A lesson plan in schools across Texas depicts the Boston Tea Party, the historical protest against taxation without representation and a seminal event leading up to the American Revolutionary War, as an act of terrorism.
The lesson plan, designed for world history and social studies classes, remained available to teachers as recently as January of 2012, CBS Houston reports, and was promoted by the Texas Education Service Center Curriculum Collaborative.
“A local militia, believed to be a terrorist organization, attacked the property of private citizens today at our nation’s busiest port,” the part of the curriculum pertaining to the Boston Tea Party reads, according to CBS Houston. “Although no one was injured in the attack, a large quantity of merchandise, considered to be valuable to its owners and loathsome to the perpetrators, was destroyed. The terrorists, dressed in disguise and apparently intoxicated, were able to escape into the night with the help of local citizens who harbor these fugitives and conceal their identities from the authorities.”
“It is believed that the terrorist attack was a response to the policies enacted by the occupying country’s government. Even stronger policies are anticipated by the local citizens.”
The controversial lesson plan is a product of the Texas Education Service Center Curriculum Collaborative — or CSCOPE — a nonprofit K-12 educational curriculum provider that has become widespread in Texas. CSCOPE bills itself on its website as “a comprehensive, customizable, user-friendly curriculum management system built on the most current research-based practices in the field.”
The Blaze notes that CSCOPE received $25 million in state funding last year.
Advocates of CSCOPE say the lesson calling the Boston Tea Party an act of terrorism hadn’t been taught in Texas schools since the fall of 2010, according to CBS Houston. However, the lesson plan reportedly remained available for use on CSCOPE’s website as late as January 2012.
Texas schools teach Boston Tea Party as act of terrorism | The Daily Caller.
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March 8, 2013 at 12:20 PM
To say that this lesson plan “depicts the Boston Tea Party… as an act of terrorism” isn’t quite right. It depicts a fictionalized newspaper article, and that article depicts the Tea Party as terrorism. I would hope that any lesson taught from this plan would include discussion of how words found in newspaper articles and other media can be used to shape perceptions, and of what the motivations of the newspaper owner might have been. Indeed, I would think (or at least hope) that this fictitious article was included precisely to stimulate such discussion.