TX RW Xian Religious Nuts Win Curriculum Change (Make-Believe Replaces Facts In School Books)

[stopbush]

That's right, the RW BoE in TX has voted to insert the SUPERSTITION of religion and a rewritten, RW-friendly MAKE BELIEVE history into textbooks that will end up being used by millions of kids across the country.

AUSTIN, Tex. — After three days of turbulent meetings, the Texas Board of Education on Friday approved a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light.

The vote was 10 to 5 along party lines, with all the Republicans on the board voting for it.

The board, whose members are elected, has influence beyond Texas because the state is one of the largest buyers of textbooks. 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.

“We are adding balance,” said Dr. Don McLeroy, the leader of the conservative faction on the board, after the vote. “History has already been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left.”

Battles over what to put in science and history books have taken place for years in the 20 states where state boards must adopt textbooks, most notably in California and Texas. But rarely in recent history has a group of conservative board members left such a mark on a social studies curriculum.

Efforts by Hispanic board members to include more Latino figures as role models for the state’s large Hispanic population were consistently defeated, prompting one member, Mary Helen Berlanga, to storm out of a meeting late Thursday night, saying, “They can just pretend this is a white America and Hispanics don’t exist.”

“They are going overboard, they are not experts, they are not historians,” she said. “They are rewriting history, not only of Texas but of the United States and the world.”

The curriculum standards will now be published in a state register, opening them up for 30 days of public comment. A final vote will be taken in May, but given the Republican dominance of the board, it is unlikely that many changes will be made.

The standards, reviewed every decade, serve as a template for textbook publishers, who must come before the board next year with drafts of their books. The board’s makeup will have changed by then because Dr. McLeroy lost in a primary this month to a more moderate Republican, and two others — one Democrat and one conservative Republican — announced they were not seeking re-election.

There are seven members of the conservative bloc on the board, but they are often joined by one of the other three Republicans on crucial votes. There were no historians, sociologists or economists consulted at the meetings, though some members of the conservative bloc held themselves out as experts on certain topics.

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.

“I reject the notion by the left of a constitutional separation of church and state,” said David Bradley, a conservative from Beaumont who works in real estate. “I have $1,000 for the charity of your choice if you can find it in the Constitution.”

They also included a plank to ensure that students learn about “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.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.html

[YOY]

1. to Mr. Bradly.

"Amendment 1 - Freedom of Religion, Press, Expression. Ratified 12/15/1791. Note

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Now make out that check to Planned Parenthood.

[Wapsie B]

2. What would be the most effective way of fighting something like this?

Seems that wingnuts have a free reign on these commissions. That has got to stop.

[DeSwiss]

19. All the "most effective" ways of fighting something like this, I believe are illegal.

- So I guess at this point that just leaves boycotts and lawyers......

[izquierdista]

3. Conservative "experts"

The only things conservatives are experts at are running an economy into the ditch, blowing up the wrong people, and laying waste to the environment.

[Angry Dragon]

4. The future..........2019

Texas students found by UN study to be 150 years behind rest of world.......even so called third world countries.......gee and I thought those new books would really help us

[trotsky]

5. Problem is, the TX textbook market is SO HUGE...

that the standards in Texas become the de facto standards elsewhere. This fucking sucks. Fucking religious loons - and there are STILL moderate believers who think that atheists speaking their minds are a bigger threat. :eyes:

[MadMaddie]

6. We need to find and support competitors that produce

real history books in the U.S. We need to take the market right from under them.

[Angry Dragon]

7. I know that is the problem

Texas orders so many books the publishers just want to run one set of books for the whole country. It is my belief that if this trend continues this country will not be able to compete with the rest of the world and the people will have no one to blame except themselves. We will bcome a second or third rate country. I wonder if their god will protect them then or if he/she will just pick another country to call his own??

