The debate on whether or not teachers should be objective in their teaching

Texas’ board of education on March 12 voted to substantially alter their educational curriculum in the social sciences by “putting a conservative stamp on history and economic textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the founding fathers commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican philosophies in a more positive light,” reported the New York Times.

The politics of this decision lags behind a more pressing issue, which is the manipulation of educational policy in order to indoctrinate children to think, believe and feel a certain way.

The conservative bloc has used their authority to prey on credulous youth. They’ve paved the way for the next generation of foot soldiers for the conservative and religious right, a clan of uniformity and subserviency, roaming aimlessly like hand-puppets, convinced their country of origin is flawless and reason to risk one’s life for the agenda of its leaders.

This contrived state of being is what I call tribal-nationalism – an amalgam of tribalism and nationalism, broadly defined as irrational allegiance to an identity, group and set of ideals within physical borders, and cannot be broken by reason, circumstance or facts.

This is a dangerous state of being and is exempt from criticism. This is the dogma of American Exceptionalism.

Assuredly, dogmatic American Exceptionalists will balk at this assessment, undoubtedly evoking the word “patriotism,” in effort to support their unqualified pro-American sentiments. After all, this is essentially what the school board believes it is promoting – a vision of future Americans who unwaveringly maintain “devoted love, support and defense of one’s country.”

The “Exceptionalists” have misled their novices about the application of patriotism. Patriotism does not require blind loyalty to a nation. Exceptionalists have tied patriotism to tribal-nationalism, promoting a concern that is restricted by borders, an identity that is insular and an attitude that sees the “other” with superior deprecation.

This is the America the Texas school board implicitly admires.

Americans are asked to disregard American initiated atrocities, foreign and domestic. We are great liberators, those we liberate are brash peasants. They must adapt, we mustn’t. We are the burning candle in their world of darkness.

What k-12 schools need is not a continuance of liberal biased curriculum, but rather thoroughly objective textbooks, ones that provide historical facts and diverse theories that encourage the development of a young person’s critical mind. This forces independent analysis, freeing them from their acquiescence of cultural maxims developed before him.

The champion of free thought in the 20th century, philosopher Bertrand Russell, had enlightened ideas about escaping the tyranny endorsed by the Texas school board, and the consequences of being unable to.

Through philosophical and critical inquiry, Russell said, we “enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes our mind against speculation…in this citizenship of the universe consists man’s true freedom, and his liberation from the thralldom of narrow hopes and fears.”

True patriots do not need to flaunt the red, white and blue to show they are invested in the well being of the nation in which they reside. They do not need to endorse their country in vain. Their identity lies with fellow human beings, not an arbitrary mass of land or ideology. They do not feel it honorable to lay paralyzed in the tyranny of a tribal-nationalist culture the Texas school board so saliently approves.