The fight to reject a controversial new textbook about Mexican American history from being used in Texas classrooms has made its way to the state capital.
Dozens of protesters rallied outside of the Texas State Board of Education meeting Tuesday morning.
“It’s factually false and it’s offensive,” Alonso Mendoza said. “It promotes stereotypes against Mexican-Americans.”
Mendoza, a student at the University of Texas, joined educators and activists to testify in front of the board, asking to keep the reading material out of Texas classrooms.
“If they pass this textbook it is going to be promoting false stereotypes and it is harmful to the community,” Mendoza said. “It really does need to be made again from scratch.”
The board is considering the proposed textbook titled “Mexican American Heritage” to be used in the 2016-2017 school year. Protesters said the textbook is racist and promotes inaccurate stereotypes.
“The book has been reviewed by experts and they found not only that it perpetuates stereotypes about Mexican Americans, but it is riddled with errors, and it also even suggests that the central cause of the civil war was not slavery,” Kathy Miller, President of Texas Freedom Network said. “This book has no business in the Texas classrooms.”
Members of the board expressed concern during the meeting that the book under fire was the only textbook submitted after they requested for entries.
“This was the only textbook that was submitted for approval to the Texas board of education,” Marty Rowley, a member of SBOE said, “and we issued this proclamation over a year ago.”
We reached out to the publisher of the textbook for comment.. She did not return our request by the time this article was published.
SBOE said the publisher has until October 21st to respond with changes to the text. The board is scheduled to make a final vote in November.
