New Mexico Has Banned Pre-Statehood History from High School Text Books Since 1992

 

In 1992 New Mexico's Board of Education changed its educational standards from what had previously been entitled: "Educational Standards for New Mexico Schools" to "Standards for Excellence.

The new Content Standard for social studies, grades 9-12 thereafter was changed from the way it had read in 1976 and 1982:

"Social Studies. All programs should emphasize the value of cultural diversity and recognize the intrinsic worth of each culture in itself"

to:

"Content Standard 1: Students are able to identify important people and events in order to analyze significant patterns, relationships, themes, ideas, beliefs and turning points in New Mexico [since statehood], United States, and world history in order to understand the complexity of the human experience. Students will:

"9-12 Benchmark 1-A. New Mexico: analyze how people and events of New Mexico have influenced United States and world history since statehood."

 

The significance of this change was that textbooks used in grades 9-12 after 1992 could no longer address pre-statehood history: No longer could the thousands of years of New Mexico's Indian history nor the hundreds of years of Spanish and Mexican history be included in textbooks used by grades 9 thru 12.

Ironically, the standards for grades 5-8 were not limited in 1992 as they were for grades 9-12. Upon inquiry I was advised that once students in grade 7 had studied pre-statehood history there was no longer a need to teach the subject in high school. My question regarding this response is: then why teach post-statehood history again in high school as it had also been taught in the seventh grade?

I must qualify what I have said about the 1992 limitations New Mexico placed upon grades 9-12 in regard to the textbook presently used for those grades. The authors of A History of New Mexico Since Statehood, the book currently used in grades 9-12, (which was published by UNM Press) namely, Richard Melzer, Robert Torrez and Sandra K. Mathews are to be commended for their efforts in stretching the limits of the regulation as far as they did.

At the very least, their Introduction and chapters allow inquisitive students to realize that New Mexico's history began centuries before January 6, 1912.

Mike Scarborough

trespasseronourownland.blogspot.com