Texas - disconnected?
Duderonomy
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So to what extent is any of this really happening, or is this just an example of the press latching on to another 'only in duh-merica' headline?'on the brink of' seems like it could be the key statement... surely?http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/16/texas-schools-rewrites-us-history
Cynthia Dunbar does not have a high regard for her local schools. She has called them unconstitutional, tyrannical and tools of perversion. The conservative Texas lawyer has even likened sending children to her state's schools to "throwing them in to the enemy's flames". Her hostility runs so deep that she educated her own offspring at home and at private Christian establishments.Now Dunbar is on the brink of fulfilling a promise to change all that, or at least point Texas schools toward salvation. She is one of a clutch of Christian evangelists and social conservatives who have grasped control of the state's education board. This week they are expected to force through a new curriculum that is likely to shift what millions of American schoolchildren far beyond Texas learn about their history.The board is to vote on a sweeping purge of alleged liberal bias in Texas school textbooks in favour of what Dunbar says really matters: a belief in America as a nation chosen by God as a beacon to the world, and free enterprise as the cornerstone of liberty and democracy."We are fighting for our children's education and our nation's future," Dunbar said. "In Texas we have certain statutory obligations to promote patriotism and to promote the free enterprise system. There seems to have been a move away from a patriotic ideology. There seems to be a denial that this was a nation founded under God. We had to go back and make some corrections."Those corrections have prompted a blizzard of accusations of rewriting history and indoctrinating children by promoting rightwing views on religion, economics and guns while diminishing the science of evolution, the civil rights movement and the horrors of slavery.Several changes include sidelining Thomas Jefferson, who favoured separation of church and state, while introducing a new focus on the "significant contributions" of pro-slavery Confederate leaders during the civil war.The new curriculum asserts that "the right to keep and bear arms" is an important element of a democratic society. Study of Sir Isaac Newton is dropped in favour of examining scientific advances through military technology.There is also a suggestion that the anti-communist witch-hunt by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s may have been justified.The education board has dropped references to the slave trade in favour of calling it the more innocuous "Atlantic triangular trade", and recasts the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as driven by Islamic fundamentalism."There is a battle for the soul of education," said Mavis Knight, a liberal member of the Texas education board. "They're trying to indoctrinate with American exceptionalism, the Christian founding of this country, the free enterprise system. There are strands where the free enterprise system fits appropriately but they have stretched the concept of the free enterprise system back to medieval times. The president of the Texas historical association could not find any documentation to support the stretching of the free enterprise system to ancient times but it made no difference."The curriculum has alarmed liberals across the country in part because Texas buys millions of text books every year, giving it considerable sway over what publishers print. By some estimates, all but a handful of American states rely on text books written to meet the Texas curriculum. The California legislature is considering a bill that would bar them from being used in the state's schools.In the past four years, Christian conservatives have won almost half the seats on the Texas education board and can rely on other Republicans for support on most issues. They previously tried to require science teachers to address the "strengths and weaknesses" in the theory of evolution ? a move critics regard as a back door to teaching creationism ? but failed. They have had more success in tackling history and social studies.Dunbar backed amendments to the curriculum that portray the free enterprise system (there is no mention of capitalism, deemed to be a tainted word) as a cornerstone of liberty and argue that the government should have a minimal role in the economy.One amendment requires that students be taught that economic prosperity requires "minimal government intrusion and taxation".Underpinning the changes is a particular view of religion.Dunbar was elected to the state education board on the back of a campaign in which she argued for the teaching of creationism ? euphemistically known as intelligent design ? in science classes.Two years ago, she published a book, One Nation Under God, in which she argued that the United States was ultimately governed by the scriptures."The only accurate method of ascertaining the intent of the founding fathers at the time of our government's inception comes from a biblical worldview," she wrote. "We as a nation were intended by God to be a light set on a hill to serve as a beacon of hope and Christian charity to a lost and dying world."On the education board, Dunbar backed changes that include teaching the role the "Jewish Ten Commandments" played in "political and legal ideas", and the study