Rally for Secular Ediucation, Texas Capitol May 16, 2010!

[Synnical]

AMERICAN ATHEISTS
http://www.atheists.org

DEFEND ... The Enlightenment,
Science and Reason, High Academic
Standards in our public schools, and the
separation of Church and State!

JOIN US ON THE STEPS OF THE
TEXAS CAPITOL IN AUSTIN
Sunday, May 16, 2010 ~ 11:00 AM
--------------------------
Speak out against proposed radical changes to public school textbooks by the State Board of Education!
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A religious-right faction dominating the Texas Board of Education is trying to distort the content of public school textbooks. This revisionist history includes downplaying or eliminating mention of Enlightenment thinkers including Thomas Jefferson; more emphasis on religious themes and figures (theocrats like John Calvin!); and even attacks on Darwinian evolution.

These religious extremists wish to turn our public schools into pulpits for sectarian preaching and an authoritarian social and cultural agenda. Their actions could affect the content of school texts in nearly two-dozen other states as well! We urge you to join us for a peaceful assembly on the steps of the Texas State Capitol in Austin to protest this outrage, and to express support of teaching solid science, balanced history and facts over sectarian religious dogmatism. Stop the Texas Textbook Massacre!

Signs and banners will be provided, or bring your own. Suggested slogans and themes include:

"We Want Jefferson Back!"
"American History for Texans, too!"
"Education, Not Indoctrination"
"Question Authority -- Especially When They Don't Know What They're talking About!"


WHO'S INVITED: Religious and non-religious secularists who want fairness and accuracy in our public school curriculum!

WHAT: Mass rally on the steps of the Texas Capitol, 201 E. 14th St., Austin, TX.

WHEN: Sunday, May 16, 2010 beginning at 11:00 AM.

MORE INFO: American Atheists (www.atheists.org) or 00
Kathleen Johnson (Vice President, AA) [e-mail]
Joe Zamecki, (Texas State Director, AA) [e-mail]

(AMERICAN ATHEISTS is a nationwide movement that defends civil rights for Atheists, Freethinkers and other nonbelievers; works for the total separation of church and state; and addresses issues of First Amendment public policy.)

[awoke_in_2003]

1. let's hope

they managed to spell "education" correctly.

[Synnical]

2. Background from NPR: Texas Textbook Tussle Could Have National Impact

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124737756

The Texas Board of Education approved social studies curriculum guidelines that incorporate socially conservative ideas into American history. The new guidelines could ultimately reshape history and economics textbooks for Texas and, potentially, much of the nation.

NEAL CONAN, host:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. Im Neal Conan in Washington.

Last Friday, the Texas Board of Education voted to approve new social studies curriculum guidelines, and, in the process, may have rewritten the history textbooks for much of the nation.

Depending on who you listen to, they will soon reflect decidedly conservative views on American history or correct for the liberal biases of the past. But just who writes textbooks? Who ultimately decides what children learn?

. . .

But first, textbooks in Texas and nationwide. We begin in Texas with Nathan Bernier, excuse me Bernier. He joins us from member station KUT in Austin, where he's covered the curriculum controversy, and nice to have you on TALK OF THE NATION today.

NATHAN BERNIER: Thanks for having me, Neal.

CONAN: And so what did the Board of Education actually decide to do?

BERNIER: Well, what happened this month was yet another in a string of procedural votes to advance the curriculum guidelines forward. So the final adoption is not scheduled to occur until May, and that is when, you know, every 10 years, the state Board of Education is charged with revising or bringing up to date or changing in whatever way these elected officials see fit the curriculum standards, and these are standards that are used to teach the, you know, almost five million public school students in Texas.

Of course, social studies encompasses a broad range of topics, but the thing that has attracted the most attention is, you know, what do we teach children about U.S. history.

CONAN: And we should be clear: These are not, per se, textbook guidelines.

BERNIER: Well, it's kind of a strange process. Essentially, the state Board of Education adopts a curriculum standard, and it's not a curriculum, but it's the guidelines around which the curriculum is developed. Then once they adopt that - and they're going to do their final vote in May - then they give that to the textbook publishers, and the textbook publishers develop, you know, proposals for textbooks, and then they'll come back. The textbook publishers will return with their proposals, and the state Board of Education will say yeah, we like that one but not that one.

And you know, there's a lot of money involved here. The state Board of Education is responsible for managing an endowment worth more than $20 billion. It's called the Permanent School Fund, and money from that endowment is used to buy textbooks, and because Texas is the only state in the country that has uniform adoption standards from K through 12 in other words, it's the only state in the country where a central body decides what textbooks school districts can get for free there's high stakes here. It's not a district-by-district kind of thing.

. . . .

BERNIER: One more caveat here is that things can be completely changed at the last minute with this body. It's very unusual what happens. I mean, we saw with the science standards, you know, there was this document that had been worked on for months. Members of the TEA had been involved, the Texas Education Agency. People with Ph.D.s had been involved in developing these standards. And then at the last second, there was this mysterious document that was shoved underneath the hotel doors of some of the board members, and this document, at the very last minute wound up large portions of it wound up making its way into the guidelines.

So really, it's too soon to say what's going to happen when you know, until we have a final vote in May.

CONAN: We're speaking with Nathan Bernier, a reporter at member station KUT in Austin, Texas, about the decisions by the Texas Board of Education, which may or may not end up in their textbooks in a couple of years' time. But we want to find out: Who writes the textbooks that the history teachers use around the country? How important are they?

LYNN (Caller): Hello.

CONAN: Hi.

LYNN: 1993 to '96, I was a social studies department chair for an entire district, and that year, we had to purchase textbooks. There were three companies that were publishing textbooks for social studies, and they're all in Texas. And I was thoroughly disgusted with the ultraconservative bent of each one of those.

CONAN: Ultraconservative how?

LYNN: Well, they gave the ultraconservative point of view of American history.

CONAN: A quick for-instance.

LYNN: For example, the nation was founded on Christianity, which it was not. It was originally a trading venture. And there were several other that - she said just to mention one, so I'll mention that.

CONAN: Okay, all right.

LYNN: It was a religious point of view.

CONAN: And were you eventually forced to decide among those three books?

LYNN: Yes, we had to because it was my turn to purchase social studies books for the entire school district. And the following year, it was mathematics and so on.

I wish the Textbook League had been able to keep up its website.

http://www.textbookleague.org/