School textbook defines ‘hippies’ as followers of rock stars who may have worshipped Satan

[Starry Messenger]

If someone already posted this, I apologize. It just seemed "Made for DU".

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/hippies-satan-worship-school-history-book-201334876.html

A school participating in Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's controversial voucher program is apparently using a history book that teaches its eighth-grade students that "hippies" were dirty followers of Satan-worshipping rock musicians.

The textbook, “America: Land I Love," includes a section on the counterculture movement of the 1960s.

Here's a paragraph taken from that section, which was published Wednesday by AmericaBlog.com:


Many young people turned to drugs and immoral lifestyles; these youth became known as hippies. They went without bathing, wore dirty, ragged, unconventional clothing, and deliberately broke all codes of politeness or manners. Rock music played an important part in the hippie movement and had great influence over the hippies. Many of the rock musicians they followed belonged to Eastern religious cults or practiced Satan worship.

It's not clear which school is using the aforementioned textbook. John Aravosis, who published the text on AmericaBlog, said the source was "a friend" who sent him a photo of the section.

<snip>

o.O

TGIF!

[longship]

1. Far out, Man! Far out!

[FarPoint]

28. Oh no...that's a bummer man.

[L0oniX]

61. Freaky!

[reACTIONary]

93. FART, man... That's short for Far Out, according to...

Cheech & Chong.

[Peter cotton]

2. I learned everything I needed to know about hippies from South Park.

[Luminous Animal]

14. As if South Park had even the tiniest clue about anything but masturbation.

[backscatter712]

65. Ma'am, I need to check out your house. I think you've got an infestation of hippies. n/t

[MrSlayer]

102. "We need to upload this Slayer CD."

"Hippies hate Death Metal."

Great episode.

[napkinz]

144. They loved Hendrix, Cream, The Stones, Led Zeppelin ...

... as well as Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez.

At least that's my reading of history. Just look at all the different kinds of groups that played at the big festivals at that time (Monterey Pop 1967, Woodstock 1969, Altamont 1969, Isle of Wight 1970).

That's real diversity!

I assume they would have given Rap a chance if it had existed in their day.

Though Disco was "a drag." (If I'm using the correct lingo of the time.)

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. This should not surprise anybody

The rewriting of history proceeds happily apace.

[glinda]

4. and no doubt outsourced it to China by the looks of it

[OffWithTheirHeads]

5. Wow, I had no idea! I must have fucked up because I took a shower every day

In my Haight Ashberry commune. Seriouslly

[Mz Pip]

6. Maybe I'm just getting old

But I can't remember a single Satan worshipping rock group from the 60s and I was pretty into the rock scene back then.

[JVS]

9. Dave van Ronk. Bigtime Satanist.

[Bluenorthwest]

33. van Ronk was arrested and beaten at Stonewall, some people don't know that

He was not gay, he was just there. Cohen Bros are working up a film based on Dave or so I hear.

[JVS]

34. I was not aware of that.

My only knowledge of the man comes from the liner notes of an album I found in my parents' record collection. Mom is going to shit when she finds out about this movie.

[Mz Pip]

62. Me either.

Never really though of him as part of the Rock scene. He was a folk/blues singer IIRC.

[JVS]

73. Yeah. My impression of him was that he was big with the crowd that would...

consider Bob Dylan to be a sold out pop musician. Good album.

[Ken Burch]

114. I wonder who'd they'd cast?

Can't picture anybody in Hollywood today who could look like Van Ronk except, maybe, Zach Galifanakis(depending on how you shaved him...his face, I mean).

[progressoid]

141. "Possibly" or "loosely based on" are what I've read

When Joel and Ethan Coen discussed their films in New York with Noah Baumbach earlier this month, word came out that they are working on a script that is music-related. Now we have the subject of the script: the ’60s folk scene in NYC’s Greenwich Village, possibly with a specific focus on the life of Dave van Ronk, who was a big part of the Village folk scene at a time when Phil Ochs and Bob Dylan were just emerging as new talents.

[HoneychildMooseMoss]

21. I think they're probably referring to The Beatles

and their experimentation with Indian religions, like Krishna. To some people, any religion that is not Christian is "Satanist".

[JVS]

35. The Beatles and Maharishi would fall under "Eastern religious cults"...

I'm thinking that the Satanism accusation has hippies conflated with (and I have no idea how they would get this confused) fans of acts like Ozzy, Alice Cooper, and various heavy metal bands in the 1970s.

