Neezar
03-18-2010, 02:52 PM
Wasn't sure whether to put this in the Politics section or the Christianity section. :laugh:
This article is dead set against it. I edited some out but will post the link.
http://www.examiner.com/x-15870-Populist-Examiner~y2010m3d14-Texas-school-board-revising-curriculum-creating-controversy
http://image3.examiner.com/images/blog/EXID15870/images/Don_McLeroy,_Washington_Monthly.jpg
Dr. McLeroy, addressing the Texas school board (Washington Monthly)
The Texas Board of Education has approved (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.html) a new school curriculum that will put a stamp on history and economics textbooks that will horrify some and be questioned by others.
After three days of turbulent meetings, the board's far-right faction succeeded Friday in injecting ideals that:
--Question the Founding Fathers' commitment to a purely secular government
--Cover the Judeo-Christian influences of the nation's Founding Fathers, but not highlight the philosophical rationale for the separation of church and state
--Present Republican political philosophies and figures in a more positive light, including Joe McCarthy
--Stress the superiority of American capitalism while eliminating the word "capitalism" from the text
--Refer to the United States form of government as a "constitutional republic," rather than "democratic republic"
--Give Confederate president Jefferson Davis equal footing with Abraham Lincoln
--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 and John Calvin (Jefferson is not well liked among conservatives on the board because he coined the term "separation between church and state")
--Consistently defeated proposals to include more Latino figures as role models, though they failed to eliminate mention of Thurgood Marshall from the textbooks (he was the first black Supreme Court Justice and instrumental in the 1954 decision, Brown-v-Board of Education)
--Banned the children's book "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" because they thought the author had also written a book on Marxism
And that's just for starters.
The board voted to replace the word "capitalism" throughout their texts with the "free-enterprise system."
"Let's face it, capitalism does have a negative connotation," said one conservative member, Terri Leo. "You know, 'capitalist pig!'"
The banning of Brown Bear, Brown Bear arose (http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-15870-Populist-Examiner~y2010m1d25-Texas-book-banning-proves-youre-deep-in-the-heart-of-stupid) when one board member discovered that its author happened to also write a treatise called Ethical Marxism.
The problem: The Bill Martin who wrote Ethical Marxism in 2008 is not the same Bill Martin who wrote the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear. In fact, it would've been impossible for Bill Martin of Brown Bear fame to have written a treatise on Marxism in 2008 since, a) the Bill Martin of Marxism fame is a professor at DePaul University in Chicago and, the Bill Martin of Brown Bear fame died in 2004.
When the board first agreed upon this in January, you'd have assumed it would've uncovered its mistake and reversed its decision in subsequent meetings. The idea that someone would make such a deduction without anyone doing a simple Google search to realize there are two different authors of the same name speaks volumes about the intellectual curiosity and capacity of individuals who, additionally, are also determining an academic curriculum for millions of public school students across the country.
Adding insult to injury: The Brown Bear book, a 12-page picture book one reads to his or her 4-year-old, was slated to be part of the state curriculum for Texas third graders.
I skipped some here.....
Okay, here is where it gets a littly ugly. lol
If you want to know why the United States is in a race to the bottom, look no further than Texas and people like Dr. McLeroy. Other countries are leaving us in the dust because those residents know that science is taught in schools and religion is best taught in the church/temple/mosque.
American students, already woefully unprepared, cannot compete if they insist that the whole dinosaur thing is a hoax and that evolution is "a theory made up by evil liberal academics."
The late Chairman Mao also launched a campaign against experts. Like the Neanderthals on the Texas school board, Mao was a case study in the dangers of zealous ideologues in charge. So too are Dr. McLeroy and his fellow travelers.
He's a factual cherry picker and a doltish ideologue guilty of every bias he claims exists on the left. He's the last person you want sitting on a school board.
To repeat: The board rammed through their changes without the input of a single historian, sociologist or economist, as they considered themselves more reliable on certain topics. As McLeroy said, "Somebody's gotta stand up to experts."
