Texas' Textbook Troubles – How a neo-conferderate dentist changed the U.S. History Curriculum

Abstract

“Texas’ Textbook Troubles” is a thesis written for the master’s degree program at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. The subject of this thesis is the revision of the social studies Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) by the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) during the Spring of 2010. The central question of this thesis is what circumstances enabled Don McLeroy to inject neo-Confederate dogma into the U.S. history curriculum in post-Jim Crow Texas during the Social Studies TEKS revision of 2010. This question is answered through an examination of the minutes of the SBOE meetings, a biographical enquiry into the leader of the conservative bloc of the SBOE, Don McLeroy, and an analysis of the main tenets of Neo-Confederate dogma. In order to establish a workable definition of neo-Confederate dogma, three distinct elements of neo-Confederate ideology are formulated.