While this blog is dedicated to the investigation of issues of international security and diplomacy, I ask you to forgive me for my domestically focused post below. As a former educator, both in the US and abroad, the recent decisions of the Texas Board of Education require my response, and I ask that you read on.

The state of Texas is one of our Nation's largest -- and thus, is one of the largest buyers of textbooks. Therefore, the standards set by the Texas board of education may very well dictate the content of all textbooks available for the entire US market. This year, that very board held their once-a-decade revision of standards for their textbooks -- and we have many reasons to be worried.

James McKinley Jr. at the NYT has done an excellent job of covering the facts of the proposed changes to the Texas standards, and I invite you to read his piece. However, the facts do not appropriately outline the danger presented by the board's decisions.

The danger is beyond left or right political leaning -- it lies between fact and fiction. As a former high school teacher, I can tell you that biased interpretation masquerading as fact is the most detrimental to a young child's education. While teachers frequently use interpretive analysis as secondary source material, it is to their textbooks that students retreat for their analytical 'north' when beginning their analysis of those more biased essays. Perhaps, after the Texas' board decision, they will not have that opportunity.

“We are adding balance,” said Dr. Don McLeroy, the leader of the conservative faction on the board, after the vote. “History has already been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left.”

Mr. McLeroy's solution? Swing the pendulum back -- past the center -- to the right. The Texas board has decided that the past needs a reinterpretation in its textbooks -- a bit of conservative revisionist history...