[thucythucy]

37. Ironic that the Beatles were also condemned by the Soviets

for being tools of "western decadence" and "perverting" socialist youth. The KGB even tried to infiltrate the Maharishi's ashram to spy on them--as if the whole world wasn't watching their every move!

There's a film on this, "How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin." It was on PBS a couple of years ago. It features interviews with people who grew up in the Soviet Union in the '60s and '70s and learned to question authority by listening to the Beatles and John Lennon. Beatles records were banned, and a whole kids' underground culture grew up around being a Beatles fan.

As I recall, it ends with a video of Paul McCartney in the '90s performing "Back in the USSR" in Red Square. When he gets to the line about "Moscow girls make me scream and shout" the crowd goes ape.

[sweetloukillbot]

70. The Beatles also had Aleister Crowley on the cover of Sgt. Peppers

And Jimmy Page had a fascination with the occult too. That could be where "Satan!!!!!" enters into it...

[JHB]

45. Keep in mind their expansive definition of "Satanism"...

...I'm sure they're including Alice Cooper and Blue Oyster Cult in that, and others they lumped together as "Satanic Rock".

Remember, KISS stands for "Knights In Service of Satan"

[L0oniX]

63. Ahmeddicca ..The Gaddddreat Satan! n/t

[Monk06]

66. Nice Donovan quote

[JHB]

74. Beg to differ: Ahmed Dicca is a renowned textile merchant...

...which makes him the Great Satin.

[fishwax]

92. Zeppelin and the Stones, for starters

I'm not saying they actually were, but they are 60s bands that religious righties sometimes claim worshipped Satan. There are all kinds of silly rumors about Led Zeppelin using backmasking to add subliminal satanic messages to their music, and the Stones had songs/albums like Their Satanic Majesties Request and "Sympathy for the Devil."

Some people took those rather literally. I had a supervisor once who believed that the reason the Stones kept touring is because Mick Jagger had literally sold his soul to satan and knew that as soon as he stopped touring he would no longer be of any use, so the devil would take him right off.

[reACTIONary]

94. That's because you were playing the records...

...forward! To get the Satanic Message you have to play them BACKWARD!

[JVS]

7. "America: Land that I love. A finger-pointing approach to history"

[white_wolf]

8. It's been 10 years and they haven't changed that page at all!?

I read this exact page when I was at my Baptist school in middle school and I swear to to you this is the exact same thing I read back in 2004 or so. I don't remember what grade I was in for sure, but it was in middle school.

[Starry Messenger]

10. Well, they still use the Bible

That hasn't changed materially in centuries.

I had science books in Catholic elementary from before the lunar landings, and I went to school in the late 70's and early 80's.

[Cha]

11. I was smack dab in the Hippie Generation.. and we

did love our Rock Stars and Love Not War.

Nothing satanic about that. There's evil everywhere in every generation. I'm thinking the Gov's mansion in Louisiana has some evil running around.

[NBachers]

12. Like Norman Greenbaum. Let's see, what was his great satanic hit? Oh yeah -

[LWolf]

39. .

[RebelOne]

51. One of my favorite songs.

Even though I am an atheist, I always loved that song.

[madfloridian]

13. That's the kind of crap they taught us in our Southern Baptist church.

They attacked my dad, the chairman of the deacons, when he let me go to see Elvis in the mid-fifties. It was fun, front row, just as he was really becoming famous.

The church leaders hated Elvis, the hippies, and also dancing.

What a fun church. I am still recovering.

[tavalon]

15. I was raised Southern Baptist

Have faith. I got better. Heck, I'm a polyamorous pagan, which back in the sixties, was called, I think, a hippie.

[Starry Messenger]

23. It's sad to think of these books being used in schools.

I'm sorry your church growing up was so toxic. Seeing a musician perform shouldn't be spiritually controversial.

I'm glad you got to see Elvis! What a great memory!

[madfloridian]

86. It was a great memory. A fun time. Elvis in early years.

Last edited Sun Mar 10, 2013, 03:45 AM - Edit history (1)

But the church leaders in the SBC poured on the guilt because we went. There was even a sermon about this new evil music. We ignored it.

He was really leaning out into the crowd, really giving us a show. That is a bunch of us in that corner. Yep, quite a memory. One of his early performances. I can still name most everyone in the group.

The picture was taken by Perkins Photography, and I am sure it is okay to post it with credit.

