Having totally borked science education in the Lone Star State, the Texas School Board is now winding up to stuff their right wing ideologies into the Social Studies curriculum.
I for one can't wait until Texas leaves the Union so we can put Texas and Turkey in the same category and begin to summarily ignore them. In the mean time, have a look at what they are doing, from the Texas Freedom Network:
The Texas State Board of Education is set to appoint a social studies curriculum "expert" panel that includes absurdly unqualified ideologues who are hostile to public education and argue that laws and public policies should be based on their narrow interpretations of the Bible.TFN has obtained the names of "experts" appointed by far-right state board members. Those panelists will guide the revision of social studies curriculum standards for Texas public schools. They include David Barton of the fundamentalist, Texas-based group WallBuilders, whose degree is in religious education, not the social sciences, and the Rev. Peter Marshall of Peter Marshall Ministries in Massachusetts, who suggests that California wildfires and Hurricane Katrina were divine punishments for tolerance of homosexuality.
The two have argued that the Constitution doesn't protect separation of church and state and hold a variety of other extreme views related to religion, education and government, TFN President Kathy Miller said.
"It's absurd to suggest that Texas universities don't have accomplished scholars in the field who are more qualified than ideologues who share a narrow political agenda," Miller said. "What's next? Rush Limbaugh on the 'expert' panel? It's clear now that just appointing a new chairman won't end this board's outrageous efforts to politicize the education of our schoolchildren. It's time for the Legislature to make sweeping changes to the board and its control over what our kids learn in public schools."
"With Don McLeroy's confirmation hanging in the balance in the Senate and lawmakers considering 15 bills that would strip the state board of its authority, these board members continue trying to push extremist politics into Texas classrooms," she said. "It's as if they're daring the Legislature to call them on it."
Barton, former vice chairman of the Texas Republican Party, is a self-styled "historian" without any formal training in the field. He argues that separation of church and state is a "myth" and that the nation's laws should be based on Scripture. He says, for example, that the Bible forbids taxes on income and capital gains. Yet even such groups as Texas Baptists Committed and the Baptist Joint Committee have sharply criticized Barton's interpretations of the Constitution and history.
Barton also acknowledges having used in his publications and speeches nearly a dozen quotes he has attributed to the nation's Founders even though he can't identify any primary sources showing that they really said them.
Some state board members have criticized what they believe are efforts to overemphasize the contributions of minorities in the nation's history. It is alarming, then, that in 1991 Barton spoke at events hosted by groups tied to white supremacists. He later said he hadn't known the groups were "part of a Nazi movement."
In addition, Barton's WallBuilders Web site suggests as a "helpful" resource the National Association of Christian Educators/Citizens for Excellence in Education, an organization that calls public schools places of "social depravity" and "spiritual slaughter."
There will be more during the coming days on this. In the mean time, you can poke around here to find out more.
- Log in to post comments
I would like to correct you on your comment to "put Texas and Turkey in the same category." Turkey was founded on a clearly secular basis and the secularists have been far more active in defending that fact than we Americans have. Though a purportedly moderate religious party came to power in 2007, an openly secular party still managed second place whereas leaders from both of our main parties must openly express their faith to have a chance at national office.
You can always pick out the target of a right-wing bullshit bomb by the noun that has the greatest number of positive adjectives describing it.
Thus, the Center for Super-Duper Greatest Awesome Sexuality Education is clearly interested in the destruction of sex ed. I suspect this has something to do with the conservative belief that words are more important than actions, having recently just discovered them to be an improvement over bludgeoning each other with clubs.
Fifty bucks says Barton's got a closet thing with black male prostitutes. They always do.
Yes, Texas is surely doomed, if they continue to allow this nonsense. Let's just hope they don't drag the rest of us down with them. Please, please, let rational people make themselves heard so that we can rid ourselves of this plague on reason.
Why don't we just call Mexico and tell them they can have Texas back now? *shrug* We don't want it anymore.
Is this sort of idiocy contagious? It's just that I'll be visiting the USA in a few months and had planned to fly in to Houston. Should I plan a different route to avoid Texas and preserve my sanity?
If Texas goes off the deep end, perhaps the focus needs to shift to the textbook publishers. Sure, they want to publish and sell books to Texas schools, but the rest of us don't have to buy them. If that is made clear to the publishers, perhaps they'll at least preserve a line of textbooks suitable for the rest of the nation. Maybe they'll end up with a standard edition and a Texas edition. Too bad for Texas kids, but better than letting Texas drag the rest down.
If automakers can have "California models" then publishers should be able to print "Texas editions." Just dust off some of the ones they printed back in the 1920s and away they go.
Or not. The 1920s editions might be a bit radical for Texas. It might be safer to use something from before 1859.
Not to defend Texas, for it is as indefensible* as the generalizations that call it indefensible on the basis of a loud, bigoted, anti-science minority, but it is a big state, and there are a lot of people who are profoundly invested in science, accuracy, and empirically-based education. And so on. Check out the developing demographics of the state, if you want to reset some of your received ideas. Maybe even visit (most reasonable people find Austin congenial, but that's an easy one). If you want to play point at the stupid kid, and laugh, go ahead ... but it does make you look a bit superficial. Now, go back to your talk about the benighted masses....
*What state, ultimately, is a shining example of Reason, seamless, monolithic, and unblemished?
I feel sorry for the kids.
As far as I know (and I am no expert), textbook publishers tend to make 2 versions of texts, a "Texas" version and a "California" version, as these are the two largest buyers of books - they get to choose what the rest of the country more-or-less sees. Luckily California has a better track record than TX.
You're correct that Greg chose a particularly bad example here. From what my Turkish friends tell me, Turkish civil society leans Islamic, but since the time of Kemal Atatürk the military has always been and continues to be secular. The civil authorities understand that the military will not tolerate religious rule, and so are constrained in terms of how far they can push Sharia law and other aspects of Islam.
Many more than two, actually. There are at least a couple of dozen states that have their own editions of some or all textbooks. But you're correct that California and Texas are the two biggies. California, because it's the largest buyer of school textbooks overall. But Texas is even more important to publishers because, unlike California, Texas buys the same textbooks for every school in the state. Basically, one textbook publisher is selected for (for example) high school chemistry, and then every school system in Texas buys that one book. The approved list is updated, IIRC, every three years, so a publisher that's shut out in Texas on this go-round isn't going to sell any textbooks in Texas for three years. So publishers are even more careful to meet Texas standards than they are to meet California standards.
Other states (such as North Carolina, where I live) have their own standards, which textbook publishers must meet if they expect to sell any books to public schools in that state. But those standards typically require only minor tweaking to meet, so the North Carolina or Ohio or Arizona edition isn't likely to differ much from the Califoria edition. And, of course, different school systems within the state can choose books from different publishers, so a publisher that's shut out by one school system can still sell to many others within the state.