This is pretty much a load of crap. It seems that every 10 years, textbook standards in Texas are re-visited. And because Texas is such a large buyer of textbooks, decisions made in Texas can affect what is taught nationwide.
What’s happened this year is that Republicans are jumping at their chance to assert their political ideals – disguised as “balance.”
I have to agree with what Rep. Mike Villareal (San Antonio, D) said:
I am disturbed that a majority of the board decided their own political agendas were more important than the education of Texas children.
And what Board Member Mary Helen Berlanga had to say:
“They are going overboard, they are not experts, they are not historians,” she said. “They are rewriting history, not only of Texas but of the United States and the world.”
It seems pretty clear, based on statements made by David Bradley, that the focus of the vote was political, not educational.
But Republican board member David Bradley said the curriculum revision process has always been political but the ruling faction had changed since the last time social studies standards were adopted.
“We took our licks, we got outvoted,” he said referring to the debate 10 years earlier. “Now it’s 10-5 in the other direction … we’re an elected body, this is a political process. Outside that, go find yourself a benevolent dictator.”
I really don’t understand this need to be on top politically at the expense of a child’s education.
Some of the changes include:
Texas schoolchildren will be required to learn that the words “separation of church and state” aren’t in the Constitution and evaluate whether the United Nations undermines U.S. sovereignty under new social studies curriculum.
In final votes late Friday, conservatives on the State Board of Education strengthened requirements on teaching the Judeo-Christian influences of the nation’s Founding Fathers and required that the U.S. government be referred to as a “constitutional republic” rather than “democratic.”
I’m amused that some of the most ignorant things (I might as well go ahead and say it… stupid things) I’ve heard said in my lifetime are coming out of this controversy.
“I reject the notion by the left of a constitutional separation of church and state,” said David Bradley, a conservative from Beaumont who works in real estate. “I have $1,000 for the charity of your choice if you can find it in the Constitution.”
Try reading the first amendment and its clauses. Or better yet, listen to what your peers have to say:
Mavis B. Knight, a Democrat from Dallas, introduced an amendment requiring that students study the reasons “the founding fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring the government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion above all others.”
It was defeated on a party-line vote.
Am I the only one who sees the irony there? Ms. Knight, following the lead of the conservative members of the Board, removed the words “separation of church and state” from her amendment and was still defeated.
I’m flabbergasted!
Cynthia Dunbar, a lawyer from Richmond who is a strict constitutionalist and thinks the nation was founded on Christian beliefs, managed to cut Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century, replacing him with St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone. (Jefferson is not well liked among conservatives on the board because he coined the term “separation between church and state.”)
This just keeps getting better and better, doesn’t it? It’s like a trainwreck and you can’t look away.
What is happening in this country? First Arizona, now Texas. What’s next?
