For instance, one guideline requires publishers to include a section on “the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract with America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association”
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Read the complete story here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/11/us/politics/11texas.html?hp
More reporting from the DallasMorningNews
By James C. McKinley, Jr.
Published: March 10, 2010
New York Times
The board’s chairman, Gail Lowe
Jack Plunkett/Associated Press
Jack Plunkett/Associated Press
AUSTIN, Tex. — Even as a panel of educators laid out a vision Wednesday for national standards for public schools, the Texas school board was going in a different direction, holding hearings on changes to its social studies curriculum that would portray conservatives in a more positive light, emphasize the role of Christianity in American history and include Republican political philosophies in textbooks.The hearings are the latest round in a long-running cultural battle on the 15-member State Board of Education, a battle that could have profound consequences for the rest of the country, since Texas is one of the largest buyers of textbooks.
The board is expected to take a preliminary vote this week on a raft of changes to the state’s social studies curriculum proposed by the seven conservative Republicans on the board. A final vote will come in May.
15 comments:
I have a simpler solution.
Teach children the basic needs in learning and life: reading, writing, math along with some basic science and core history.
Then give them one elective period where they can pursue whatever topic they, their parents and/or educators want.
Teach them better communication and life training skills that actually are important in daily life, e.g., like maintaining a checking account, writing a letter or resume.
There is no need to teach religious thought, political philosophy or any of that other tripe that has little to do with REAL learning in public education.
Teach kids to learn for learning's sake, how to research any topic and to enjoy the learning process.
Our schools have beoome another business and political football field. Our classrooms are labs for babysitting our children until 3 PM.
If we do the above our kids will get much more out of education and of life and we can stop trying to run public education like an industrial assembly-line plant.
DS, thanks for the laugh. You had me going there for a second. Peter, I agree with your simpler solution. If only. For it to happen, the people must demand it and our school boards must take notice.
Interesting and fitting that Scheiskopf means "shithead" in German.
Poetic justice?
Mr. Stern,
You should put yourself in the hands of God and run for SBOE. You have the knowledge and the true conservative attitude that hopefully would keep the religious right thought Nazis out of our children's minds.
Of course, you would have to put his own ego aside to do the right job. This is what your higher power would help you do.
Better you are out there than not. Thanks for your balance and intelligent conservative ideas. Too few of you in the US these days.
Peter Stern, I agree with every word you posted here. It is simple common sense; what a shame it isn’t all that common.
OK, let's say the conservatives win. They re-write the textbooks. Other saner state legislatures balk and say, hell no, we're not buying these texts authored by these Texas ignoramuses. The book publishers panic and say, these are the only books we offer. States cancel their orders and go elsewhere. The economic cart under these textbooks collapses. Texas is isolated as a national laughingstock (again). Kids are no longer accepted at colleges and universities outside the state because they think the earth was created 5,000 years ago. My prediction: the MARKET will decide what books our kids read, not the members of the Texas Board of Education--and the market will harshly rebuke Texas.
Anony # 3, your statement, “Kids are no longer accepted at colleges and universities outside the state because they think the earth was created 5,000 years ago” is the most ridiculous part of a completely ridiculous post. You know you can’t back that up so why say it? Just a lot of red herrings is all that came from your side and that’s the reason you lost.
No, the textbook battle was lost because normal intelligence foolishly assumed that the religious right would not sacrifice their own children'e future for their leadership's inabiility to see beyond cognitive ignorance and self-delusion.
Our Bible is really reflections of a great man written in parable form scribed decades after the life of Christ. Sadly, it is being taught as fact, without adaptation to the complex modern world we live in.
Such fear and guilt based beliefs and thinking will only lead to the futher fallure of American democracy and the failure of Christian conservative kids to survive in the modern multireligious and multicultural world.
The real message of Jesus was for all his believers to go out and live Christ-like values within themselves and to share those values outside themselves, not to built temples of greed and to promote hate and destruction of anyone who looks or thinks differently.
And nowhere in the teachings of Christ is there any mention of free markets superiority or property or gun rights. Such distorted religious blather is simply more fear and greed-driven arrogance disquised as Christian values.
Jesus and his God-father are probably taking anti-depressants as they look at much of the actions and anger of the religious right in America. Just look at our country now - after eight years of an American Judas disguised as a modern man?
The truth shall set you free - if you want to be free. Really give yourself over to God, not to your ego and selfishness disquised as God. Don't make your children suffer because of your own addiction to hate and the greedy false prophets here on earth.
