The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 43, July 1939 - April, 1940 Page: 378

TEXAS COLLECTION
By WALTER PRESCOTT WEBB
"A little more Texas history mixed with its Columbia Uni-
versity theory and Midwest personnel would not hurt this school
system," writes a member of the Association. There is not the
slightest doubt that both of these factors have been mixed lib-
erally in the Texas educational equation. All liberal Texans are
willing to let 'em live, and some will acknowledge that they
have made contributions to what we now have. But certainly
these new brooms should not be permitted to sweep out all that
they found here. There has been a concerted effort to sweep
history out of the curriculum, and so far as names are concerned,
it has been pretty well accomplished. At the last meeting of
the Texas State Teachers Association there appeared on the
regular program no section devoted to history. It would seem
that the subject has been abolished. At least the pedagogical
eraser has swept the word off the professional blackboard and
written two words in its place, "Social Science." Now one who
can make two words grow where one grew before certainly adds
something-a word, but all else remains about as it was. The
past still stretches out behind us, over the road that man has
traveled, and the story of the journey must still be told to satisfy
man's curiosity about his yesterdays.
The adoption of the term social science is in keeping with the
age. It illustrates man's inability to maintain a balance; it illus-
trates how much sillier adults are than children who know enough
to keep equal weight on both ends of the seesaw.
That science dominates the modern world, we admit. More
accurately stated, it dominates man's thinking about the modern
world. It is a modern obsession. It is like a fisherman's net
with a two-inch mesh. The scientist drags the sea and brings up
various forms of marine life. He finds that all this life is too
large to go through a two-inch mesh, and that it all has gills
instead of lungs. He concludes that this is all the life there is
in the sea and that all sea life breathes through gills. He has
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