Texas students will now have a chance to learn about the state’s hispanic past

There’s no way Gloria Martinez could avoid knowing how tightly interwoven the stories of individual Mexican Americans and Anglo families in Texas can be.

She grew up hearing her mom talk about being a nanny for Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson’s two young daughters at the couple’s Hill Country ranch, and remembers learning that LBJ “was hard to work for” and that “his eggs had to be a certain way,” Martinez said.

But nobody taught Martinez, now the Weatherford Chamber of Commerce community relations director, much about Mexican Americans’ contribution in the context of Texas and American history, the 1983 Weatherford High School graduate said.

Except for the time her mom visited Martinez’ elementary classroom to show the students how to make tortillas, “really that was it, besides talking about the Alamo,” she said.

That’s likely to change for young Texans with the state education board’s recent approval of a new course called Ethnic Studies: Mexican American Studies.

Thought to be the first Mexican American Studies course approved by any state education board, adoption is a win for all Texas public school students, whatever their ethnic or racial background, historian Roberto Calderon said. ...