Hey, “The Jesus Within Us” you are just another liberal Bush hater that was probably forced to go to church when you were a child. Get over it, you lost this one.
It is obvious that in your sick little 60s world, you view everything you disagree with as being caused by Christian Conservatives. Your post was a very crudely put together diatribe against conservatives with the word “Jesus” inserted in key places.
I am a NON-Christian and I believe we live in the greatest country on the planet. It didn’t get that way by listening to you frustrated left wing types. You and your ilk have exaggerated the different views on this ridiculous textbook re-write of history, to further your cause for destruction of our American values. We fought and killed to keep these values and will do it again unless you leftists turn our young men into limp wristed panzies.
I think we all know that George Washington didn’t cut down a cherry tree and there is no Tooth Fairy. You want to destroy all traces of these harmless myths just to “purify” the world in your own way. Why not let these stories be told, including the Bible, as many people get comfort from them.
Our "sick little 60s world" was full of true egalitarian ideals that would have made America the best country on earth but failed in part due to a series of Republican president international war criminals like Nixon, Reagan, and both of the Bush incompetents.
Conservative Atheist thinks of himself as some sort of "tough individualist" superior being to everyone because he believes in mindless free markets and that he is his own God. In other words, a "legend in his own mind."
Jean Paul Sartre's book "No Exit" is about hell being stuck in a small room for eternity with people you can't stand. I bet Conservative Atheist and his profoundly borish ego would fit one of those characters to a tee.
Did all you Christians get the big put down fron this Conservative Atheist lost ego:
"Why not let these stories be told, including the Bible, as many people get comfort from them."
What a hypocrite!
You don't need to believe in God to "be free".
The Bible you speak of is NOT "our" Bible, it is YOUR Bible.
Our true Bible in the Hebrew Bible that Christians have discarded in favor of "their" Bible.
So, let's get some of the Bible FACTS straight.
The Hebrew Bible. Do you mean the Old Testament? With the Ten Commandments?
First of all, why do we need ten? I think that list of the Ten Commandments was artificially and deliberately inflated to get it up to ten. Here's what happened:
About 5,000 years ago a bunch of religious and political hustlers got together to try to figure out how to control people and keep them in line. They knew people would believe anything they were told, so they announced that God had given them some commandments, up on a mountain, when no one was around.
Well let me ask you this - why did they pick 10? Why not 9 or 11 commandments? Why? Because 10 sounds official. Ten sounds important! Ten is the basis for the decimal system, it's a decade, it's a psychologically satisfying number (the top ten, the ten most wanted, the ten best dressed).
So, in fact, having Ten Commandments was really a marketing decision! It's a political document artificially inflated to sell better. You know, like the Academy Award winning movie adapted from THE Book staring Charlton Heston
Do you mean that Hebrew Bible?
Pantheism = Tree Hugging God Hater
I think that definition best describes many posters on this Blog. I am an atheist (little ‘a’) but do not define my whole existence as such and certainly don’t go around trying to legitimize my beliefs with vulgar criticisms of others. I don’t hate God, I just can’t find proof that such a thing exists. I do not hate Christians, Buddhists, Jews, Muslims or even Pantheists for their beliefs; I just think they are wrong.
The Bible, Hebrew or otherwise, is an interesting and useful book of moral lessons and a chronicle of the carnage that a religious belief can bring about. Religion has always been the cause much evil. As an example, it is a fact that the early Christians killed more Jews than Hitler. Does that make today’s Christians responsible for the Holocaust of the Crusades, I think not. War is inevitable and in some cases desirable to cleanse the earth of evil that infects it, it’s kind of an antibody if you will.
Man was not granted dominion over the earth by a supreme power he just simply conquered it due in part to his mental superiority. It was inevitable that the only animal on earth with reason and thought would rise to dominate the planet. Now he has the responsibility to use its resources wisely and protect it from the ignorant evil ones that seek to destroy it.
The SBOE clearly needs to stop trying to impose one-sided, one-dimensional religious & conservative political views into our kids' publicly funded textbooks. They've gone too far, and I sincerely hope their efforts fail. It is all too unfortunate that the vast majority of people do not see this type of Antediluvian thinking taking place right under their noses, until it's too late. Our country's founders created a separation of church and state in the Constitution in order to keep the bible thumpers and religious zealots in their proper places.
"...a bunch of religious and political hustlers got together to try to figure out how to control people and keep them in line. They knew people would believe anything they were told..."
Oh. You are speaking of the New Testament? The great Christian Bible???
Oh, THAT Bible.
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