posted
CA lawmaker proposes bill to keep away TX’s textbooks (which call slavery the ‘Atlantic triangular trade’). Earlier this year, Texas faced national scrutiny for the efforts of a determined bloc of far-right ideologues on the Texas State Board of Education to rewrite history in the state’s social studies textbooks and curriculum. They succeeded in making students learn about the “conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s,” “documents that supported Cold War-era Sen. Joseph McCarthy,” and the difference “between legal and illegal immigration.” Because of the state’s size, Texas has significant pull in shaping what the nation’s social studies books will say. However, California state Sen. Leland Yee (D) has introduced a bill to keep Texas at bay:
Under Yee’s bill, SB1451, the California Board of Education would be required to look out for any of the Texas content as part of its standard practice of reviewing public school textbooks. The board must then report any findings to both the Legislature and the secretary of education.
The bill describes the Texas curriculum changes as “a sharp departure from widely accepted historical teachings” and “a threat to the apolitical nature of public school governance and academic content standards in California.”
Tom Adams, director of the state Department of Education’s standards and curriculum division, said the Texas standards could make their way into national editions of textbooks, but those aren’t used in California. “Our main concern is whether materials meet California’s standards,” he said. “There’s nothing in our review process that says we should be following Texas or anything like that.”
A new report in the Guardian reveals that the Texas State Board of Education also “dropped references to the slave trade in favour of calling it the more innocuous ‘Atlantic triangular trade,’ and recasts the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as driven by Islamic fundamentalism.” The board will be meeting again this week and conservatives have promised to “keep working to the last moment to correct years of liberal bias in history classes.” and stay the hell out
-------------------- Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise. Posts: 3827 | From: beautiful California | Registered: Sep 2008
| IP: Logged |
quote:The bill describes the Texas curriculum changes as “a sharp departure from widely accepted historical teachings” and “a threat to the apolitical nature of public school governance and academic content standards in California.”
posted
want rewrite history? you should read the British version of the American Revolution.
they would have hanged most of the founders if they had caught them. Granpa George W. ashington? He was Birtish trained, not a first rate soldier, and he lost more often than he won, but he did win when it meant his life would be forfeit.
The Brits can honestly say that we won only because the rest of Europe united against them. We had major assistance from France and to a lesser degree, Prussi and Spain.
They would tell us that they paid to protect US colonists from the French and Indians and we owed them a huge debt which we refused to pay...
"The colonies were acquired with no other view than to be a convenience to us," the London Chronicle pointed out in 1764, "and therefore it can never be imagined that we are to consult their interest preferably to our own." In fact, the British considered that their American colonies, having enjoyed an extended period of "salutary neglect" during the 18th century, were practically self-governing. They had only to fulfill their vital function within the mercantile system by providing raw materials and consuming the manufactures of the British Empire. (The laws prohibiting trade between the colonies and foreign countries had never been strictly enforced anyway; therefore, smuggling was a popular avocation.)
it goes on and on and it is correct too.
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise. Posts: 36378 | From: USA | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
There are lots of 'true' versions of history, Glass. It's all about perspective. In the final analysis, the colonies rebelled because they were finally peopled with folk that felt no loyalty to the Crown and didn't want to exist solely for It's benefit. (Shrug)
Point being for this thread...Cali is nothing if not political in its school system choices.
posted
Texas Board Of Education: Jefferson Davis And Obama’s Middle Name Are Essential For Students To Learn Today, the right-wing Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) will give final approval to content for state social studies curriculum. The standards will “dictate what is taught in all Texas schools and provide the basis for textbooks and student achievement tests over the next decade.” Yesterday, this unqualified board — which includes a woman who thinks public education is a “tool of perversion” and a chairman whose real profession is a dentist — continued to inject their right-wing ideology into the state’s standards, pushing for inclusion of more conservatives, more Confederate glorification, and more distortion of progressive viewpoints.
Whether To Require Students To Learn Obama’s Middle Name: Republican David Bradley is one of the leaders of the SBOE’s far-right faction. Yesterday, he suggested that if students were going to learn about Barack Obama as the first African-American president, they should also learn his middle name — Hussein. However, fellow Republican Bob Craig objected, saying, “The intent of what you’re doing is pretty obvious, but I don’t think it is necessarily correct,” pointing out that other presidents like Kennedy and Reagan don’t have their middle names in the standards. Bradley eventually withdrew his amendment, and the board decided to list Obama as he is on the White House website: Barack H. Obama.
