Local Dallas columnist examines fundie home school materials.

[tanyev]

I predict this guy is going to get a lot of hate mail. Especially interesting because he usually does apolitical, local interest stuff.

Steve Blow:
Turning textbooks into the Good Book

A concerned mom called my attention to the politically loaded lessons. She was troubled by some of the Texas history worksheets her son was bringing home.

That's where he had learned the definitions of liberal ("referring to philosophy not supported by Scripture") and conservative ("dedicated to the preserving of Scriptural principles").

--snip--

In more recent history, the re-election of Bill Clinton is explained thusly: "To some Americans, a healthy economy is more important than the moral fiber of their country." Interestingly, the various investigations of Mr. Clinton get more than twice the space in the workbooks that Watergate gets.

And Jimmy Carter is described as someone who "claimed to be a Believer."
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/localnews/columnists/all/stories/DN-blow_05met.ART.North.Edition2.3e852c7.html

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. and that was in their math class section - you know. How to divide

a m e r i c a .

[WritingIsMyReligion]

12. ...

:rofl:

:thumbsup:

[Maestro]

2. And voting for the repukes conserves moral fiber?

Take a look at this I wrote to my freeper uncle who claimed something along those same lines.

My diatribe

[The Backlash Cometh]

3. Dems should make this an issue. This is blatant indoctrination.

This is exactly what they accused Liberals of doing in the school textbooks, and this goes much further than anything they charged.

I hope public money wasn't spent on this.

[Igel]

5. You don't say where you live, so I'll

assume it's not Texas.

Things may have changed since I looked into home schooling in Texas last year. If so, sorry. But this is the state of things as of about a year ago.

Texas has very, very lax home school requirements. No tests; no requirements, besides teaching something like reading, arithmetic, and civics, and having a written curriculum available for inspection showing what you'll teach to cover them. There are no criteria for evaluating the curriculum, and therefore there is no basis for ruling it inadequate.

Home schooling parents are considered to be running a private school. They issue grades; they are authorized to provide a diploma which, technically at least, is considered equivalent to a public school diploma for Tx state purposes.

[The Backlash Cometh]

6. And we made their governor a president and allowed him to touch

our public schools systems. Are we stupid or what?

[Igel]

10. You know, I didn't know how long-standing the

Tx home-schooling (or home-non-schooling) business is.

It dates to at least 1991. There was some quibble in 1981 as to whether it satisfied compulsory attendence laws; a court ruled that it didn't, but that was overturned a couple of years later. But even then the Tx practice of tolerating it was "long-standing".

Tx is a strange state, in many ways. Partly because of the way it entered the Union; partly because it was so isolated for so long; partly because it's so damned big and, until recently, thinly populated.

[Critters2]

13. Who you callin' "we"?

[tanyev]

8. I am in Texas, and I think you hit the nail on the head.

I know there are a lot of DUers currently homeschooling or passionate defenders of homeschooling; if done well, I'm sure it's great. But most of the homeschoolers I personally run into in this area have fundie indoctrination as their main motive and would happily use materials like the ones described in the article.

[leftchick]

4. this is used in private schools as well??

<snip>

Now, I realize private is private, and such schools can teach anything they want. But when does education become indoctrination?

And when does it begin to affect us all?

I'm not talking about one or two little schools. This involves curriculum used by private schools and home-schoolers all over the nation. Indeed, all over the world.

The curriculum is published by Accelerated Christian Education. And that company started right here – in Lewisville.

Though ACE is now headed up in Florida, its distribution and other facilities in Lewisville are valued at more than $20 million on county tax rolls.

[NMMNG]

7. Pure revisionist indoctrination

Textbooks filled with lies and propaganda--just what kids need to be raised on. Then these will be the people running the country one day. :scared: I weep for the future.


I sent an e-mail to the author of the article to let him know how important I thought the article was, and to offset the inevitable hate mail he'd be getting just for exposing the truth.

[Brilligator]

9. This stuff scares the crap out of me

Why the sudden recent resurgence in isolating one's children and pumping them full of misinformation/propoganda? Even conservatives of a few decades ago didn't used to resort to this sort of drastic, scary activity.

[tanyev]

11. UPDATE: LTTEs in Dallas Morning News.

Enough letters that the paper gave them their own page on the website.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/letters/stories/DN-wedartletters_0308edi.ART.State.Edition2.ae98.html

Oh, and I wish I could correct my title. These materials were being used in a private school, not a homeschool, although I think the company that publishes the materials also caters to the homeschool crowd.


Letter #1 makes some good points, but she seems to fall into the I-think-both-sides-are-wacko category:

Conservative or liberal government has nothing to do with Christianity, abortion, feminism, education, crime, homosexuals, gun control or any other issue that seems to have been dragged into the philosophies. This country will always be a combo platter of liberal and conservative solutions.

I just feel sorry for the voters who are too young to know that neither political party was meant to be lunatic, right-wing, Christian gun-nuts or tree-hugging, tax-crazy atheists.

Letter #2 was written by somebody who freebases the Kool-Aid:

What an astounding exposé! Steve Blow must be right: What difference could there possibly be between those kooks at Accelerated Christian Education and those we fight in Iraq? I'll bet ACE is behind those daily car bombings in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles! I'll bet they're really called ACE-Qaeda!

Thanks for serving up another fat slice of politically correct pie! And I thought we actually celebrated diversity of ideas, but Mr. Blow has just added another log to the fire that seeks to consume all opinions and practices failing to conform to a particular viewpoint.

Since when does information that is flat out wrong represent diversity??? I also suspect that his deep concern for celebrating diversity does not extend to alternative lifestyles.


Letter #3 somehow makes a correlation to the teacher in Colorado who got in trouble for "bashing Bush." Contorted Logic 101.

Steve Blow is a courageous columnist in attacking private education for its political slant. However, I don't remember any columns or editorial comment in your newspaper taking umbrage with Denver-area geography teacher Jay Bennish for indoctrinating his Overland High School students by equating the president with Hitler.

The Bennish brand of indoctrination goes on all the time in our public schools by teachers who are smart enough to use more subtle techniques to make sure their students get the right message.

I had to find out about Jay Bennish on the Internet. Small wonder a lot of us get their serious news elsewhere.