Backstory: How The Texas Textbook Revision Came To BeJeremy Binckes
First Posted: 03-14-10 05:00 PM | Updated: 03-15-10 04:37 PM
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In Texas, Thomas Jefferson is set to be removed from the textbook standards explaining how Enlightenment thinkers have influenced revolutions since 1750. Replacing him will be the French theologian John Calvin.
After a long and emotionally-charged debate, the Texas Board of Education -- dominated by a group of conservatives -- voted last week to make this and a host of other changes to the state curriculum, a move that has wide-ranging implications for students across the country.
How did this happen?
A Conservative Clique On The BoardThe Board of Education consists of 15 elected officeholders. The split is 10-5 in favor of Republicans. Of those 10, seven are highly conservative.
"This is a board controlled by extremists who have determined to turn Social Studies classrooms into a tool to promote their ideology," said Dan Quinn, spokesman for the Texas Freedom Network. "They've been successful in turning what should be a curriculum document into a political manifesto."
(TFN is a nonpartisan group which "advances a mainstream agenda of religious freedom and individual liberties to counter the religious right," according to its Web site.)
Story continues below
"We're not
," said former chairman and current board member Don McLeroy, a Republican and a dentist with an engineering degree.
The Board members "are not being guided by any sort of rigorous academic standards. This is a purely political fight for them," said Ed Brayton, editor of the Michigan Messenger. Brayton is also the President of Michigan Citizens for Science, and has written extensively about the Texas school board on his blog.
Seven of the most conservative board members tend to vote en bloc. Brayton calls the group the "Wingnut Brigade."
"They're very cliquish," fellow board member Mary Helen Berlanga, a Democrat from Corpus Christi, Tex. said of the seven. "They come in together, and they go out together, and they leave in cars together. They already have their agenda by the time they're here. Whether they're talking on the phone, emailing each other, I don't know. "
The group of Republicans on the board includes David Bradley, a Republican from Beaumont and an insurance and real estate executive whose children were home-schooled. (Two other board members have also chosen to either home-school or send their children to private schools.)
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Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/14/backstory-how-the-texas-t_n_496831.html
Unbelievable... these assholes don't even use the public school system, yet they are causing incalculable damage to it!
:mad:
:nuke:
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