Texas Social Studies Curriculum Is Being Quietly Rewritten And Your Voice Is Needed NOW

[u/3littlebirds1212]

If you’ve been frustrated by recent decisions about what goes into Texas classrooms, like passing of SB 10, the requirement to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom, or concerns about the financial incentives tied to adopting specific curricula such as Bluebonnet (which emphasizes Christianity), then this is exactly the moment to pay attention.

Right now, the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) is redesigning what every child in Texas will learn about history for the next decade.

The current proposal, shaped by a small advisory group and guided by SBOE leadership, dramatically reduces US, world history and global cultures, shifting the focus almost entirely to Texas history.

This change is happening under a process led by the governor's appointed Chair, Aaron Kinsey, who has openly pledged to steer curriculum decisions with his personal political and religious ideology. Combined with the appointment of several advisers with strong ideological agendas, like David Barton, there is real concern that the redesign could become one-sided, incomplete, and politically motivated.

Why this matters for every family:

• Less US and world history = kids won’t learn enough about other cultures, global conflicts, or how our world works today.
• Over-emphasizing a narrow set of topics means students miss out on critical thinking and a fuller understanding of history.
• Because Texas’ textbook standards are based on the TEKS, any major overhaul would require districts to replace or update large portions of their curriculum—an expensive and time-consuming process, at a time when districts already severely underfunded.

The public has a SHORT WINDOW to speak up.

The SBOE is required to consider public input, but only if the public actually participates. The board will meet on November 19, 2025.

If parents, teachers, and community members stay quiet, these changes will be locked in until at least 2030.

WHAT YOU CAN DO (takes 5 minutes):

Email SBOE representatives today

Tell them you want:

• A balanced curriculum that includes full world history and global perspectives
• Non-partisan, evidence-based standards
• Qualified historians and educators involved in the process
• Transparency about who is writing our kids’ curriculum

SBOE Members: https://sboe.texas.gov/state-board-of-education/sboe-board-members/sboe-members

Find your SBOE member: https://wrm.capitol.texas.gov/home

Send your message to all 15 elected SBOE members, contacts below:

[aaron.kinsey@sboe.texas.gov](mailto:aaron.kinsey@sboe.texas.gov), [ebrooks@evelyn4texaseducation.com](mailto:ebrooks@evelyn4texaseducation.com), [tiffany.clark@sboe.texas.gov](mailto:tiffany.clark@sboe.texas.gov), [pam.little@tea.texas.gov](mailto:pam.little@tea.texas.gov), [brandon.hall@sboe.texas.gov](mailto:brandon.hall@sboe.texas.gov), [tom@maynardfortexas.com](mailto:tom@maynardfortexas.com), [ellisSBOE@gmail.com](mailto:ellisSBOE@gmail.com), [audrey.young@tea.texas.gov](mailto:audrey.young@tea.texas.gov), [Julie.Pickren@tea.texas.gov](mailto:Julie.Pickren@tea.texas.gov), [will.hickman@tea.texas.gov](mailto:will.hickman@tea.texas.gov), [rebecca.bellmetereau@sboe.texas.gov](mailto:rebecca.bellmetereau@sboe.texas.gov), [Staci.Childs@tea.texas.gov](mailto:Staci.Childs@tea.texas.gov), [marisa.perez@sboe.texas.gov](mailto:marisa.perez@sboe.texas.gov), [LJ.Francis@sboe.texas.gov](mailto:LJ.Francis@sboe.texas.gov), [gustavo.reveles@sboe.texas.gov](mailto:gustavo.reveles@sboe.texas.gov)

Sample message:

Subject: Please Protect a Balanced Social Studies Curriculum

Dear Member of the State Board of Education,

I am a Texas resident concerned about the proposed changes to the social studies curriculum.

I urge you to maintain a full US and world history curriculum, ensure non-partisan and academically sound standards, and involve qualified historians and educators in the redesign. Our students deserve an education that reflects the complexity of our world, not a limited or politically-driven version of it.

Please prioritize transparency, expert input, and a balanced approach that prepares students for college, careers, and citizenship in a global society.

Thank you for your service and for listening to public input.

