The conservative members maintain that they are trying to correct what they see as a liberal bias among the teachers who proposed the curriculum. To that end, they made dozens of minor changes aimed at calling into question, among other things, concepts like the separation of church and state and the secular nature of the American Revolution
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Read the complete story at this link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.html
By James McKinley, Jr.| New York Times| Published: March 12, 2010
The vote was 10 to 5 along party lines, with all the Republicans on the board voting for it.
Mary Helen Berlanga accused fellow members
of the Board of Education of “rewriting history.”
Jack Plunkett/Associated Press
The board, whose members are elected, has influence beyond Texas because the state is one of the largest buyers of textbooks. In the digital age, however, that influence has diminished as technological advances have made it possible for publishers to tailor books to individual states.
In recent years, board members have been locked in an ideological battle between a bloc of conservatives who question Darwin’s theory of evolution and believe the Founding Fathers were guided by Christian principles, and a handful of Democrats and moderate Republicans who have fought to preserve the teaching of Darwinism and the separation of church and state.
Since January, Republicans on the board have passed more than 100 amendments to the 120-page curriculum standards affecting history, sociology and economics courses from elementary to high school. The standards were proposed by a panel of teachers.
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The Sage of Monticello is probably rolling in his grave. Who'd a thunk the man who penned these prescient words in 1802 would be denied a place in our public school history books: 'I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property – until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.'Wow, they even voted to erase Thomas Jefferson
We received this dispatch from an alert local citizen who's been tracking the Baptist Convention at the SBOE . . .
Thought you'd like to know.
Last week the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE), led by Rick Perry's appointee, voted to remove Thomas Jefferson from social studies textbook standards. That's right. Thomas Jefferson -- Founding Father, author of the Declaration of Independence, and a world-renowned scholar who advocated democratic, limited government -- was deleted from a list of historical figures who inspired political change.
"9:30 – Board member Cynthia Dunbar wants to change a standard having students study the impact of Enlightenment ideas on political revolutions from 1750 to the present. She wants to drop the reference to Enlightenment ideas (replacing with “the writings of”) and to Thomas Jefferson. She adds Thomas Aquinas and others. Jefferson’s ideas, she argues, were based on other political philosophers listed in the standards. We don’t buy her argument at all. Board member Bob Craig of Lubbock points out that the curriculum writers clearly wanted students to study Enlightenment ideas and Jefferson. Could Dunbar’s problem be that Jefferson was a Deist? The board approves the amendment, taking Thomas Jefferson OUT of the world history standards."
Why?
Because Governor Rick Perry provided no leadership or voice for mainstream Texans against people who decided to substitute their political agenda for the judgment of professional historians.
Look out Kansas, Texas wants to be Number 1 in ridicule.
This is a pattern for Rick Perry.
Perry's previous appointed chair of the SBOE openly bragged about allowing his extreme views to skew history textbooks. His antics as chair were so extreme that the Texas Senate refused to confirm him a second time, and he was recently defeated by Republican primary voters. Governor Perry's current appointee as chair wanted Supreme Court Justice and civil rights pioneer Thurgood Marshall removed from a section on citizenship because he is "not particularly known for [his] citizenship."
And under Perry's appointed chair's leadership, last week the board passed more than 100 amendments to Texas' social studies textbook standards, without a single classroom teacher or historian in the discussions.
This is what happens when we sit on our butts and leave our kids futures to extremists.
8 comments:
Texas conservatives are more stupid than most American conservatives (except for those in the deep south).
They believe the mindless rhetoric and nonsense about American superiority. In fact our country is failing and leaders like the SBOE keep digging the grave deeper.
In reality Texas conservatives are a bunch of gutless mass consumers who are politically blind and nationalistically gullible; they allow their children to be duped by the lies about our global "expansionism" and white Christian superiority; they are OK with being obese and unhealthy (even proud to be so); and they are fine with corporations poisoning their families in our food and water and keeping them drugged up under the guise of free markets, beer and barbeque.
Let's just admit it. Texas conservatives are some of the stupidest people in the developed world (only to be outdone - maybe - by the other redneck Confederate states.
Ok, maybe I'm a little overboard with my disgust. Maybe two in ten Texas conservatives are not as described above. And yes, they are generally very nice people. But nice doesn't make mentally healthy.
I would love to be proven wrong about the Goober State.
A more apt headline for this story should say: A Day at Jurassic Park
Yet another reason to vote for Rebecca Bell-Metereau for SBOE!
What a shock, the liberal camp on this blog tearing up all conservatives for a couple of religious nut cases pushing their ideas off on the rest of us. Please focus your ire on the guilty parties. Most Conservatives are not stupid narrow-minded fools and many are not even Christians. Frankly, I have found liberals to be a very prejudiced bunch. Lighten up. Did anyone really think Perry would cross the RR bunch in and election year? I may be voting for a Democrat Governor for the first time in decades.
Conservative Atheist is correct. Maybe only 6 out of 10 Texas conservatives are really stupid. But the SBOE is made up of at least eight right wing religious nutcases.
Yet all of us are to blame for what has happened. We sit back and live complacent and then act indignant when we see the SBOE implement this farce.
But it is good to know that America was NEVER imperialists - that we were only looking out for the well being of the ignorant central and latin Americans the dozens of times we invaded their countries or helped to overthrow their democratically elected leaders.
And of course goverment is inherently bad, especially when it is controlled and corrupted by the corporations. Oh, wait. Is that good? Or bad? If the corporate sector runs our government, isn't that good for the free markets? Jeez, it's so confusing.
I clearly was mislead for 40 years by the biased east coast liberal elitist communist educators.
I completely agree with Conservative Atheist. I am a true blue Dem but, contrary to the SBOE many GOPers aren't crazy religious revisionists. It's a shame that they are the ones in control of the GOP Party in Texas now. We'd all be better off with the more mainstream leaders of the GOP getting back in power.
I'm not so sure that either Conservative Atheist or Anonymous are right I've met quite a few conservatives lately at health care reform demonstrations and they generally seem pretty far over the edge but religiously and intellectually. My neighbors home school their three girls so aren't exposed to a secular education but now the girls are at least one to two years behind the other kids their own age. I just haven't seen too many reasonable conservatives of late. I'd be thrilled to meet an Eisenhower or Teddy Roosevelt Republican.
Conservatives stupid? Psychiatrists describe an abnormality called "projection," in which "a person's own attributes, thoughts, and emotions,... are then ascribed to the outside world, such as to the weather, the government, a tool, or to other people."
It is always easier to respond to good arguments with sneers, name-calling, and innuendo, rather than with facts, evidence, persuasion, and logic. I am not competely familiar with the controversy over the Texas school curriculum, but I do know that the brilliant leftists wanted to put Oprah Winfrey in, and leave Isaac Newton out. Now that's some (stupid) change you can believe in!
As a conservative from Texas, I would be glad to compete with any of these commentators to see who is really stupid, for example by means of a test of general knowledge, comparison of academic records and achievements, an IQ test, a test of historical or economic literacy, or the like.
Brian Carty, MD, MSPH
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