I Could Not Teach in Buna Anymore.........

 I have spent the weekend see how hard it is to bring a cat to the UK. It would take about 3 months to bring Fred over in preparation. Might be easier to have someone take care of him. 

And in typical Fred, he got on the bookshelf and jumped off on my shoulder like he was BatCat. Good thing I was there to catch him, him all purring like this is fun...Which bookshelf? The one on the hallway. Teachers, especially history/English majors have books everyplace. We have 5 bookshelves scattered in the Compound. 

Then, I did research as to how hard it would be to get a PhD in Classics. The cost of tuition alone was prohibitive.  And then, would I want anyone to call me " doctor?" I don't even like it when people address me as "Reverend" or " Brother./"  Old school Church of England vicars were often just called "Mister" so and so.....Plus, I don't want to leave any debt....I've been watching too much John Batchelor and his Londonium programs. 

And then, I am trying to decide if I want a pair of Beckett-Simonon shoes. Their short-wing, wingtips. I really need a pair of black, but the Bordeaux( fancy name for oxblood) is temping. 

But, as always, I digress. 

No, I am here this morning to talk about the proposed changes to 11th grade, AKA Junior level  US History or American History TEKS. I will flip flop calling it that in this blog.....

TEKS are the subject areas that teachers are supposed to cover over the school year. Trouble is, the way they are written when I speak the first week, in US History, any decent teacher covers about 50% of the TEKS, and it is that way, all year long.  

And many of you are going " But, Mr. T, I thought you were a government/economics teacher." Well, not always. I taught American History exclusively for a while. A short while and to be honest, teaching American History is easy.  Economics instruction, on the other hand, is hard. 

The Texas State Board of Education  is revamping the TEKS K-12 in Social Studies. 

I know there is a big controversy concerning the Bible story inclusion in the elementary and junior high level, and I was never one to avoid discussions on religion in class, but I wonder how some teachers will draw the line and concerning personal religious beliefs, well, they are all over the place in classrooms. The teacher might be Cumberland Presbyterian and in their classroom, they may have a 6 Baptists,  a Lutheran, 3 Methodists,  2 Pentecostals/A of G, a Buddhist, 2 Muslims, a Hindu, and 7 who believe nothing. 

In the Houston, Austin, Dallas regions, class religious make-ups look nothing like what they might in Buna Schools. 

Then, there is the changed that local newspapers in Dallas are stirring up a stink about. 

Here is one of their headlines....." The board approved changes Wednesday that eliminate coverage of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, substituting study of Oprah Winfrey in the revised social studies TEKS. (They dropped the TEKS on the American Revolution.)

Do the kids today even know who Oprah is, and do they actually need to do so?  

I don't know the answer on that one, do they need to know Jack Benny, or Lucille Ball? You can go down a rabbit hole on that one...I covered stuff like the British Invasion of Rock in the 1960s. 

11th grade US History is from 1877 to present. The US History class in 8th grade is the Colonial Period to 1876. The American Revolution was in 1776. ( It has since been reinserted)

The Revolutionary War, or as the British call it the American War for Independence..... Should have been covered already.   

I fudged and always started my American History class with George Armstrong Custer and the Battle of the Little Big Horn. June, 1876. Got to throw a hook out there, and that always worked for 11th graders. 

I know they are removing TEKS like McCarthyism, and any history teacher worth their salt is covering the Junior Senator from Wisconsin, Eugene McCarthy.  

I know they have included things like " No fault divorce" in the lessons, and to be honest, I can see an 11th grader asking their mother when they got home, asking Mom about divorcing Dad 10 years ago.....Happens more than you think.  

As many of you know, I jumped from one manure pile to another when I was teaching at Buna, even when I wasn't being Kerry Thomas, I still got into trouble.   I can just about imagine the new trouble I would get into. 

In 2026 I could no longer teach in Buna, probably no place else. 

It is part of the reason I never issued books. Other than use them for supplemental material, I hated every book ever approved by the State of Texas for social studies. 

  Then again, there is so much micromanagement going on right now at the Buna Schools, I would be looking for an exit....Looking hard......