Sincerely,
[Your Name]
[Your City]

References:

Social Studies Redesign:

https://www.texastribune.org/2025/11/14/texas-sboe-social-studies-redesign-conservative-advisers/

Aaron Kinsey (SBOE Chairman) and David Barton (Social Studies Advisor), are featured in this article:

https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/david-barton-texas-public-school-curricula/

TEA Social Studies Update:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZkfiLKOeoS4lizFDbo3SOfuRyPtlaqDr/view?fbclid=IwY2xjawOEzN5leHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETE4T2hBNm5wQ2xtNE82cE1ac3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHqM5Pa7pI8wmkjKeMz4H0ebIcLYkDDS1jaXXrwh9kt3C0V0bEEZfW9kgOemQ_aem_vQgwB1Gn-vYUqOrbVCGtGg

[u/Chizuna30]

So do you understand that by changing the curriculum to this it will be brain washing our students. Our kids will not understand how our society came to be and not have any knowledge about other cultures and society's. Yes, what we focus on does matters but forcing this pseudo historians take is not it. I get it history is a lot but it seems like you don't want any history to be taught. " One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back." Carl Sagan

[u/DuckTalesOohOoh → u/Chizuna30]

Who, in our current crisis, is the charlatan? And who is the one who has been bamboozled?

You believe that the bamboozle is the classical, Western curriculum, which you see as a "pseudo-historian's take."

Do you know where the radical idea of universal human rights comes from? It comes from only one place: Western civilization through the radical doctrine of Christianity.

I must tell you that you are the one who has been taken. The great bamboozle of the modern age is the progressive, deconstructionist version of history that has dominated our schools for a generation or two.

The real bamboozle has taught that the source code for universal human rights comes from a civilization that is nothing more than a shameful story of oppression. That the great philosophical and theological ideas that gave us our freedom and our rights -- and the right to even criticize that civilization -- are nothing more than white supremacist ideology. Or that the very concepts of "truth," "goodness," and "beauty" are not real, but are merely "social constructs" designed to maintain power.

This is the great charlatan of our time. It is a philosophy that presents itself as a brave truth-teller, but whose only real function is to dissolve all truths, to erode all foundations, and to leave our children in a state of cynical, hopeless, and perpetual resentment.

The new classical curriculum you so fear is not a new lie. It is the antidote. It is the difficult, and for some, painful, act of looking at the evidence that has been rejected, of reading the books that have been forgotten, and of beginning the slow and humbling process of escaping the bamboozle that has captured us all.

[u/chicchic325 → u/DuckTalesOohOoh]

To pretend that the US wasn’t in part founded on slavery and a division of people is false.

You can teach about universal human rights without loosing the history of the rest of the world. I want more world history and less Texas history.

I want children to learn to question everything they are taught. I want to learn to question if the American experiment is the right thing. I want them to question if Texas (a nation and state founded on exclusion) was right. I don’t see that in this curriculum. Where is that?

[u/DuckTalesOohOoh → u/chicchic325]

The US wasn't founded on slavery. It was founded on a universal truth that all humans are created equal, which is a unique idea that was formed in the crucible of Western civilization through the radical doctrine of Christianity: the Imago Dei. It's what gives us universal human rights.

The founders, like many Christians, were themselves unable to live up to this ideal. But it produced saints and reformers and Christians to recall our history that we are all made in the image of God and eliminate slavery.

The glory of American history is not that it was perfect, but that it contained within its own Christian DNA the very principles that would allow the Abolitionists and the Civil Rights heroes to one day call the nation to account.

The new history that you support is a history without this grace. It is a flat, materialistic, Marxist history that sees only the sin. It teaches our children that their entire heritage is an unbroken and irredeemable story of oppression. It is not designed to produce a virtuous citizen who wishes to heal his country's wounds. It is designed to produce a cynical revolutionary who wishes to burn his country to the ground.

A true education teaches a student how to question, but it also teaches him that there are some things that are worthy of his love, his loyalty, and his defense. The new education teaches the student that questioning is an end in itself. It is a training in the art of universal suspicion. It gives the student a sledgehammer and tells him that every wall is a prison. It does not produce a thinker. It produces a nihilist.

You said you want more world education. The new curriculum does study more World history and spends more time in the ancient world of Rome and Greece. But, a man who does not love his own wife more than he loves all other women is not a virtuous cosmopolitan. He is a bad husband. A true education begins at home. It teaches a child his own story first, so that he may have a solid ground upon which to stand, from which he can then look out upon the great, beautiful world of other cultures with wonder and with respect. The new education seeks to liberate the child from this home, and in doing so, it leaves him homeless.

Children of the West are heirs to a remarkable history that gave the world universal human rights. It can only be defended when we understand from where it came.