[reACTIONary]

96. Now that is a great picture! Never seen Elvis...

...in an early performance. Only know him from his Las Vegas persona.

[madfloridian]

98. He really put on a fun performance.

Very down to earth. The church elders lectured all us young folks about the evils of hip girating and what it could lead to.

[jmowreader]

109. Well, of course you know...

that Southern Baptists don't screw standing up because it looks too much like dancing.

[madfloridian]

110. lol

All the lectures on dancing being evil makes what you say not too far-fetched.

[Starry Messenger]

101. Omg, how fun!

That really is a treasure. I've seen some seminal shows in my time, mostly influential punk bands, but no one beats The King. I can feel the excitement!

[madfloridian]

111. It was. He hung around for pictures.

Here is one with a high school friend. I believe it was from The Ledger photographer.



I was too shy to bother even trying to get one taken.

[Starry Messenger]

118. Insanely cool, mad!

That's like being a part of history!

[OriginalGeek]

138. Lol! THe sermons were much the same in the 70s

We had record burning nights and were told that John Denver, Barry Manilow and Juice Newton were all satanic.


Thank god I'm an atheist now.

[patrice]

130. Catholics weren't teaching it, but you'd hear Catholic LAY leaders say shit like that. There were

also those who liked to rave on about the evil in the music, all of that base and those drums are a call to group sex.

Funny, they're kind of right but wrong about exactly HOW they're right (the way lots of us are, btw). The sex in all of it really was/is sex, but hippies were busy learning (somewhat imperfectly) how to bless sex, many missed the mark, but many also grew to be the ones who learned that free love manifests itself in the way that is specifically relevant to the persons living the truth of it as honestly as they could in their relationships and, of course, we noticed that that didn't mean sex with everyone. Even though they were definitely minorities, there really were some genuinely good effects of freelove amongst the liberals and intellectual libertarians of those times, which effects included things like: divorce doesn't have to be about hate and anger; children shouldn't be programmed to marry at all costs; masturbation is not evil; women's sexual desires are as much of a priority as men's; bearing children should be a conscious choice; women have something to contribute to "us" AS women . . . .

And we didn't get ALL of that out of the Karma Sutra he, he . . .

[progressoid]

142. It made it's way into our little town in Iowa too.

When they told us that Pink Floyd was Satan's music, I immediately bought a copy of Dark Side of the Moon!

[TexasTowelie]

16. How does Ted Nugent fit in?

[nikto]

17. Damn you!

You beat me to the punch on a Ted Nugent comment.
Dang you!!!

[TexasTowelie]

19. Here, maybe this will make you feel better.

Bad TexasTowelie!

[Mopar151]

50. Not exactly a musican anymore

Ted jumped the shark in the 80's sometime.

[Bake]

56. You're generously implying that Ted ever was actually a musician.

Fourth-rate guitarist at best. Basically just a one-hit hack who learned a couple of riffs. Put enough distortion on the amp and they sound OK.



Bake

[Mopar151]

75. As "legit" as a lot out there...

Especially in the "hair metal" era. His over the shark moment was firing his lead singer (Derek St, Holmes).

[Bake]

80. Which is to say, not very legit.

But you are correct.



Bake

[nikto]

87. Hey, the solo in "Journey To The Center Of The Mind" was pretty cool, actually...

Ofcourse, it was all downhill from there.

[Bake]

88. Wait ... that was the Moody Blues, wasn't it?

Ted was nowhere near that. If I remember correctly. And it's possible that I dno't remember correctly, because frankly I wasn't a big Moody Blues fan anyway--I always thought them a bit on the pretentious side.



Bake

[bluesbassman]

95. Amboy Dukes, 1968. n/t

[Bake]

122. Never was one of my favorites ...

But I stand corrected.



Bake

[bluesbassman]

123. Wasn't mine either. Truth be told...

I found most of the Psychedelic rock genre a little over done and pretentious. There was way better music being made.

[panader0]

125. What ever happened to the Thirteenth Floor Elevators?

[bluesbassman]

129. Wow! That certainly is a blast from the past.

Lot's of substance abuse issues with that band. IIRC the lead guitarist did some time in a mental institution rather than serve jail time for a drug beef. Think they pretty much disbanded by '69.

[proud2BlibKansan]

89. He wasn't a hippie.

Ted was a hippie wannabe. But we never let him in officially.