of the influence of Moses on the US constitution. Dunbar says these are important steps to overturning what she believes is the myth of a separation between church and state in the US."There's been this amorphous changing of how we look at religion and how we define religion within American history. One concern I have is that the viewpoint of the founding fathers is very clear. They were not against the promotion of religion. I think it is important to present a historically accurate viewpoint to students," she said.On the face of it some of the changes are innocuous but critics say that closer scrutiny reveals a not-so-hidden agenda. History students are now to be required to study documents, such as the Mayflower Compact, which instil the idea of America being founded as a Christian fundamentalist nation.Knight and others do not question that religion was an important force in American history but they fear that it is being used as a Trojan horse by evangelists to insert religious indoctrination into the school curriculum. They point to the wording of amendments such as that requiring students to "describe how religion and virtue contributed to the growth of representative government in the American colonies".Among the advisers the board brought in to help rewrite the curriculum is David Barton, the leader of WallBuilders which seeks to promote religion in history. Barton has campaigned against the separation of church and state. He argues that income tax should be abolished because it contradicts the bible. Among his recommendations was that pupils should be taught that the declaration of independence establishes that the creator is at the heart of law, government and individual rights.Conservatives have been accused of an assault on the history of civil rights. One curriculum amendment describes the civil rights movement as creating "unrealistic expectations of equal outcomes" among minorities. Another seeks to place Martin Luther King and the violent Black Panther movement as opposite sides of the same coin."We had a big discussion around that," said Knight, a former teacher. "It was an attempt to taint the civil rights movement. They did the same by almost equating George Wallace [the segregationist governor of Alabama in the mid-1960s
] with the civil rights movement and the things Martin Luther King Jr was trying to accomplish, as if Wallace was standing up for white civil rights. That's how slick they are."They're very smooth at excluding the contributions of minorities into the curriculum. It is as if they want to render minority groups totally invisible. I think it's racist. I really do."The blizzard of amendments has produced the occasional farce. Some figures have been sidelined because they are deemed to be socialist or un-American. One of them is a children's author, Bill Martin, who wrote a popular tale, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? Martin was purged from the curriculum when he was confused with an author with a similar name but a different book, Ethical Marxism.
Comments
Good luck explaining how the a-bomb actually managed to fall on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Could these mooted educational reforms be seen as institutionalised child abuse?
Will the questions-posing-as-devil's-advocate-but-actually-rhetorical posting style ever be a good look?
Usual Tex-reps to speak on it. Or say that it's no-one else's muhfuh bidniss.
God's will. Obvious, ennit?
In the words of Gok-Wan, "It's all about the confidence".
But honestly, I'm incredulous enough to believe that a Texas poaster on this board will chime in with how this isn't really a good rep of Texan education, that this crazy lady speaks for a small and delusional minority, and that there's more chance of cheating death than avoiding taxes on the grounds that they're 'un-American' or 'un-Christian'.
Right Harv?
My favourite quote is "There seems to be a denial that this was a nation founded under God. We had to go back and make some corrections" - she's letting her Torquemada tatoo show there.
Put his mask on back-to-front-o.
It is tragic but with time, those mistakes will be corrected. I'm going to enroll my son in a private Science/Art based academy soon, so there are private options.
Surely.
It's a tug of war with each side claiming "victories".
Personally I always had the type of relationship with my kids where we would discuss any of these questionable issues and try to explore and understand all the angles.
As a parent, questioning any part of a ciriculum and making sure your kid understands both sides of an issue(ie. Evolution vs. Creationism)is not an unreasonable responsibility.
A few years back a Congressman from San Antonio was on a local radio talk show pushing for an official "daily minute of silence" in Texas Public Schools that kids could use in any way they saw fit.
I called in and told him his plan was nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to try to get prayer back into our classrooms and should be presented as such.
He took offense and said "You're probably one of those people who support sex education in our public schools".
I replied "I support BOTH sex and religious education, I just don't think we should take time out from the school day to allow students to practice either one".
I was promptly introduced to Mr. Dialtone.
Evolution is science and to put creationism in the same argument with it, is a disservice to actual science education in my opinion, that would be better reserved for a literature class and presented as such.
