American public classrooms have become Marxist daycare centers, filled with indoctrination, transgenderism, and racial divisiveness.  Parents are demanding a return to the 3 Rs, American patriotism, respect, and moral character with teacher-centered classes and printed lessons.

Texans have an incredible opportunity to accomplish all of this and bring back the public schools that many of us remember.  The solution?  Bluebonnet Learning, a new traditional curriculum for elementary reading, language arts, and math.  Yet a fringe group of fear-mongers, using bully tactics to silence those who challenge them and to stop State Board of Education (SBOE) approval, falsely claims that the Texas Open Education Resources (OER) curriculum is connected to UNESCO.  When pressed for specific proof about the UNESCO connection, they are silent.

Origin of Open Education Resources

First, let’s address the history of OER.  The movement began in the 1990s in the technology sector, where open source software was designed by and circulated among like-minded individuals and shared in ways that encouraged others to supplement and improve the applications.  Although educators have always produced teaching and learning resources, they usually were informal.  With a vast array of technological options increasingly available to educators, a fierce rivalry began between proprietary distributors and independent software developers.

When the Massachusetts Institute of Technology initiated sharing third-party course content openly on the internet in 2001, the disruption of proprietary distribution of educational resources quickly gained momentum.  Within a decade, other third-party institutions followed.

OER at UNESCO

The term OER was first coined by UNESCO in 2002 as “any type of educational materials that are in the public domain or introduced with an open license” in any format and medium and can “range from textbooks to curricula, syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, tests, projects, audio, video and animation.”  They are freely available for “re-use, re-purpose, adaptation, and redistribution by others.”

To influence worldwide acceptance, UNESCO, the educational agency of the communist U.N., claims that OER fosters learning and sharing knowledge and furthers the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) — quality education; gender equality; industry, innovation, and infrastructure; reduced inequalities within and across countries; peace, justice, and strong institutions; and partnerships for the goals.

The actual purpose of UNESCO ’s commitment to “promoting OER adoption and usage” is worldwide control of what people learn and believe.  The goal is to shift allegiance from national sovereignty to feudalism under a New World Order.

OER at USDE

In 2011, the U.S. Departments of Education (USDE) and Defense created the Federal Learning Registry as an open source infrastructure where education resources are aggregated and shared.  For assistance in collecting millions of student educational data points through interactive tutoring systems, online educational games, and open online courses, and storing it in the Learning Registry, they partnered with giant corporations.

The USDE launched Online Education Resources and encouraged states, school districts and educators to use open licensed online curricula and educational games.  Through OER, giant corporations are bypassing the state boards of education and controlling the online “personalized” curriculum content that our American students are being taught.  Taxpayers are being forced to fund this unapproved content, which is dumbing down students and instilling leftist thinking.

The federal government is aggressively encouraging schools to toss out textbooks in favor of digital learning, under the guise of saving money.  According to the website of the U.S. Department of Education, “Traditional textbooks are perpetually outdated, forcing districts to re-invest significant portions of their budgets on replacing them.”  U.S. education secretary Arne Duncan in the Obama administration said, “Districts across the country are transforming learning by using materials that can be constantly updated and adjusted to meet students’ needs.”

This is a ploy to create new lesson content with Marxist Common Core ideology.  Veteran teachers tell us that, since the only new addition to math is in statistics and data analysis, good 50-year-old math textbooks can be used and supplemented by statistics lessons.  Good reading materials and correct grammar and writing conventions rarely have changes within those disciplines.  Good music and good art skills are timeless, while there are more changes in science, world history, and world geography.

OER in Texas

In 2011, the Texas Legislature passed Senate Bill 6 (SB6), which stripped SBOE’s control over the content of instructional materials (I.M.) and Open Education Resources.  Under SB6, school districts can spend state tax money for I.M. and OER that are not on the SBOE-approved list.  District use of state funding for non-SBOE approved technological products, especially online learning, exploded after 2011.  This began the shift away from textbooks to online learning and wide use of non-SBOE-approved OER.

Academic content in online products was fused with Common Core, social justice, LGBT, Critical Race Theory, and wokeism.  The consequences of the low alignment of content with the Texas curriculum standards (TEKS) and the indoctrination are evidenced in abysmal STAAR scores.  Since 2011, NAEP math and reading scores have declined in Texas.  There is extensive research that proves that the use of digital learning has been a causal factor for the decline, especially in reading.

Texas Counter to Unapproved OER

To counter the negative impact of SB6 on learning, in 2023, the Texas Legislature passed House Bill 1605 (HB1605).  The bill addresses the statewide low reading scores with a ban on three-cueing, the failed whole language approach, and signals a return to phonics by authorizing the SBOE to adopt an approved list of phonics instructional materials.  The SBOE again is authorized to require all instructional materials to be aligned 100 percent to the TEKS, effectively getting rid of indoctrination.

As an alternative to the unapproved ideological materials proliferating in Texas public classrooms through SB6, the TEA was directed to create optional instructional materials for statewide use, subject to approval by the SBOE.  The new traditional curriculum, branded Bluebonnet Learning, was thus created, and, in a turn away from digital learning, the curriculum was designed to be printed for student use.  To encourage districts to adopt the printed Bluebonnet Learning instead of the digital, ideological materials funded by SB6, additional funding for each student is given to cover printing costs.

In its November meeting, the SBOE will consider approving the new traditional curriculum for rollout of K–5 Reading Language Arts in August 2025.  The curriculum will be free to anyone, including homeschoolers and other states, and can be modified over time for improvement by the SBOE.

With Bluebonnet Learning, Texas public schools will return to traditional classrooms with teacher-centered instruction and printed instructional materials and away from online learning and project-based learning.  Gone will be the communist indoctrination, wokeism, and radical sex.

The academically rigorous curriculum is a sharp turn away from the current dumbed down learning in public classrooms.  Students will be taught reading and phonics through age-appropriate, engaging stories in history, literature, the arts, and culture along with religion as a foundational tool for history and literature.  Lessons connect history, art, literature, and religion to pivotal events such as the signing of the U.S. Constitution and the American Revolution.

As evidenced by the above facts and contrary to what fear-mongers claim in their zeal to influence public opinion to stop SBOE approval, Bluebonnet Learning is not influenced by UNESCO, the federal government, or giant corporations.  Indeed, the traditional curriculum is the polar opposite.

Carole Hornsby Haynes is an education policy analyst, curriculum expert, historian, pianist, and entrepreneur. chaynes777@gmail.com

Image: Scazon via Flickr, CC BY 2.0.