[nikto]

18. As I remember...

Godspell and Jesus Christ, Superstar did pretty well in those hippy days.
Or...daze.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

20. One of my earlier childhood memories

...is of my dad, a Southern Baptist, ranting about Jesus Christ Superstar being an extended exercise in "taking The Lord's name in vain". So the Baptists had that angle covered too.

[Bake]

57. I remember my Southern Baptist pastor preaching a sermon against JC Superstar.

The only part he knew was the line from Superstar, "who are you, what have you sacrificed."

That became the basis for the sermon.



Bake

[sagat]

22. They aren't?

[Initech]

24. Whoever wrote this book has never met metal fans.

[Scuba]

25. Did they mention this ...

[RudynJack]

26. Wing-nuts don't believe in free-love.

They believe everyone should have to pay for it.

[Kath1]

31. You're on to something there!

They certainly are opposed to all forms of birth control. Makes me want to send another donation to Planned Parenthood!

No wonder they usually look so sour and constipated!

[Bake]

58. Because that's the only way THEY get any ...

So by golly, EVERYBODY should have to pay for it!!



Bake

[patrice]

127. Nailed. it. That's the nut of it right there. That's also why a guy named Jesus was killed by his

church-state.

[patrice]

131. And Hippies were saying you don't really love if you're not free, which freaked a bunch of peopleout

From there hippies and freedom got demonized by means of a definition of freedom that amounts to "Doing whatever you want, without consequences", coming largely from "The Great Generation", which is a prostitution of the relationships that hippie people were actually trying to work out (more or less imperfectly, since they were trying to do something relatively "new&quot amongst themselves one by one, some pretty creatively, others not so much.

[Zorra]

27. I just finished reading Magaret Atwood's absolutely brilliant novel "The Handmaid's Tale" for the

second time. I read it for the first time in1986.

This reading disturbed me even more than the first reading did, and the OP is an illustration of the reasons why I found the book even more relevant than I did in 1986. It's even more relevant today.

Keeping conservatives, particularly the toxic RW religious conservatives, out of all positions of leadership and control is paramount to us maintaining any semblance of freedom.

I think I may donate to some liberal organizations later today.

[Starry Messenger]

38. I've read that book about five times, I think.

It's been awhile, time to get it out again and reread.

The other thing that bothers me about this story is the voucher school aspect of it. That is tax money going to this school that uses this horrid book.

[Kath1]

29. Ugh!

That is what is passing for education? Maybe they should mention that peace is better than war. At 54, I'm more of a hippie now than I was in the '70s. Proud of it, too! PEACE NOW!!!

[HughBeaumont]

30. My parents weren't hippies.

Don't know if my dad was a devil worshipper or not.

Think he'd tell me if I asked?

[graham4anything]

32. OMG. For a minute I thought that was me in the picture.

(not saying which one).

[RandiFan1290]

36. What did the hippie have in his bag???

Ear worm warning! You will sing this all day

[jsr]

40. Good ol' Satan worshippers

[PETRUS]

41. Oh good lord.

I wonder if this textbook has a section on the labor or civil rights movements...

[Starry Messenger]

44. I'd be afraid to see it.

Just imaging... this is probably the same book that says the KKK were plucky little freedom fighters.

[lunasun]

90. "God used the Trail of Tears to bring many Indians to Christ."—America: Land That I Love, Teacher ed

A Big WTF??? and paid for with taxpayer $$$$$$$$

[Starry Messenger]

100. Yes.

It makes me ill. It really shouldn't be legal. The right-wing is always whining about liberals in teh public schools, but no one on the left has ever taught anything as scurrilous as that.

[lunasun]

116. Teaching genocide issues in particular as a resort to bring non beleivers closer to Christ

Raises kids to be adults who may think not a second thought about wiping out an entire nation or geographic area in effort to bring them closer to Christ .

Infidels /ones without faith may have no choice but to die to fully receive Christ

To them it is a fact they learned in school

I have no problem with this kind of talk among soulsavers themselves but not on the taxpayer's dime and isn't at least some of the funding the LA state gets federal??

Is there a penny of my hard earned $$ via taxation going to indoctrinate this crap??? If so that is one penny too much

[Starry Messenger]

119. Another article said the voucher program costs $4 mil in tax money.

Yeah, I'm not too happy either.

[Cal Carpenter]

42. That's hilarious

I wish I could get a hold of the history texts I had in school as a kid. I'm sure they were horrific.

[Starry Messenger]

46. It's like something out of Mad Magazine.

Who writes these things? The ghost of George Wallace?

