How Conservatives Get Their Point Of View Taught In Schools (Outrage of the day)

[Joanne98]

The Dog thinks most Progressives, Liberals or any other stripe of DFH’s often despair at how seemingly clueless the majority of our nation is. After all, there are things the political Right spouts, which are clearly crazy. Many of us have decried the ideas of the United States being a "Christian country" or any of the kind of revisionist history that the Right continually spouts, yet it seems to find fertile ground with many Americans. Where does this kind of thinking seep into our national consciousness?

Something the Dog Said's diary :: :: One of the places is where you would least expect it, in public schools. There is a dirty little secret in the text book publishing trade, two states California and Texas pretty much have all the say in what goes into all the books in the nation, since they are the ones who make the biggest buys of these books.

Right now the ultra conservative Texas Board of Education is writing the standards for their text books. The board has a 2-to-1 Republican split. Over at Washington Monthly Mariah Blake has a great article about this fight.

Here are some of the things a Board member had to say about picking this years textbook standards;

With childlike glee, McLeroy flipped through the pages and explained what he saw as the gaping holes in Darwin’s theory. "I don’t care what the educational political lobby and their allies on the left say," he declared at one point. "Evolution is hooey." This bled into a rant about American history. "The secular humanists may argue that we are a secular nation," McLeroy said, jabbing his finger in the air for emphasis. "But we are a Christian nation founded on Christian principals. The way I evaluate history textbooks is first I see how they cover Christianity and Israel. Then I see how they treat Ronald Reagan—he needs to get credit for saving the world from communism and for the good economy over the last twenty years because he lowered taxes."

Views like these are relatively common in East Texas, a region that prides itself on being the buckle of the Bible Belt. But McLeroy is no ordinary citizen. The jovial creationist sits on the Texas State Board of Education, where he is one of the leaders of an activist bloc that holds enormous sway over the body’s decisions. As the state goes through the once-in-a-decade process of rewriting the standards for its textbooks, the faction is using its clout to infuse them with ultraconservative ideals. Among other things, they aim to rehabilitate Joseph McCarthy, bring global-warming denial into science class, and downplay the contributions of the civil rights movement.

This is a real problem this time as the state of California is not going to balance out the text book battle, since they will not have the money to buy new books until at least 2014. All of this means there is good chance that for the next few years kids in schools nation wide will be learning their history from books that try to make one of the most heinous Senators ever a good man. It is from these kinds of facts taught to school kids that keep the this nation from completely disavowing the teachings of the Right, since it requires a lot of thinking and intellectual curiosity to overcome what you are taught in grade school.

continued>>>
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/1/5/822008/-How-Conservatives-Get-Their-Point-Of-View-Taught-In-Schools.

Another way to solve this problem is to BAN anything that comes out of Texas from the schools all together! We need a parents revolt. Parents Against Texas Ignorance PATI.

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. They need to stop the way they choose textbooks in CA and TX

And I remember this being an issue when I was in college in the 70s. One of my education professors said he was hoping that by the time we were teaching this textbook selection policy would be history.

[Lautremont]

2. This will be the worst thing ever to happen in a Texas school book depository.

Seriously, that is a frightening article. If i had kids who were going to be affected by it, I would be chilled to my very bones. I am anyway, actually.

[supernova]

3. They've been doing this in Texas for years

Doesn't make it any less heinous though.

:grr:

I realized early that I wasn't getting the full story and did a lot of reading on my own. Still do. So, while they may get some, they won't get everyone to swallow their bile.

[tom_paine]

4. No question, we are at most a generation out from something truly horrific

maybe two. But 40 years seems wildly optimistic, given the speed at which our National Dialog has been infantilized and "Bushified".

Now, like the good Totalitarians they are, following "1984" like it was an instruction manual, they seek to control the past and make rational dialogue impossible without a common framework of history or even reality (which is now supplied wholly to our National Mind, by TV, media, and advertsiers - not in that order).

Just another step in what appears to be an unstoppable process that reached critical mass already when the election was stolen in 2000, or maybe it was even before that but it doesn;t really matter.

Exactly when is just a question for historians, it is here, now, and we are now in the Middle Phase, maybe even Late Middle Transition Phase to Totalitarianism.

I wonder they aren't trying to rehabilitate the Rebfederacy, but maybe even that's too much of a stretch.

For now. RW Authoritarians are reprogramming the National Mind, long-term, as badly or worse than the Nazis or Soviets.

Orwell was right. So was Yeats. The "rough beast, it's hour come round at last, slouches towarsd Bethlehem to be born."

[Martin Eden]

5. Hopefully hardcover textbooks will be obsolete before too long

When every student works with computers there will be no need for costly and heavy textbooks.

Once that happens there will be better curriculum choices.

[Mr Generic Other]

6. yes, that will be a good thing.

since currently it is not just students in texas but students all across america who will be reading these texts.
text book manufacturers come out with a variety of "choices" for districts to adopt but they are all essentially the same. and they are the texts that conform to the texas standards.