| The State School Board in Texas, the home of George W. Bush and Tom DeLay, has approved the most backward thinking, fundamentalist, right wing text book program ever seen in our country. The sad part of this story is that this ruling will affect students in many other parts of the country. You can read what the NY Times has to say about this by clicking here. 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 Schalfly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association.”
Dr. McLeroy pushed through a change to the teaching of the civil rights movement to ensure that students study the violent philosophy of the Black Panthers in addition to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent approach. He also made sure that textbooks would mention the votes in Congress on civil rights legislation, which Republicans supported.
“Republicans need a little credit for that,” he said. “I think it’s going to surprise some students.”
It even gets worse as these folks are also making an attempt to improve the image of one of the worst Senators our country ever saw... Joe McCarthy. I lived through that abysmal era that had McCarthy and others seeing communists under every rock. I still have friends whose lives and careers were destroyed because their names or similar names were on the "black list". Other changes seem aimed at tamping down criticism of the right. Conservatives passed one amendment, for instance, requiring that the history of McCarthyism include “how the later release of the Venona papers confirmed suspicions of communist infiltration in U.S. government.” The Venona papers were transcripts of some 3,000 communications between the Soviet Union and its agents in the United States.
In economics, the revisions add Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek, two champions of free-market economic theory, among the usual list of economists to be studied, like Adam Smith, Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes. They also replaced the word “capitalism” throughout their texts with the “free-enterprise system.” These “Let’s face it, capitalism does have a negative connotation,” said one conservative member, Teri Leo. “You know, ‘capitalist pig!’ ” The next major fields of study to go in Texas will likely be real civics and real American History. There is a 30 day window for public comment with a final vote to take place in May. Chances are that nothing will change A detailed study of the Texas School Board and standards particularly in regard to the church and state issue written by Russel Shorto back in February can be read by clicking here. It is a long article, but well worth your time. |
