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Message started by Starlifter on 05/19/10 at 09:15:02

Title: Texas ready for textbook showdown
Post by Starlifter on 05/19/10 at 09:15:02

Source: MSNBC

Board to vote on curriculum changes some call ‘backward’

AUSTIN, Texas - Is Texas on the verge of rewriting history, or just correcting it?

The answer depends on whom you listen to on the state’s Board of Education, which is poised to vote this week on new social-studies curriculum standards that could significantly shape what Texas children — and perhaps those outside the nation's second-largest state — are taught in the classroom.

Social conservatives on the 15-member Republican-dominated board are optimistic they will be able to push through curriculum changes that, according to board member and conservative Texas lawyer Cynthia Noland Dunbar, “promote patriotism.”

Among the recommendations facing a final vote: adding language saying the country's Founding Fathers were guided by Christian principles and including positive references to the Moral Majority, the National Rifle Association and the GOP’s Contract with America.

Other amendments to the state's curriculum standards for kindergarten through 12th grade would minimize Thomas Jefferson's role in world and U.S. history because he advocated the separation of church and state; require that students learn about "the unintended consequences" of affirmative action; assert that "the right to keep and bear arms" is an important element of a democratic society; and rename the slave trade to the "Atlantic triangular trade.”

"The standards are looking real good now. We've made some significant improvements, and I am proud of what the board has done," board member Don McLeroy, author of many of the changes backed by social conservatives, told the Dallas Morning News.

'Founded under God'

Texas school board member Dunbar, who home-schools her children and says sending them to local schools would be like “throwing them in the enemy’s flames,” says the changes she backs are all about “fighting for our children's education and our nation's future."

"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,” she said in a recent interview with the U.K. Guardian. “There seems to be a denial that this was a nation founded under God. We had to go back and make some corrections."

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They are neither "rewriting" history nor correcting it.

Sigh...they are simply being stupid, and everyone outside their fetid Circle of Ignorance knows it. Embracing Denial - A slow, painfu,l death spiral.

(Please no offence to JOG and other Texans, just brining this to light.)

Title: Re: Texas ready for textbook showdown
Post by mick on 05/19/10 at 14:57:17

Next thing you know they will take Darwin out of there history books.
Ask any kid raised in Texas ,"who was the first to cross the atlantic in an aeroplane"? and who invented Television?"

Title: Re: Texas ready for textbook showdown
Post by Jay on 05/20/10 at 03:56:14

That's a fight I hope they lose. I don't want my grandkids subjected to ideology. I want them to know the facts and be able to make up their own minds.
When I was growing up, we had a name for this kind of stuff...BRAINWASHING!

Title: Re: Texas ready for textbook showdown
Post by drharveys on 05/20/10 at 08:32:00

History textbooks suck!

And it's not just my opinion:

James Loewen spent two years at the Smithsonian Institution surveying twelve leading high school textbooks of American history. He found an embarrassing blend of bland optimism, blind nationalism, and plain misinformation, weighing in at an average of 888 pages and almost five pounds.

http://www.ushistory.org/us/historians/loewen.asp

And, for more of Loewen:

http://sundown.afro.illinois.edu/

He's the author of "Lies my teacher told me" and "Lies across America" -- available in your local library or bookstore.

Title: Re: Texas ready for textbook showdown
Post by tcreeley on 05/21/10 at 15:37:45

Doesn't take much to satisfy an intellectual idiot, just a little make believe, like in Texas. :D

Title: Re: Texas ready for textbook showdown
Post by mick on 05/21/10 at 17:36:20

I would like to remind Mr McElroy that most of the Founders were "
"Deists" NOT christians ! Jefferson refused to believe in the deity of Christ, And Madison wrote the constitution First Amendment, and a Georgian wrote the article which banned religious tests as a requirement for public office.
the above written by a friend of mine.
and another one writes.
I'm sure glad I don't live in Texas.there is just so much stupidity and bovine excrement of a political nature to step in, the self imposed ignorance is unbelievable.

Title: Re: Texas ready for textbook showdown
Post by tcreeley on 05/22/10 at 19:51:45

Ok so Obama isn't the messiah, but Sarah, aka Lake Palin, sure as hell ain't no Virgin Mary!

Title: Re: Texas ready for textbook showdown
Post by bill67 on 05/22/10 at 19:55:20

Are you still looking for a virgin?

Title: Re: Texas ready for textbook showdown
Post by mick on 05/22/10 at 20:30:09

just found out they are taking Darwin out of the new tex books.
Stupid stupid stupid.

Title: Re: Texas ready for textbook showdown
Post by Toymaker on 05/23/10 at 07:53:17

Since I am a teacher, let me explain something. If any of you would look into what is in the texts that you are so beautifully defending, you would find many many many inaccuracies, misquotes and plain rubbish. Every quarter this year, I have had to point out places where the textbook is NOT correct...but is using a clever form of propaganda.

and what is worse is we as taxpayers BUY these books at 60-70 bucks a pop!

Title: Re: Texas ready for textbook showdown
Post by Starlifter on 05/23/10 at 09:52:42

Inaccuracies are one thing...these people just make sh!t up.

Title: Re: Texas ready for textbook showdown
Post by mick on 05/23/10 at 12:20:44

506C61506B7D69656F6176040 wrote:

I'm supprised they are not seeking you out to prosicute you for not teaching according to the new text books.
Texas will probably start burning teachers at the stake, they usually are about a 100 years behind the rest of the world.
I don't know why we don't give the whole state to Mexico.

Title: Re: Texas ready for textbook showdown
Post by bill67 on 05/23/10 at 12:30:44

This is all news to me I didn't realize Texas had textbooks.Are they in Spanish or English.

Title: Re: Texas ready for textbook showdown
Post by mick on 05/23/10 at 12:48:34

787376762C2D1A0 wrote:

This is all news to me I didn't realize Texas had textbooks.Are they in Spanish or English.

they said they are all written in crayon. and only in American

Title: Re: Texas ready for textbook showdown
Post by Toymaker on 05/23/10 at 13:07:17

If only I was able tolaugh and joke about 8it like you. Un fortunatley, I have to explain basic truths to my students because the books they get are so bad.

Texas is just the tip of the iceberg...but because they buy so much, they get in the news. Mick and Starlifter...no crayon there...just people tired of crap and BS. Plain and simple

Title: Re: Texas ready for textbook showdown
Post by mick on 05/23/10 at 13:35:44

73787D7D2726110 wrote:

This is all news to me I didn't realize Texas had textbooks.Are they in Spanish or English.

they are in Spanglish

Title: Re: Texas ready for textbook showdown
Post by tcreeley on 05/24/10 at 16:19:07

always said- being south and below the rest of the country wasn't a good thing - guess Texas has found a way to gives us back some of that crap. ;D