You don't need experts; the facts are already there. You just need the slightest amount of effort to find them. For example, anyone who thinks they need to rewrite history to "emphasize" that the U-S was founded on Christianity, from the Treaty of Tripoli, ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1797: "the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." (Sorry, Dave. :unsure:)
Not that facts matter to the ideologue. The McElroys of history and their ilk were the same one who burned witches in Salem, persecuted Galileo in Rome and, I've no doubt, martyred Christians in the early Common Era. They've been with us always, and we've survived them. Little men afraid of the future. (wow, he seems bitter, lol)
It's always funny how evangelicals today think the Founding Fathers thought the same as they do, when the fact is many were deists who (and I'm grossly oversimplifying here) believed that a creator made and wound the watch and then set back and let the universe tick. Few were gung-ho about hellfire and brimstone and going to church every Sunday. Indeed, I wonder if Dr. McLeroy ever read the Jefferson Bible. :scared0011: The author of the Declaration of Independence edited the Bible to take out the supernatural elements (e.g. miracles performed by Christ, Virgin Birth, etc.) and retitled it the "Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth."
The text is in the public domain and available here (https://feed.examiner.com/fckeditor2_6_3/editor/dialog/etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/JefJesu.html).
There's a very simple solution that we need to take --now-- because of the impact this kind of nonsense can have on children all across the country, and by implication on America's standing in the world (both its future economic prosperity, and its current image as a rational, first-world nation): any school system that advocates teaching faith as science is violating the establishment clause of the First Amendment, and as such must lose all federal aid, immediately.
The other disgusting thing about all of this is that publishers don't stand up to the bullies in Texas. If parents in Texas want to raise a bunch of morons, that's their choice, but they shouldn't be able to foist their ignorance on the rest of the children in the country. (:unsure:, lol)
In the meantime, those of us from more reality-based states (:laugh:) need to band together. Texas may be one of the largest states, but (as hard as it may be to remember this) there are more of us overall than there are of them. If, for example, New York, New Jersey and New England all ordered textbooks together, the 42 million people in those states would easily trump the 25 million represented by the lunatic fringe on the Texas Board of Education. Through California's 38 million in for good measure and Texas hasn't got a shot.
As a matter of fact, if ever there were a state that needed to cede from the Union, Texas would be it. (They would probaly love to. :happydancing:lol) Please, finally, give all those creationist-loving, tea bag sycophants their very own Galt's Gulch world of Ozzie and Harriet and let the rest of the country get back to the business of being America.
Our condolences to the city of Austin. (:huh:)
This article is dead set against it. I edited some out but will post the link.
http://www.examiner.com/x-15870-Populist-Examiner~y2010m3d14-Texas-school-board-revising-curriculum-creating-controversy
http://image3.examiner.com/images/blog/EXID15870/images/Don_McLeroy,_Washington_Monthly.jpg
Dr. McLeroy, addressing the Texas school board (Washington Monthly)
The Texas Board of Education has approved (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.html) a new school curriculum that will put a stamp on history and economics textbooks that will horrify some and be questioned by others.
After three days of turbulent meetings, the board's far-right faction succeeded Friday in injecting ideals that:
--Question the Founding Fathers' commitment to a purely secular government
--Cover the Judeo-Christian influences of the nation's Founding Fathers, but not highlight the philosophical rationale for the separation of church and state
--Present Republican political philosophies and figures in a more positive light, including Joe McCarthy
--Stress the superiority of American capitalism while eliminating the word "capitalism" from the text
--Refer to the United States form of government as a "constitutional republic," rather than "democratic republic"
--Give Confederate president Jefferson Davis equal footing with Abraham Lincoln
--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 and John Calvin (Jefferson is not well liked among conservatives on the board because he coined the term "separation between church and state")
--Consistently defeated proposals to include more Latino figures as role models, though they failed to eliminate mention of Thurgood Marshall from the textbooks (he was the first black Supreme Court Justice and instrumental in the 1954 decision, Brown-v-Board of Education)
--Banned the children's book "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" because they thought the author had also written a book on Marxism
And that's just for starters.
The board voted to replace the word "capitalism" throughout their texts with the "free-enterprise system."
"Let's face it, capitalism does have a negative connotation," said one conservative member, Terri Leo. "You know, 'capitalist pig!'"
The banning of Brown Bear, Brown Bear arose (http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-15870-Populist-Examiner~y2010m1d25-Texas-book-banning-proves-youre-deep-in-the-heart-of-stupid) when one board member discovered that its author happened to also write a treatise called Ethical Marxism.