[Wapsie B]

9. And the problem I have with that is don't other areas of the country think for themselves?

People who sit on these boards should be selecting texts with a little more critical thinking than monkey see monkey do. Just because a commission in Texas makes poor choices in classroom materials should have no bearing on selections in other states.

Edit: I still believe this needs to be a focus of Democrats around the country. The rwingers need to be stopped in their tracks.

[trotsky]

10. Well sure they do.

But when the publisher is looking at printing up a few million of these for Texas, and some local school board in New Hampshire wants 10,000 copies of an actual science-based version, how much more do you think it's going to cost them to be different?

Just because a commission in Texas makes poor choices in classroom materials should have no bearing on selections in other states.

Shouldn't, but economic reality says it does.

[redqueen]

12. I don't understand why California's market isn't bigger.

I wish they'd flex some muscle.

[trotsky]

14. Your wish has been granted!

http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_15098236

[redqueen]

16. Nice!

"While some Texas politicians may want to set their educational standards back 50 years, California should not be subject to their backward curriculum changes," Yee said. "The alterations and fallacies made by these extremist conservatives are offensive to our communities and inaccurate of our nation's diverse history."

It seems that CA is already safe from these changes though... I hope parents in other states are doing all they can to ensure they get the CA versions and not the backwards-assed TX versions.

I just feel so bad for all the kids in TX whose parents either don't care, or prefer that their children be poorly educated.

[stopbush]

17. "It seems that CA is already safe from these changes though."

Not true.

My daughter's Ancient History Book from last year (6th grade) in CA covered religious beliefs of ancient peoples. It treated the Jewish and Christian myths as history, while treating other religions as myths!

Example: a sidebar question on ancient Rome asked, "What is it about the story of Romulus and Remus that tells you the story is a myth?" Another section of the text referred to the R&R story as "a foundational myth in the history of Roman culture."

Sidebar question on the section on Christianity: "Do you think the apostles would have preached what Jesus taught if they didn't believe he was resurrected?"

Amazing! In one question, we're told that feral children being raised by animals is pure myth - even though such cases have been documented in recent history - while in another question, something as purely mythical as people coming back from the dead is treated as history, not to mention that the text treated both Jesus and the disciples as historic figures, when there is no evidence whatsoever that they existed.

BTW - the resurrection of Jesus got its own little box in this text, with the Heading "The Resurrection." The text said things like "Xians believe Jesus was resurrected from the dead." No where was the resurrection referred to as a "foundational myth" of Xianity.

When I called the school and asked them about this, I was assured that "the text meets the CA education standards." They wouldn't answer my question when I asked, "are you telling me the school district is asserting that people can come back from being dead after three days? Is that what is taught in biology class?"

Even liberal CA has been infected with this idiotic PC pandering to the Xians.

[redqueen]

18. Safe from the TX changes, I meant. (nt)

[ladjf]

8. What a disaster! How many millions of Tx children will be deprived

of an adequate education before the pendulum swings back in the direction of sanity? nt

[Jim__]

11. "... they are not experts, they are not historians...(t)hey are rewriting history"

I think that is the gist of the problems. Curriculum needs to be determined by experts; or at least with input and the power to veto from experts.

[TZ]

13. But the problem is conservatives don't recognize certain "experts"

Like the whole "teach the controversy" bullshit about evolution. THERE IS NO CONTROVERSY. The problem is the arrogant assholes who think they know MORE than the experts.

[immoderate]

15. It may not be so bad. Well maybe.

I mean Texas is already fucked. But what if a significant number of states refuse the revisionist history? Can Texas determine what all the other states will teach?

A Florida school board member told me that with modern techniques, publishers have more ability to "customize" their products to a state.

--imm

[stopbush]

20. As Americans, we should be dismayed that children in ANY state are being

taught lies about history. Sure, TX is a fucked up place, but I still feel for children who live there and are being ABUSED by this assault on providing them with a fact-based education.

[immoderate]

21. Who says I'm not dismayed?

:shrug:

--imm