Texas Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

National Guard Troops Head For Southern Border

A group of West Virginia soldiers and airmen leaving for the Texas border with Mexico had a sendoff Monday at the West Virginia National Guard headquarters in Charleston, surrounded by dignitaries.

In May, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott sent letters to a number of other governors asking for help for Operation Lone Star — to support efforts by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Fifty volunteers from the West Virginia National Guard are heading out for a month-long deployment. According to Gov. Jim Justice, the troops will help “secure the border, reduce the flood of fentanyl, and combat the human trafficking crisis.”

“And it just may very well be that you, by what you’re doing, you could absolutely do something that could change the course of the whole world,” Justice said.

The number of illegal border crossings has dropped off significantly since May with the end of Title 42 and the national COVID-19 emergency.

The West Virginia governor’s office has said there will be a cost to the state for this effort but has not provided details on what that will be.

There are also about 400 national guard members working corrections jobs under an emergency executive order in the state’s prisons. That costs taxpayers $20 million a year.

Us & Them: Textbook Watchdogs

In this episode, I dig into one of my favorite culture war subjects: the battles in Texas over education.

For years, I’ve had a fascination with the fights Texans have had over education curriculum and textbooks. This interest started with my research of the 1974 Kanawha County textbook controversy.

When researching the events in Kanawha, I saw that a Texas couple named Mel and Norma Gabler came to Charleston to lend support to the textbook protesters. At that point, the Gablers – a Mom and Pop team from Longview, TX – had more than a decade of experience of performing intensive reviews of public school textbooks. Overtime, the couple would have a huge impact on what got into `– not just in Texas, but around the country.

The Gablers died about a decade ago, but their work to bring conservative, patriotic, Christian values into public school classrooms lives on.

Back in 2010, the Texas State Board of Education – a group dominated by cultural conservatives created some controversial standards for what kids have to learn in history classes. These standards have been criticized for lionizing conservative heroes like Newt Gingrich and Phyllis Schlafly; downplaying slavery as a cause of the Civil War and exaggerating the Bible’s influence on America’s founders.

This fall, Texas students are going to crack open textbooks that are tailored to the controversial 2010 standards. In this show, I speak with Dr. Don McLeroy, a former member of the Texas Board of Education, who was a part of approving the social studies standards in 2010. He and his allies fought to have Moses included in the standards as a thinker who inspired the founding fathers. We also hear from Kathy Miller, President of the Texas Freedom Network, a liberal watchdog group that keeps an eye on the activities of the Religious Right in Texas and that opposes many of the standards that board members like McLeroy championed.

Trey Kay Talks Texas Textbooks on Latest Episode of Us & Them

Texas students will be back in school soon and they’re going crack open some brand new social studies textbooks. The books are the result of fierce fights over what kids should learn in school. Lots of American school districts struggle with this question, but nobody fights like Texans.

In 2010, the Texas State Board of Education – a body dominated by social conservatives – created some controversial standards for what kids have to learn in history classes. Critics say those standards lionize conservative heroes like Newt Gingrich and Phyllis Shlafly. They downplay slavery as a cause of the Civil War. Critics also complain that the standards over-emphasize the Bible’s influence on America’s founders.

Ashton Marra speaks with Us & Them host Trey Kay about how the new Texas social studies books list Moses as a major influence on the writers of our nation’s founding documents. They also speak about Texas textbook watchdogs, Mel and Norma Gabler. Fifty-some years ago, Mel was a clerk for an oil company and Norma was a housewife. But they had a huge impact on what got into textbooks – not just in Texas, but around the country.