US history and civics curricula shouldn't be mandated (or "incorporated") but the Oklahoma Murrah bombing SHOULD

April 13, 2010 by jenni

Oklahoma students will study the effects of April 19
BY MICHAEL MCNUTT
Published: April 7, 2010

A bill signed into law two weeks before the 15th anniversary of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building stresses the need to educate Oklahoma public school students about the Oklahoma City attack.

"The events that occurred that day — April 19, 1995 — still remain today some of the most horrific events ever to occur on American soil,” Gov. Brad Henry said Tuesday as he signed the measure in a ceremony at the Oklahoma National Memorial & Museum. "While the events of that day are indelibly etched in the mind of those who were here when it occurred ... there are so many children throughout our state that weren’t even born on April 19, 1995, or were too young to really have a significant memory of the events that occurred that day.”

State schools Superintendent Sandy Garrett said textbooks used to teach Oklahoma history in fourth grade and again in high school already detail the bombing, but she supported the new law.

House Bill 2750 directs the state Board of Education to incorporate information about the bombing into the Oklahoma history and social studies core curriculum.

The explosion resulted in 168 deaths. Nineteen children died, mostly at the day care center in the federal building.

The measure states the curriculum should include the role that the bombing played in the history of the state and the nation. A study of the bombing and its aftermath can help students learn the impact of violence, the senselessness of using violence to solve problems or effect government change and the importance of personal responsibility, according to the measure.

John Richels, chairman of the memorial’s board of trustees, said he appreciated the effort to make the history of the bombing and the resilience of Oklahomans a permanent part of what is taught in history classes in the state.

"Everyone of us was changed forever, and that’s an important part of what we can teach,” he said.

Kari Watkins, executive director of the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum, said she and her staff look forward to working with the state Education Department to provide appropriate resources to history teachers.

Watkins said she realized the need for public schools to have consistent lesson plans on the bombing about a year ago when she spoke to students in her hometown of Cleveland, OK.

"It hit me really hard to go to my hometown and realize that it wasn’t being taught there,” she said.

"Enough time has elapsed that we are forgetting,” said Rep. Lee Denney, author of HB 2750, which was passed unanimously by both the House and Senate.

"We owe it to the 168 lives that were lost on this site, but we owe it to the survivors that are still continuing to heal even 15 years later,” said Denney, R-Cushing. "This is such an important event in Oklahoma history. ... Although we may not enjoy studying it, we have to study it.”

Sen. Ron Justice, Senate author of the bill, said he also wanted students to learn about how Oklahomans stepped forward to offer courage, kindness, compassion and charity to those who had family members or friends injured or killed in the blast.

"Our state came together in a time of tragedy and worked together to do positive things,” said Justice, R-Chickasha.

Susan Winchester, whose sister, agriculture veterinarian Margaret "Peggy” Clark, was killed in the bombing and would have been 57 on Tuesday, said the law is significant for those who were injured or lost loved ones in the building’s bombing.

"For those of us that were here that day, it’s something that we will never forget,” said Winchester, a former state representative from Chickasha. "For everyone else it’s something we can never quit remembering.”

Henry, who said he often brought his three daughters to the memorial and museum, said he hoped the curriculum would include having students brought to the bombing site to help them understand the lessons learned from the attack.

"America learned that terrorism could strike anywhere, anytime,” the governor said. "The more important lesson America learned from Oklahoma was that good can overcome evil, that we can come together.”

Read more: http://newsok.com/students-will-study-the-effects-of-april-19/article/34...

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Altered states: Texlahoma never made it to a map
THE OKLAHOMAN EDITORIAL
Published: April 13, 2010

A new law directs education officials to inculcate the Oklahoma City bombing into history curricula. That’s good, but we hope it doesn’t start a wave of legislative directives on history lessons.

University of Texas fan Ernest Anguiano of Austin, Texas, waves a Texas state flag before the start of the annual Texas/Oklahoma college football game, Saturday, Oct. 7, 2006.

Such as why Texlahoma didn’t become the 49th state.

Texlahoma was a pre-World War II proposal to combine 46 counties in Texas with 23 in western Oklahoma into a state. The capital would have been Amarillo. The idea is one of many — some silly, some serious — covered in "Lost States: True Stories of Texlahoma, Translyvania and Other States That Never Made It” by Michael J. Trinklein.

Sentiment for such a state, possibly including parts of Kansas, has flared through the years as residents in the area feel left out. Similar sentiment in western Illinois, Trinklein writes, led to the idea for a "Forgottonia.”

History books generally don’t mention Texlahoma, but they do cover the 1906 proposal to create a state of Oklahoma next to a state of Sequoyah. Trinklein says Congress nixed that plan as a slap at Indians. But there’s no evidence that Sequoyah would have been less dominated by whites as Oklahoma itself.

A history text titled "The Story of Oklahoma” blames partisan politics in Washington, not racism, for quashing the two-state plan. That book never mentions Texlahoma, but sources from the 1930s did; a term styled as "Tex-La-Homa” referred to Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma.

Assuming Texlahoma had an income tax (Texas doesn’t), people in Guymon would be gearing up to send their returns to Amarillo about now.

Read more: http://www.newsok.com/altered-states-texlahoma-never-made-it-to-a-map/ar...