delayed the process<\/a> amid pressure from conservatives who claimed it downplayed Texas and American exceptionalism, which some experts define as the belief that the country and state are unique, superior or set apart from others.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/elex_2024_sboe_gustavo_reveles-e1729022738527.jpg\")
Gustavo Reveles<\/p>\n
Reveles, who voted against the adopted framework, said the new curriculum centers around Texas and American exceptionalism, which he defines as \u201ca process to where we teach students the virtues of America and the virtues of Texas, and use those virtues as the guiding light in telling the history.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is fine to me, except that it takes away courses and instruction on world cultures,\u201d added Reveles, who works as communications director for the Canutillo Independent School District. \u201cIt also shies away from difficult conversations regarding our history in order to sanitize, in my opinion, very difficult topics, like slavery, civil rights and things like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ch\u00e1vez Leyva is one of only two advisers appointed by Democrats.<\/p>\n
Who is Yolanda Ch\u00e1vez Leyva?<\/p>\n
Ch\u00e1vez Leyva was born in Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez, raised in El Paso, and considers the border her home. She received a master\u2019s in border history from UTEP in 1989 and a doctorate in U.S. history from the University of Arizona in 1999.<\/p>\n
She serves as the director of UTEP\u2019s Institute of Oral History and has worked for the university for nearly 25 years.<\/p>\n
Over the years, much of her work has focused on U.S.-Mexico border, Mexican American and Chicano history. As an oral historian, Ch\u00e1vez Leyva uses personal testimonies from the past and present to tell stories that aren\u2019t always written in government documents or history books.<\/p>\n
She has led projects on the bracero program and documented the histories of Hispanic women and children, and other marginalized communities.<\/p>\n
Ch\u00e1vez Leyva met recently with El Paso Matters to talk about her perspective on the new social studies curriculum and how she plans to advise the State Board of Education.<\/p>\n
Here are highlights from the conversation, which has been edited for brevity and clarity.<\/p>\n
El Paso Matters: What expertise or perspective do you bring to this work?<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Yolanda-Chavez-Leyva-UTEP-mug.jpg\")
Yolanda Ch\u00e1vez Leyva (Courtesy UTEP)<\/p>\n
Ch\u00e1vez Leyva: My expertise is going to complement the history that perhaps other content advisors are referring to, because I want to make sure that the history of Mexican Americans, African Americans, Native Americans and women are brought into the content of the state standards.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Part of the standards that just went before the Board of Education last week says that children, and they were looking at K to second grade, should be taught about Texas heroes who fought for liberty and freedom.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The kind of training that I have would say, yes, let\u2019s definitely talk about people who fought for liberty and freedom, but this includes people like Jovita Idar, who was an investigative reporter more than 100 years ago, who investigated school segregation and anti-Mexican American violence.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So, to include people like that, who I think are really important for people in Texas, and especially for our children and youth to know about, so that it\u2019s more inclusive of all the different kinds of people that fought for equality.<\/p>\n
El Paso Matters: How should children be taught history in school?<\/p>\n
Ch\u00e1vez Leyva: I have to say that my experience is teaching in higher education. I typically teach adults, but I have raised children, and my children and grandchildren have gone to Texas schools.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I think children can understand more complex ideas than we think they can.<\/p>\n
History, and Texas history, included, is so full of contradictions and ironies that sometimes people want to just sweep under the rug. Going back to the idea of people wanting to teach about who fought for liberty, and sometimes the people that they talk about were slave owners. So, that\u2019s a huge contradiction. I think that older children in middle school and high school, they can understand those contradictions.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The way that I think history should be taught is to teach children at the appropriate level for their mental development, but not to hide things from them. Not to romanticize things, but slowly show them how people are very complex. History is very complicated, and it\u2019s not necessarily a pretty thing.<\/p>\n
El Paso Matters: How do you plan to represent El Paso and the border in your role?<\/p>\n
Ch\u00e1vez Leyva: I think because I know border history, I can always bring up border history as we\u2019re talking about the standards. What we\u2019ve done so far, and we\u2019ve had three meetings, is we have identified topics for each grade level, and that\u2019s what the State Board of Education was looking at a few days ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Then we\u2019re going to start looking at content, which is our real goal, to suggest content for each topic. And I think it\u2019s there that I\u2019ll be able to talk about how was this border created, the relationship between the United States and Mexico. So, I\u2019m hoping that all of that can get included as part of both Texas history and U.S. history.<\/p>\n
El Paso Matters: Are there particular topics or historical events that sparked strong debate among advisers?<\/p>\n
Ch\u00e1vez Leyva: There hasn\u2019t been much debate yet. I do think that there are people on the committee who have a very particular perspective on history that would be different from mine. For example, people who might be opposed to teaching Mexican American, Native American and African American history when I think that those are critical for our children to learn.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When I was invited to do this, I was surprised to look at the demographics of Texas, K through 12 students as a whole, because I\u2019m certainly familiar with our area. It is so Mexican American, but for Texas as a whole, something like 53% of students are Hispanic, 25% are white, and about 13% are African American.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When I saw that number, I saw that it\u2019s really important for children to learn history that reflects them, because that\u2019s what\u2019s going to make them feel like they belong in this state and belong in this country. If they only see history that excludes them, they\u2019re going to feel like outsiders. And I don\u2019t want that for our children and youth. I want them to feel like they belong.<\/p>\n
El Paso Matters: Do you have any concerns with the curriculum framework or design process?<\/p>\n
Ch\u00e1vez Leyva: What I understand is that the process was changed so that now Texas history and U.S. history are taught in every grade level. Texas history used to be just in fourth grade and seventh grade. So I actually think that\u2019s good, rather than just keep it in two grade levels, but the thing that I\u2019m a little concerned about is it seems to me that they have cut down on the world cultures part of teaching.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kids need to know about other parts of the world, not just Texas and not just the U.S. I always think when I\u2019m teaching, the students need to learn about where they\u2019re from, but they also need to learn about places that are far away. So, that is one concern that I have.<\/p>\n
El Paso Matters: Given the makeup of the State Board of Education, do you think it might be difficult to get your perspective in the final curriculum?<\/p>\n
Ch\u00e1vez Leyva: There are different perspectives, for sure. But I think that there\u2019s enough people who are content advisers, who would listen, that I think I\u2019ll be able to get my point across to many of them. Not all of them, but many of them.<\/p>\n
El Paso Matters: How do you plan to navigate differing viewpoints on what should be taught?<\/p>\n
Ch\u00e1vez Leyva: Every time we have a discussion, we also put things in writing to send to each other. So, I\u2019m just going to continue talking about the importance of the border, about people of color in the history of Texas and the U.S., and the importance of students knowing their history. I\u2019m just going to keep focused on that.<\/p>\n
Related<\/p>\n
LISTEN: EL PASO MATTERS PODCAST<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A University of Texas at El Paso history professor will help decide how Texas elementary and middle school…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75877,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[138,140,139,4533],"class_list":["post-75876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-el-paso","tag-el-paso","tag-el-paso-headlines","tag-el-paso-news","tag-utep"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}