Texas State Board of Education in November. If adopted by the board, children would be learning a range of questionable assertions. These include: how Moses and King Solomon actually helped inspire American democracy; negative information about Muslims and Islam; downplaying how Christianity was spread through conquest; how Jews believe Jesus is a significant prophet; and how climate change is a hoax
[SEE: Cartoons on Gay Marriage]
I think you get the picture. But this is a very, very slippery slope.
There are many things we were not taught in school, and many things that were not accurate. Growing up in Massachusetts, I believed that the Pilgrims who came over on the Mayflower and landed on Plymouth Rock were greeted by savages. The truth, of course, is that without the Native Americans, those Brits would have never survived their first winter; they would have starved to death.
Granted, biases or complete omission of facts have been a part of American public education for many years. But haven't we grown beyond this as a society in 2014? Do we truly want a dumbing down of American children? They are, after all, the future of this nation.
If this all sounds a bit familiar, it might be because in 2010, Texas was also at the center of the textbook debate. Then, the issue was renaming slavery. You know, making it sound prettier, not as nasty, not as bad. The problem with that, in addition to it being offensive and inaccurate, is the harm it inflicts on history itself. History, after all, is about the transmission of facts and the lessons we can learn from these facts – things we can learn not to do and mistakes we don't want to repeat.
[GALLERY: Cartoons on the 2014 Congressional Elections]
And my concerns are not because I am a progressive, liberal Democrat – to have a liberal or left bias or slant would also be wrong. It's because two plus two is four, no matter how you slice it.
History is the description through facts of how the world came to be what and where it is today. And, it's also about how the United States became what it is. For instance, when children study the facts about the Civil War or affirmative action and civil rights, they can better understand the true divide between North and South and the impact and legacy of slavery in this nation.
Rewriting history deprives our children of the truth about their own nation's and the world's past. It's also a slippery slope. Or at least that's what my public school textbook taught me.