[Cal Carpenter]

47. Maybe the Onion?

Michelle Malkin?

I don't know. I wouldn't exactly want a byline if I wrote that crap!

[Starry Messenger]

48. Did you ever see the Mother Jones report on textbooks in LA voucher schools?

It's scary! http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/07/photos-evangelical-curricula-louisiana-tax-dollars It does read like the Onion.

[Cal Carpenter]

49. Wow! I'd seen one or two of those examples

somewhere but not the whole thing.

I love that the dinosaurs may have been dragons. That makes more sense than the rest of them

The scariest part is that those come from multiple textbooks, they aren't all from the same source.

[love_katz]

84. Good one.

The ghost of George Wallace? Yikes, time for an exorcism!

[Manifestor_of_Light]

43. "Eastern religious cult" = religions much older than christianity.

Hinduism and Buddhism. Hinduism goes back at least 10,000 years and Buddha lived 600 years before Jesus.

But then "Eastern religious cult" equals "Not Christianity, therefore BAD!!"

My idiot neighbor was in my house and saw my Medicine Buddha statue, held up her forearms in a cross to protect herself from the evil and said "BUDDHISM'S LIKE VOOOOOODOOOOOOOO!!!"

I have a bagua (Chinese feng shui mirror) on a tree outside to reflect her ignorance back to herself. And a six foot privacy fence.

I told her it was an ancient and dignified religion but she didn't hear me. All she knows is what some half-assed ignorant bible beatin' preacher tells her. She doesn't want to know anything.

And the guy across the street told me I was going to hell if I "keep meditating and worshiping Buddha". Had to set him straight about Buddha being an enlightened MAN, NOT a god.
His response, "Ohhhhhhh..."

He said his dad wouldn't let him watch the Beatles on Ed Sullivan in 1964 because they were "Communists". Seriously.

And that "Imagine" song by John Lennon is "the most atheistic, caahhhhmuhnistic song evah...."

[MineralMan]

52. Yay Hippies!

That passage should get a lot of kids interested in exploring hippieness, I'd guess.

Sex, drugs, and rock and roll! Who could ask for more?

[riqster]

53. I preferred the "freak" label, as did most people I knew at the time

On a related topic, I went to a museum at a southern university some years back, and they had an exhibit on the post-civil war era. Lots of displays on how the Northern Aggressors had disrupted the lives of the formerly-contended slaves.

Even my Brit girlfriend knew that was a crock. She found it quite Orwellian, as did I. And this at a mainstream state-chartered institution, not some fringe religious bible college.

[Starry Messenger]

55. Interesting that you bring this up.

Re-the anti-Northern spin on post Civil War history taught in schools. I read an article post-"Lincoln" movie that mentioned "The Dunning School of thought", which was a deliberately crafted ideology that painted the South as the victims. It was very prevalent in schools until the 1950's. I would think there was some carry-over into later decades, since changing things in education can be a slow process.

Wiki has a decent overview:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning_School

"The Dunning School refers to a group of historians who shared a historiographical school of thought regarding the Reconstruction period of American history (1865–1877). The Dunning School approach dominated scholarly and popular depictions of the era from about 1900 to the 1950s. Faircloth summarizes their viewpoint:

"All agreed that black suffrage had been a political blunder and that the Republican state governments in the South that rested upon black votes had been corrupt, extravagant, unrepresentative, and oppressive. The sympathies of the “Dunningite” historians lay with the white Southerners who resisted Congressional Reconstruction: whites who, organizing under the banner of the Conservative or Democratic Party, used legal opposition and extralegal violence to oust the Republicans from state power. Although “Dunningite” historians did not necessarily endorse those extra legal methods, they did tend to palliate them. From start to finish, they argued, Congressional Reconstruction—often dubbed “Radical Reconstruction”—lacked political wisdom and legitimacy."[1]

<snip>

The school was named after Columbia University professor William Archibald Dunning (1857–1922), whose writings and those of his PhD students comprised the main elements of the school. He supported the idea that the South had been hurt by Reconstruction and that American values had been trampled by the use of the U.S. Army to control state politics. He contended that freedmen had proved incapable of self-government and thus had made segregation necessary. Dunning believed that allowing blacks to vote and hold office had been "a serious error".[2] As a professor, he taught generations of scholars, many of whom expanded his views of the evils of Reconstruction. The Dunning School and similar historians dominated the version of Reconstruction-era history in textbooks into the 1960s. Their generalized adoption of deprecatory terms such as scalawags for southern white Republicans and carpetbaggers for northerners who worked and settled in the South, have persisted in historical works."

