The Texas State Board of Education voted this past Friday to wipe out any mention of Hillary Clinton from the state’s mandatory history curriculum.
Former First Lady and ex-Secretary of State, Clinton is also a two-time failed presidential candidate after she lost out to Barack Obama in 2008 and current US president Donald Trump in 2016.
Clinton joins Helen Keller – the first deaf-blind person to earn an undergraduate degree – and American politician Barry Goldwater, whose names are set to be removed from the state history curriculum along with Clinton’s, if a final vote in November produces the same results as the preliminary vote that took place last week.
Removing the names of specific figures does not mean that teachers can no longer teach about these figures, it just means that it is no longer compulsory for teachers to include them in their teaching material.
According to two teachers who helped make the removal recommendations, such eliminations of names from state curriculum is a means to make sure that real learning can take place since students will not be bogged down by needing to learn about so many historical figures.
Tasked with ensuring that students can prioritize learning about “essential” historical figures, the group that came up with the recommendations made their decision based on criteria that “asked questions like, ‘Did the person trigger a watershed change’; ‘Was the person from an underrepresented group’; and ‘Will their impact stand the test of time?'”
Based on this criteria, the group awarded points to each historical figure they reviewed. The historical figures could have earned a maximum score of 20 points in the exercise.
Clinton only received five points.