The new literature list currently being developed by the State Board of Education has the potential to reverse the crisis in higher literacy in Texas while teaching students a love of the history and culture that created our great nation. Opponents to the current plan, however, who mostly come from current educators and academia, reject these narratives in favor of representing identity groups and literature that is often overtly hostile to the United States.
If Texas cannot create a reading list that transmits and inspires veneration of our shared history and values, then our nation will fracture along every stripe.
From this nation’s very beginning, the Founding Fathers wrestled with the problem of how to unite peoples of disparate origins, faiths, and political and economic priorities. That is, after all, why the weak Articles of Confederation were abandoned in favor of a more robust federal system. The Federalists recognized that without a centralizing government, the 13 colonies would each pursue their own interests. The disparate interests of the peoples of the fledgling republic would be united under common values of guaranteed rights and constitutional governance. This notion is reflected by the nation’s motto e pluribus unum, “out of many, one.”
This conception of a nation united by shared principles and history, however, is currently being challenged in the discussion of the required literary works list at the State Board of Education. Instead of supporting a curriculum of literature that celebrates the history and cultural and moral accomplishments of the United States, many activists, educators, and even State Board members argue that many students have no connection or interest in American culture and the state would be better served indulging every particular background and perspective, even those with grievance with or oppositional to the United States. This approach, however, will not result in a more enlightened form of patriotism but will only produce a divided society with no confidence in the American project.
There are two general theories about how to maintain a coherent national character, the unitary theory and pluralism. A unitary view, as the name suggests, imposes one vision of the country, while pluralism takes an “everyone gets a seat at the table” approach.
As a matter of practice, American civil society has taken a both/and philosophy. A few crucial points are advanced as the bedrock of our nation, namely a belief in the Constitution and its guarantees of rights, but citizens are assured that diversity of race, religion, culture, or even political ideologies are not impediments to their being full participants in American civil life. For instance, as part of this compromise, a generic civic nationalism is the culture of public life, but more particular religious and cultural displays are reserved for private life.
The institution most dedicated to evangelizing this civic nationalism throughout American history has been the education system. Horace Mann and John Dewey, the two most influential names in American education, recognized that, whether you see it as an opportunity or danger, the public school system is a powerful means of transmitting values. Both advocated for public schools to inculcate students with a strong sense of national unity. It is not a secret that Mann pushed universal, compulsory education as a way to neutralize the influence of sectarian schools, namely those of Catholics. The values of future citizens cannot be left to the preferences of their parents or, Higher Power forbid, their religion. Public schools would indoctrinate students into an American, rather than a particular sectarian, faith.
In recent years, this impulse to use the public education to shape the morals of citizens has not abated, but its end goal has changed. Progressive partisans, recognizing the same power as Mann and Dewey, now wish to replace a unifying civic nationalism in education, under the guise of “representation,” with a pluralism whose main objective is to document every sin and grievance against the United States. This pluralism, of course, is a sham meant to bring into being a new unitary vision that is antithetical to America.
Dissatisfied with the neglect of anything resembling an effective civic education and the proliferation of anti-Americanism in our public schools, the Texas Legislature directed the Texas Education Agency to create a list of required literary works for all Texas public schools to teach. The agency proposed an admirable curriculum of texts that included great works of ancient literature, English literature, both British and American, passages from the Old and New Testament that are significant to Western thought, and both fiction and nonfiction works that touch on pivotal historical periods in American history. In short, this list is full of exactly the kinds of works that you would have your students read if you wanted them to have a firm foundation in the literary tradition of the West.
This foundation was roundly condemned by almost all testifiers (mostly teachers) at the April SBOE meeting and by about a third of the State Board members as “too old and too white.” Aside from complaints that it was just too much to read and should include more contemporary works, the critics argued that the curriculum should reflect the diversity of the state and should not include any explicit instruction in the Old or New Testaments.
From a certain perspective, the critics have a point. As of the 2024-2025 school year, 72% of the student population of Texas was non-white, and around 20% are the first generation in their family to attend school in the U.S.. The United States may always have been variegated to some degree, but that variation was largely confined to peoples of western Europeans. After 40 years of permissive immigration policy, the majority of Texas students are only a few generations (if that) removed from countries that do not have a tradition of liberal government.
They do not “see” themselves in the complexion of George Washington, and an increasing number of Texas students possess few ties to the history, literature, or culture of the nation that has existed in some form or another for 380 years. It is natural that the cultural and political representatives of these groups would want to see representation for their constituency in the curriculum.
But this is putting the cart before the horse: Demographic shifts make this education more urgent, not less. Students from varied backgrounds, including recent immigrants without liberal traditions, need formation in the universal truths of the Declaration—all men are created equal, endowed with unalienable rights—rather than ethnic self-esteem. Without it, they cannot appreciate America’s blessings or reject illiberal alternatives.
Educators and lawmakers should not shrink from defending the canon of Western culture and America that will give students the courage to proclaim a belief in our nation’s goodness. The alternative is an ethnically balkanized country in which the government doles out historical justifications, grievances, and recriminations as political spoils. Where each ethnic and religious group scrounges for scraps of culture and the legitimacy it confers as they wheedle for their share of the public largesse. Such a nation will not long endure.