Texas parents are “dangerous,” the Washington Post claims in a new editorial. How so? Because they wanted a say in how their kids learn history.

“This fall, Texas schools will teach students that Moses played a bigger role in inspiring the Constitution than slavery did in starting the Civil War,” the Post opines. “The Lone Star State’s new social studies textbooks, deliberately written to play down slavery’s role in Southern history, do not threaten only Texans — they pose a danger to schoolchildren all over the country.”

What the Post objects to is how our state chooses textbooks and classroom materials. We don’t just rely on “experts;” we involve parents, through an elected body, the State Board of Education.

“The Texas board of education adopted a revised social studies curriculum in 2010 after a fierce battle,” the Post explains. “When it came to social studies standards, conservatives championing causes from a focus on the biblical underpinnings of our legal system to a whitewashed picture of race in the United States won out.”

The Post’s two examples are, in fact, good case studies in how changeable academic “truth” can be. Let’s take Mosaic law and the U.S. Constitution. In our stridently secular age, academics like to distance our form of government from any biblical roots. But that’s a very modern (indeed, a post-modern) take on two things that have always been seen and taught as linked.

Noah Webster, often said to be the father of American education, clearly and unequivocally taught that the Constitution arose from biblical thought.

As Webster wrote to James Madison, “the Christian religion, in its purity, is the basis or rather the source of all genuine freedom in government… I am persuaded that no civil government of a republican form can exist & be durable, in which the principles of that religion have not a controlling influence.”

That’s an exceedingly unfashionable position to take these days, but it’s the education establishment that has changed, not the historical record.

Likewise, the Post complains that in Texas textbooks, slavery is portrayed as one of the issues behind the Civil War — instead of the sole issue. Again, the historical record is on the side of those Texas texts. The Civil War wasn’t that simple. Of course slavery was a primary cause — but it wasn’t the only one. Only an estimated 2 percent of Confederate soldiers were slave owners. Most Southern enlistees said they joined to defend their homes, not to defend the vile institution of slavery.

The Post’s real objection is to how Texas approves textbooks. We let parents have a say, through the state board. And we don’t defer to “experts” and the latest politically correct thinking.

“By distorting history, Texas tells its students a dishonest and damaging story about the United States that prevents children from understanding the country today,” the Post claims.

That’s simply not true. Textbooks in Texas undergo a rigorous approval process, and parental involvement only enhances that.

Washington would love to put “experts” in control of everything. But this is Texas.