Politics blog: Texas restores Thomas Jefferson to social studies curriculum
02:30 PM CDT on Friday, May 21, 2010
Burned by very bad publicity, social conservatives on Texas State Board of Education scrambled to undo an earlier vote to delete Thomas Jefferson from a list of influential political thinkers in world history.
After renewed debate today, the board reinserted Jefferson (but not James Madison, who didn't the cut) in the world history curriculum.
The deletion of Jefferson -- whose separation of church-state philosophy doesn't get high marks among Christian conservatives -- sparked a flurry of criticism on cable TV, where some pundits held the board up to ridicule.
So today, as the board prepared to vote on the final social study curricula standards, members put Jefferson back on the list of writers including John Locke, Thomas Acquinas and William Blackstone.