Thoughtful school standards

Some very useful words published in The Daily Texan from UT grad and philosophy and political science professor David Williams on the new textbook standards in Texas. The state’s guidelines now include teaching the influence of Charles-Louis de Secondat Montesquieu, Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Aquinas on the American Way or whatever you call it.

So the board is to be congratulated for its keen and renewed commitment to social equality as a way of sustaining this great democratic republic. Its emphasis on the great thinkers who inform our tradition ensures that future Texans will continue to be vigilant against extreme wealth, extreme poverty and a dangerously myopic self-interest that not only offends the Christian tradition, but also the democratic republic itself. I encourage all secondary school social studies teachers across the great state of Texas to consider the Board’s directions to communicate these lessons to students with the urgency these guidelines and our fragile times demand.