Ha ha. Dude, really? Where's the liberal equivalent of this? Please enlighten me.
Dude, really? You think public school curricula just magically broaden and become more inclusive at random?
One could certainly argue that education should not be politicized but it'd be naive to think that all sides don't think of it as a volatile terrain to battle for influence. American public schools have become more liberalized (in most states at least) over the last half century. That's the result of specific, deliberate attempts to do so. What you're now seeing is a push back/rollback. The latter makes for better news but it doesn't mean there haven't been liberal agendas at work either. And there ought to be.
The textbooks were already a cauldron of misinformation, such as Columbus discovered America and we live in a democracy.
The schools are already leading kids down the wrong path, stripping them of all creative outlets including those related to physical fitness.
Of course these proposed textbook edits make things that much worse.
But I think it's long been up to parents to teach their children that their school isn't providing the end-all, be-all when it comes to their education...and that the school shouldn't necessarily be viewed as all that much of an institution of authority as just one more resource that needs to be scrutinized at every turn. Kids might as well get used to learning how to be analytical and cope with a load of bullshit presented as official business as it only gets worse in that regard once they grow up and enter the "real world".
How's that for a shoulder shrug?
Again, where is the liberal equivalent of this display of ridiculous extremism?
I'd say that's a pretty reasonable view of the situation.
Calling a representative republic a democracy.
Calling a representative republic subverted on its ear by lobbyist systematically paying for their agendas to be legislated despite public sentiment a democracy.
So it's ok to knowingly load kids up with utter crap to be overcome in the hope that this will make them somehow stronger in the long run?
The 'Boy Named Sue' school of schooling.
The 'that which doesn't kill me' school of thought.
God bless you all.
SMH
You can't be enlightened....because you won't think what Conservatives view as "liberal extremism" is extreme at all.
What you feel is a Conservative agenda is what Conservatives think is simply "Doing the right thing".
And subsequently the things Conservatives see as a Liberal agenda you see as just "Doing the right thing".
To prove my point with one example, many Conservatives see pushing school text books like "My Two Dads" as part of the liberal agenda.(there are many more I could use as an example)
And while many citizens are outraged by this I'll bet you just see it as "Doing the right thing".
And to make things clear, I personally have no problem with teaching about "My Two Dads" or Creationism as long as they are taught in the correct context which is basically "This is how some people live/believe".
Not as a mandate of right vs. wrong, but more as here are all the options, respect how other people live.
I believe in the theory of Evolution, but I don't automatically think anyone who doesn't is a defacto idiot.
A birds eye view really helps on issues like this.
And I'm not a fan of the "Liberal = Smart/Conservative = Stupid" theory I see so many folks expound.
The promotion of those views are 100% bi-partisan.
Well next week when I assume control of the school board, I'll make it all right and better.
The Queen shall rule this land!
I can't think of a response beyond an eye-roll. You couldn't be more confused about my position.
I don't think you'd find it "extremism" but I'm sure there are plenty who find the idea of, say, talking about evolution as "extreme liberalism." My point here is that the politics of the issue are in the eye of the beholder. What you or I would find perfectly rational curricula could easily be twisted by the opposition to appear to be extreme. Just look at the Supreme Court battles - at this point, if you're in favor of upholding the last 30 years of jurisprudence, you're an "activist judge" whereas rolling back those changes makes you "an originalist."
Bizarro world my friend.
OK....then we're done here.
On balance, probably chemtrails and the hollow earth are preferable to creationism.
It's probably my fault for not being more clear in my initial post.
I am not a "liberal." I do not care for any agendas being pushed on to the educational system that involve brainwashing children with political propaganda, regardless of the political affiliation of the pushers.
Let me assure both you and Rock that I completely understand that everyone has a relative perspective and that most people tend to think that their way is right.
I cannot stress enough that I am not a liberal apologist, but I do not think promoting acceptance of homosexuals, for example, is not even remotely the same as promoting racial and religious superiority, which is what I believe these people are doing.
Sure, I agree with you. But you asked what the liberal equivalent to Texas' current textbook proposals is and to the opposition, "promoting acceptance of homosexuals" IS the equivalent.