[riqster]

72. Fascinating!

I'll read up on that.

FWIW, this exhibit would have been in 2007, give or take a year.

[unblock]

54. and what do they have against satan? i mean, it's in the bible, right?

[L0oniX]

59. Oh ...its' Yahoo. n/t

[gollygee]

60. ROFL!

Ha! That's hilarious. The whole thing.

I guess the good side of these textbooks is the comedy value. Too bad kids are being taught this stuff as if it's legitimate.

[Starry Messenger]

68. And $4 million taxpayer money supports it.

The good news is that Jindal's education "reforms" are being beaten back in the courts. Hopefully, maybe, these fringe texts will go back to being the fodder of private schools that won't be able to take public money via vouchers.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joy-resmovits/bobby-jindals-education-r_b_2807933.html

[Bake]

64. How about that book title???

Sounds more like indoctrination than a history book!



Bake

[Starry Messenger]

69. Hi Bake, it's a good question.

The Mother Jones article from earlier this year posted some possible culprits. The "Hippies worship Satan" snippet wasn't sourced at the original AmericaBlog entry about it, from what I can tell.

But here are some "history" book titles from known conservative textbook publishers:

http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/07/photos-evangelical-curricula-louisiana-tax-dollars

America: Land That I Love, Teacher ed., A Beka Book, 1994

Old World History and Geography in Christian Perspective, 3rd ed., A Beka Book, 2004

United States History for Christian Schools, 2nd ed., Bob Jones University Press, 1991

United States History: Heritage of Freedom, 2nd ed., A Beka Book, 1996

American Government in Christian Perspective, 2nd ed., A Beka Book, 1997

You get the gist.

edit: I was wrong. AmericaBlog sourced the book. It's from America: Land That I Love, Teacher ed., A Beka Book, 1994

http://americablog.com/2013/03/voucher-school-us-history-book-hippies-didnt-bathe-worshipped-satan.html

"Now for the hippies

This comes from a book called “America: Land I Love.” It’s an eighth-grade history book that’s used in Louisiana voucher schools (the Mother Jones link above confirms that this book is being used). And it has a section on “The Hippies.” Here’s what Louisiana is teaching its school kids about the hippies:"

[Bake]

71. I'd love to see the one from Bob Jones University Press!!

OMFG!!!!



Bake

[SpartanDem]

81. I'm not it surprised it came from A Beka

they're a big player in the fundy homeschool crowd.

[love_katz]

82. Bingo! You win, Bake.

We are laughing at the absurdity of these pseudo factoids, but really, it is not funny.

Young, vulnerable minds are being polluted with indoctrination. And at the taxpayer's expense? Arrrrrrgh!

[steve2470]

67. slaps forehead

Brainwashing anyone ?

[Shrike47]

76. Michael Savage, back in the day.

Before he discovered hate radio.

[spanone]

77. and people rode dinosaurs too...this is frightening as hell. teaching children ignorance.

[LeftInTX]

78. Here's what a Louisiana textbook says about the KKK:

"[The Ku Klux] Klan in some areas of the country tried to be a means of reform, fighting the decline in morality and using the symbol of the cross. Klan targets were bootleggers, wife-beaters, and immoral movies. In some communities it achieved a certain respectability as it worked with politicians."—United States History for Christian Schools, 3rd ed., Bob Jones University Press, 2001

[gollygee]

83. Holy crap

I am speechless.

[Starry Messenger]

99. We need to fight and get rid of this shit.

Full stop. It's deforming America and keeping us from our democratic potential. The oligarchies are trying to normalize hate and infect children with it.

[Trajan]

79. Religionists in the state of Texas control the content of school textbooks

[font size=2]I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this yet ...

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/jun/21/how-texas-inflicts-bad-textbooks-on-us/?pagination=false

How Texas Inflicts Bad Textbooks on Us

June 21, 2012

Gail Collins


[font size=1]Texas State Board of Education members Cynthia Dunbar, Barbara Cargill, and Gail Lowe discussing curriculum standards, Austin, May 2008. Cargill, who was appointed chairwoman last year by Governor Rick Perry, has expressed concern that there are now only ‘six true conservative Christians on the board.’[font size=2]

“What happens in Texas doesn’t stay in Texas when it comes to textbooks”

No matter where you live, if your children go to public schools, the textbooks they use were very possibly written under Texas influence. If they graduated with a reflexive suspicion of the concept of separation of church and state and an unexpected interest in the contributions of the National Rifle Association to American history, you know who to blame.

