Several learning opportunities that I have had during the past few months have brought to my attention the almost total absence of women in the curriculum studied by children in Texas schools. My Brownie Girl Scout Troop recently completed the requirements for the Herstory Try-It and the Ms. President Patch, which exposed me to a lot of wonderful materials provided by Girl Scouts USA and The White House Project, materials on womens history and women in government. Additionally, I have been able to visit the awesomely wonderful Womens Museum of Dallas on two occasions and have read several articles on the issues and debates involved in its establishment. This has led me to do a little research.

The truth is, in this day and age, shocking and unacceptable. We have made only a couple of percentage points worth of progress since 1971 (the year in which I was born) in which a study of thirteen popular U.S. History books found that only 1% of the content was about womena couple of points. According to the American Association of University Womens report How Schools Shortchange Girls, a study on books taught in high school English classes found that only one of the ten most frequently studied books was written by a woman (none, by the way, were written by minorities).

My sister is taking U.S. Studies in the eighth grade and I asked her at Thanksgiving how many women she had studied in the class. She said none. I suggested a petition if her teacher refused to rectify this. My sister said that, when she spoke to him, her teacher told her that was a good point and that their next project would be women in U.S. history. Thats all very nice, but a project is not enough.

At every point in history, women have made up at least half of the nation, at least half of this state and I daresay have perpetrated at least half of the things that are worth studying. According to the curriculum being fed to our daughters, however, Betsy Ross, Grandma Moses, Amelia Earhart, Marie Curie and Rosa Parks are the only women ever to have contributed anything of worth to the nationand their accomplishments were worth only a few words each.

It inevitably lowers the self esteem of our daughters to be taught that people like themselves have contributed little and are not worth studying. It does not encourage them to make their own important contributions if they are taught this way. Studies have shown that curriculum content does transmit values and the value that this curriculum is transmitting is that women are worthless.

We must take charge of the curriculum and change this now, before another generation of daughters grows up in a learning environment so hostile to who they are. I encourage you to visit with your childs social studies teacher and other teachers and find out if women are equally covered in the curriculum. When you find that they are not, get busy. Insist that changes be made in the curriculum and not just token changes. Follow up on and see that the changes are made. Remember Title IX.

We must also be active on the state level to see that the academic standards and tests are made equitable, for this is where the change must occur. Local school curriculums are driven by state requirements so talk to your legislators. Let them know that this is an important issue that has been ignored for far too long.

Dont forget to educate your children yourself in the meantime. Let them know that history is not just about men and wars. They should know the names of Jane Addams, Lucretia Mott, Dolores Huerta, Wilma Mankiller and Queen Liliuokalani. They need to know that the contributions that women make, the contributions that they, our daughters, will make, are important. So important that their parents will fight for them. Now go do it.