Textbook Culture Wars & Historiography

This past Sunday the NYT Magazine had a great piece titled "How Christian Were the Founders?"  If you are a social studies teacher or historian I strongly recommend finding the time to read it.

Essentially it is about America's culture wars.  The Texas School Board of Education is currently in the process of reviewing the state's social studies curriculum.  This is always a contentious issue, but made more dramatic by the disproportionate power Texas wields in determining textbook content given they have a state wide adoption, and the fact that there is a faction of the board whose publicly stated goals are to increase the conservative and Christian presence in America's textbooks.

This brings me to the real purpose of the post, in the wake of the controversy in Texas & the recent death of Howard Zinn (whose NPR obit caused some controversy of its own), is anyone using these events to teach historiography to their History students?  It seems like these two events would be a great jumping off point to discuss the writing of history, the biases of authorship, issues of power and control of information, etc.  Obviously, these events concern U.S. History, but I think they could also be used to open the discussion in a World History class.

Has me bummed about not being in the classroom this year.  I hope someone will be inspired and let me know how it goes.