The problem: The Bill Martin who wrote Ethical Marxism in 2008 is not the same Bill Martin who wrote the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear. In fact, it would've been impossible for Bill Martin of Brown Bear fame to have written a treatise on Marxism in 2008 since, a) the Bill Martin of Marxism fame is a professor at DePaul University in Chicago and, the Bill Martin of Brown Bear fame died in 2004.
When the board first agreed upon this in January, you'd have assumed it would've uncovered its mistake and reversed its decision in subsequent meetings. The idea that someone would make such a deduction without anyone doing a simple Google search to realize there are two different authors of the same name speaks volumes about the intellectual curiosity and capacity of individuals who, additionally, are also determining an academic curriculum for millions of public school students across the country.
Adding insult to injury: The Brown Bear book, a 12-page picture book one reads to his or her 4-year-old, was slated to be part of the state curriculum for Texas third graders.
I skipped some here.....
Okay, here is where it gets a littly ugly. lol
If you want to know why the United States is in a race to the bottom, look no further than Texas and people like Dr. McLeroy. Other countries are leaving us in the dust because those residents know that science is taught in schools and religion is best taught in the church/temple/mosque.
American students, already woefully unprepared, cannot compete if they insist that the whole dinosaur thing is a hoax and that evolution is "a theory made up by evil liberal academics."
The late Chairman Mao also launched a campaign against experts. Like the Neanderthals on the Texas school board, Mao was a case study in the dangers of zealous ideologues in charge. So too are Dr. McLeroy and his fellow travelers.
He's a factual cherry picker and a doltish ideologue guilty of every bias he claims exists on the left. He's the last person you want sitting on a school board.
To repeat: The board rammed through their changes without the input of a single historian, sociologist or economist, as they considered themselves more reliable on certain topics. As McLeroy said, "Somebody's gotta stand up to experts."
You don't need experts; the facts are already there. You just need the slightest amount of effort to find them. For example, anyone who thinks they need to rewrite history to "emphasize" that the U-S was founded on Christianity, from the Treaty of Tripoli, ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1797: "the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." (Sorry, Dave. :unsure:)
Not that facts matter to the ideologue. The McElroys of history and their ilk were the same one who burned witches in Salem, persecuted Galileo in Rome and, I've no doubt, martyred Christians in the early Common Era. They've been with us always, and we've survived them. Little men afraid of the future. (wow, he seems bitter, lol)
It's always funny how evangelicals today think the Founding Fathers thought the same as they do, when the fact is many were deists who (and I'm grossly oversimplifying here) believed that a creator made and wound the watch and then set back and let the universe tick. Few were gung-ho about hellfire and brimstone and going to church every Sunday. Indeed, I wonder if Dr. McLeroy ever read the Jefferson Bible. :scared0011: The author of the Declaration of Independence edited the Bible to take out the supernatural elements (e.g. miracles performed by Christ, Virgin Birth, etc.) and retitled it the "Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth."
The text is in the public domain and available here (https://feed.examiner.com/fckeditor2_6_3/editor/dialog/etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/JefJesu.html).
There's a very simple solution that we need to take --now-- because of the impact this kind of nonsense can have on children all across the country, and by implication on America's standing in the world (both its future economic prosperity, and its current image as a rational, first-world nation): any school system that advocates teaching faith as science is violating the establishment clause of the First Amendment, and as such must lose all federal aid, immediately.
The other disgusting thing about all of this is that publishers don't stand up to the bullies in Texas. If parents in Texas want to raise a bunch of morons, that's their choice, but they shouldn't be able to foist their ignorance on the rest of the children in the country. (:unsure:, lol)
In the meantime, those of us from more reality-based states (:laugh:) need to band together. Texas may be one of the largest states, but (as hard as it may be to remember this) there are more of us overall than there are of them. If, for example, New York, New Jersey and New England all ordered textbooks together, the 42 million people in those states would easily trump the 25 million represented by the lunatic fringe on the Texas Board of Education. Through California's 38 million in for good measure and Texas hasn't got a shot.
As a matter of fact, if ever there were a state that needed to cede from the Union, Texas would be it. (They would probaly love to. :happydancing:lol) Please, finally, give all those creationist-loving, tea bag sycophants their very own Galt's Gulch world of Ozzie and Harriet and let the rest of the country get back to the business of being America.
Our condolences to the city of Austin. (:huh:)