When it comes to meddling with school textbooks, Texas is both similar to other states and totally different. It’s hardly the only one that likes to fiddle around with the material its kids study in class. The difference is due to size—4.8 million textbook-reading schoolchildren as of 2011—and the peculiarities of its system of government, in which the State Board of Education is selected in elections that are practically devoid of voters, and wealthy donors can chip in unlimited amounts of money to help their favorites win.

Those favorites are not shrinking violets. In 2009, the nation watched in awe as the state board worked on approving a new science curriculum under the leadership of a chair who believed that “evolution is hooey.” In 2010, the subject was social studies and the teachers tasked with drawing up course guidelines were supposed to work in consultation with “experts” added on by the board, one of whom believed that the income tax was contrary to the word of God in the scriptures.

Ever since the 1960s, the selection of schoolbooks in Texas has been a target for the religious right, which worried that schoolchildren were being indoctrinated in godless secularism, and political conservatives who felt that their kids were being given way too much propaganda about the positive aspects of the federal government. Mel Gabler, an oil company clerk, and his wife, Norma, who began their textbook crusade at their kitchen table, were the leaders of the first wave. They brought their supporters to State Board of Education meetings, unrolling their “scroll of shame,” which listed objections they had to the content of the current reading material. At times, the scroll was fifty-four feet long. Products of the Texas school system have the Gablers to thank for the fact that at one point the New Deal was axed from the timeline of significant events in American history.

-snip-

Pitiful ....

[malthaussen]

85. Damn, how did they find out about us?

Excuse me while I recite the Lord's Prayer backwards... "Amen, amen..."

-- Mal

[no_hypocrisy]

91. And I haven't changed a bit.

Now go away!

[Initech]

97. THE BUMS WILL ALWAYS LOSE! DO YOU HEAR ME LEBOWSKI???

http://m.

[aquart]

103. Texas texts?

[Starry Messenger]

105. A Beka as someone noted above is a longtime homeschooling program

They are based in FLA. http://www.abeka.com/OurFoundation.aspx

Bob Jones University is based in SC.

[aquart]

149. Thank you!

My loathing for homeschooling continueth.

[sibelian]

104. Well a hippy crashed my car recently so people can call them what they want as far as I'm concerned.

Useless jerks.

[Starry Messenger]

106. Oh sure.

Well, if anyone crashed into your car of any other counter-culture identification, it would be totally appropriate to label their contributions satanic, and have that taught to schoolkids with taxpayer millions. Because that isn't authoritarian and narcissistic at all.

[sibelian]

107. Well, it sort of depends on the sub-culture.

I think any further textbook distortions would have to be the *most irritatingly inappropriate* distortion possible of their ideology/oeuvre before I would feel satisfied with my vicarious "vengeance". (Gosh, that's alliterative).

So, you could have textbooks calling goths "frivolous", punks "timid and over-cautious", Elvis impersonators "lacking focus and goals", shoegaze "hyper-politicized and overwrought", stuff like that. If you want to avoid limiting it to music you could call Occupy "grotesquely hierarchical", or the BDSM community "inhibited and conservative".

And so on.

Anyway, she crashed my car.

Do you know any hippies?

[Rex]

108. Fucking bullshit from the Establishment!

Government man in his shinny suit. Fuck the pigs! Fuck war man!

[Raine]

112. Lots of those hippies are now repukes on the verge of being senior citizens or they already are. nt

[Ken Burch]

113. Is it just me, or does the frizzy-haired dude in the middle

look like Will Ferrell if he'd been in "Dazed and Confused"?

[Phillip McCleod]

115. smoke pot! worship satan! freak out the squares!

modern dems could learn a lot from the hippies.

like how to plant a flower in the muzzle of implacable hatred.

[Kath1]

117. I was too young to be a part of the original hippie movement

but I fondly recall my hippie days in high school in the mid 70's. Ragged bell bottom jeans, tinted glasses, over sized turtleneck sweater, sandals, fringed purse. Smoking cigarettes, cursing a lot and telling anybody who would listen how much I hated Nixon while waiting for the school bus. The good old days! We need more hippies!

