South Hadley , Massachusetts ( CNN ) -- As a co-author of an American history textbook that was effectively banned in Texas eight years ago , I get a strong feeling of déjà vu all over again as I follow the state 's latest curricular wars . Historians and teachers have reason to be deeply concerned over the latest actions taken by the Texas Board of Education regarding social studies curriculum standards . The board has moved aggressively to put its hard-right conservative stamp on what students need to learn about the American past . Among the changes made by the board was the elimination of Thomas Jefferson from a list of thinkers who had inspired revolutions around the world . Conservatives object to Jefferson 's support for a clear separation of church and state . This trend is troubling in terms of the writing and the teaching of U.S. history . In 2002 , the school board , egged on by well-funded conservative organizations , excluded `` Out of Many : A History of the American People , '' ostensibly for an offensive passage discussing prostitution on the Western frontier . But the real reason became clear as that dispute played out , and I think that it helps explain what 's happening today . Many conservatives are simply unwilling to accept how much the writing and teaching of American history has changed over the past 40 years . They want an American history that ignores or marginalizes African-Americans , women , Latinos , immigrants and popular culture . Rather than genuinely engaging the fundamental conflicts that have shaped our past , they prefer a celebratory history that denies those fundamental conflicts . Conservative textbook activists believe that somehow what they call the `` revisionist '' history of recent decades needs to be `` balanced . '' Hence their insistence that , for example , textbooks stress the superiority of American `` free enterprise '' -- they think the word `` capitalism '' is too negative . And they insist books stress , as school board chairman Don McLeroy put it , that `` America was built on Biblical ideals . '' What 's wrong with this picture ? For one thing , the process itself undermines the hard work , research and professional judgments of teachers and outside experts who toil to come up with a coherent curriculum . This year , the Texas board approved more than 100 amendments to the 120-page curriculum standards affecting history , sociology and economic classes . Instead of acknowledging that genuine disagreements over interpretation and emphasis are the lifeblood of history , they reduce it all to a cartoonish process of correcting perceived `` bias . '' This is a terrible trivialization of history , contributing to the dumbing-down of what students learn . If we want to equip our students with analytical skills , the tools that allow them to become critical thinkers and better citizens , then we need to expose them to a greater variety of often conflicting sources : primary documents , biographies , monographs , films and so on . We need to acknowledge there 's no such thing as history with a capital H. There are only individual men and women who struggle to make sense of some aspect of the past , bringing our own passions , preconceptions and points of view to our writing . American history looks a great deal more inclusive , capacious , contentious and messy than it did a half century ago . That is because contemporary events always affect how we understand the past . Thus , the civil rights movement led to an explosion of innovative and groundbreaking scholarship on African-American history . Similarly , there was very little attention to the historical experiences of women before the feminist upsurge of the 1970s . The antiwar movement and New Left of the 1960s and '70s prompted major reconsideration of the history of American foreign relations . The environmentalist movement has inspired a broad rethinking of the nation 's relationship to the land and natural resources . Much recent historical writing has confronted some of the more painful and difficult aspects of our past , such as the grim realities of American apartheid and the powerful influence of white supremacist thinking . But does this sort of work somehow demean America , as conservative critics charge ? Perhaps , if your goal is to reduce the study and teaching of history to a kind of pseudo-patriotic cheerleading . But I believe we have an obligation to present our students with inconvenient facts , to make them uncomfortable and to teach them how to assess competing interpretations of our past . Future historians may look back at the Texas textbook wars as a prime example of how contemporary political movements shape how we engage history . I ca n't think of a better example of that than the current campaign waged by conservatives to remove `` bias '' from textbooks . Their success threatens to impoverish our students , teachers , and classrooms . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Daniel Czitrom .
Daniel Czitrom co-wrote an American history textbook banned in Texas eight years ago . The book was called "The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Civil War," and it included a chapter on slavery that some parents found offensive. Texas still putting hard-right conservative stamp on what students learn . Writes : History according to Texas ignores blacks , women , Latinos , immigrants , pop culture . It cheats students , trivializes history into pseudo-patriotic cheerleading , he writes .