[Starry Messenger]

120. I was born in 1970.

I found out about hippies when I was 7 or 8 and got all excited and asked my parents if they'd been hippies. Boy was I sad! My parents both told me that they'd been anti-counterculture Nixon lovers. They were young Republicans in love! My mom moved *out* of the Haight-Ashbury in the Summer of Love!

She's now recovered (and divorced), but that's my hippie story.

[Kath1]

121. Great story, Starry Messenger!

I took a long break from hippiedom while I was married to a Republican conservative. Like your mom I am also "recovered (and divorced)." I'm more of a hippie now than I was in the 70's and I'm glad to say my 25 year old daughter is a 2013-era hippie! Peace and love!

[Puzzledtraveller]

124. :)

[patrice]

126. Someone has been working on this meme at least since 1986, when I first heard that we are responsibl

e for the decline of the USA, from an educated person who taught debate at the Catholic high school where I taught.

[Skidmore]

128. Why does a textbook even have the word "immoral" in it?

That is a value laden word.

[MountainLaurel]

132. Another proud moment for Louisiana

Combine this with the textbook that says the Loch Ness monster is real, and what a state we have.

[napkinz]

133. yeah, just play the Beatles backwards! ...

"No, a Demon Idol" and "Satan, look at me please."

"Satan look at me. Come on, Satan, now. Is he great?

"We'll Fuck You Like You're Superman?" OK!

[napkinz]

143. and how could I forget this one!

[Douglas Carpenter]

134. I really doubt that they are rewriting history as much as they are just telling their memories of

how they saw it at the time. This description of hippies was a very popular notion held by a major portions of the population and was reported in the mainstream media at the time.

Remember this 1967 CBS special, "The Hippie Temptation"

[Starry Messenger]

139. I missed out on that classic.

Born too late! My parents probably saw it...Harry Reasoner, that's a name I haven't thought of for years.

I figured the books had been influenced by a sort of Bircher world-view, but your point makes sense.

[napkinz]

140. hey, at 33:14 in the video, the Grateful Dead!

Weird seeing Jery Garcia without the beard.

I have to say, Harry Reasoner is very condescending in this documentary.

[reflection]

135. One of my teachers in 7th grade tried to tell me

that Rush and Yes were Satanic bands. I was deep into both at the time.

She said Rush stood for 'Rulers Under Satan's Hand' and that Yes' lyrics were Satanic. I eviscerated her "theories" as well as a 13-year old could. The whole thing was just utterly befuddling. Neither band showed the slightest amount of Satanism. Rush were sort of fatalist, and a little Randian in their early work, and Yes could be construed as mystical perhaps. But Satanistic? Psssh.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

145. They are the priests of the temples...

...of Satan.

And did you ever notice that 90125 is 5 characters long, the same number of characters as in S-A-T-A-N? That's scientific proof right there. Still don't believe me? What about Heart of the Sunrise? The sun is hot. Its "heart" is even hotter--an obvious reference to Hell.

[reflection]

146. It was actually 2112 that set her off.

The Red Star and all. I quoted the lyrics from 'Survival' when we got to Yes. Such a gentle song. How it could be construed as Satanic I have no idea.

[nikto]

148. Poor, miserable woman

Sounds like a wretch.

[WCGreen]

136. Let's compare the Hippies with the tea baggers and see who comes out the better...

[jwirr]

137. Oh, Lord, they look good to me. Satan or no satan.

[moondust]

147. Soviet historiography.

The official version of Soviet history has been dramatically changed after every major governmental shake-up. Previous leaders were always denounced as "enemies", whereas current leaders were usually a subject of a personality cult. Textbooks were rewritten periodically, with figures - such as Leon Trotsky or Joseph Stalin - disappearing from their pages or being turned from great figures to great villains.[11][13]

Certain regions and periods of history were made unreliable for political reasons. Entire historical events could be erased, if they did not fit the party line.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_historiography

The Fox News of textbook writing: "Designer history bent to your specifications!"

[liberal_at_heart]

150. no. no. they have it all wrong. Satan worship didn't come into play until Black Sabbath man.

[cliffordu]

151. Yeah, well I got their Satan right here....

[DonCoquixote]

152. The Bullshit begins

Never mind that half their parents lsitened to Dylan and the Who. As far as Satan Worship goes, very few claimed that, and fewer even knew what the hell they were talking about.

[Turbineguy]

153. And they are starting to collect

Social security! The very work of Satan!