Elevating Confederate Leader Jefferson Davis To The Level Of Abraham Lincoln: There was “prolonged debate” yesterday over whether to “include Confederate President Jefferson Davis’ inaugural address with a lesson on Abraham Lincoln’s philosophical views.” Far-right Republican Cynthia Dunbar said that excluding Jefferson would be an attempt to “whitewash” history. (TFN Insider adds, “But that’s what Davis’s address does! The address doesn’t even mention the reason southern states seceded: slavery.”) Eventually, the SBOE votes to keep in Davis and require students to “contrast” his speech to Lincoln’s speeches.
Requiring That Historical Figures — Except Conservative Ones — Must Be Dead For Students To Study Them: Yesterday, SBOE voted to strip United Farm Workers of America co-founder Dolores Huerta from a third-grade list of “historical and contemporary figures who have exemplified good citizenship.” Several officials argued that she is a socialist and therefore should be excluded. But perhaps the most blatantly biased objection came from Bradley, who said:
I am very reluctant to include persons who are still alive. By definition of “history,” you must be dead, because you never know when you might embarrass us later. Of course, the board has had no problem including Wallace Jefferson, the Republican chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court, or right-wing figure Phyllis Schlafly.
This week, ThinkProgress spoke with Judy Jennings and Rebecca Bell-Metereau, two progressives who are running for seats on the SBOE. They both promised to try to undo any textbook changes the right-wing board approves.
-------------------- Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise. Posts: 3827 | From: beautiful California | Registered: Sep 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
Republican David Bradley is one of the leaders of the SBOE’s far-right faction. Yesterday, he suggested that if students were going to learn about Barack Obama as the first African-American president, they should also learn his middle name — Hussein.
what demented Lunacy is that anyway???
i remember when we didn't know Unca Ronnies middle name and everybody said it had six letters to make him the number of the Beast....
i would still have to look it up and i have before, and i still don't remember it- but i DO remeber it had 6 letters too...
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise. Posts: 36378 | From: USA | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Texas Can’t Afford To Buy New Far-Right Textbooks, But Rick Perry Still Resists Federal Aid For the past year, far-right members of the Texas Board of Education have been overhauling the state’s textbook standards. The changes include “pushing for inclusion of more…Confederate glorification,” re-naming the Atlantic slave trade the “Atlantic Triangle Trade,” prioritizing “a suggestion that the anti-communist witch-hunt by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s may have been justified,” and raising doubt about climate change.
However, the Texas Observer now reports that the state can’t afford to buy the new books:
The state normally replaces textbooks on a rotating basis every 10 years. With Texas facing a budget shortfall of at least $11 billion in 2011, the money isn’t going to be there. Textbooks covering the new science standards would have cost $400 million, and the Legislature is already expecting a bill of $888 million for textbooks already ordered.
To ensure that students can still be exposed to “proof, supposedly, of evolution’s fallibility,” the Board is trying to secure funding for special “supplements for science classes from fifth grade through high school.” Social studies textbooks aren’t up for replacement until 2013 — by then, Texas might have enough money to teach their students about Phyllis Schlafly and the Moral Majority.
The lack of textbook funding underscores Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s (R) constant compulsion to oppose federal funding that could help his state. At the beginning of June, he refused to let Texas compete for Race to the Top funding for education reform because he falsely claimed the program would weaken the state’s school standards. That allegation was even refuted by a fellow Republican governor, Sonny Perdue of Georgia. A Houston Chronicle editorial from earlier this week lamented Perry’s stubborn “grandstanding” while noting why Texas needs additional, federal education funding: “Of the 50 states, we’re No. 49 in the percentage of adults who’ve completed high school; and it’s estimated that a third of our Texas high school freshmen don’t make it to graduation.”
Texas faces a daunting $18 billion shortfall for the next two-year budget cycle, amounting to 20 percent of the total budget, but Perry misguidedly insists he can find enough spending cuts to create balance, and he is even blustering about rejecting supplementary Medicaid funding from Congress that would greatly help address the state’s fiscal woes. Last year, he tried to reject the stimulus money that proved key to balancing Texas’ budget, insisting, “We can take care of ourselves,” before the legislature intervened and secured the relief.
Perry’s serial rejections, both actual and attempted, evoke his flirtation with secession; of course, with more federal aid, he might be able to afford teaching Texan youth about “the ‘significant contributions‘ of pro-slavery Confederate leaders during the civil war.” (HT: @DahliaLithwick)
- William Tomasko
-------------------- Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise. Posts: 3827 | From: beautiful California | Registered: Sep 2008
| IP: Logged |
-------------------- It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so many things that aren't so. Posts: 6949 | Registered: Apr 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Figures a repub would call a school text book propoganda. And have an ok type of fascist atittude about it.
You are not an American
-------------------- Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise. Posts: 3827 | From: beautiful California | Registered: Sep 2008
| IP: Logged |
UBBFriend: Email this page to someone!
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Mad]](mad.gif)
and stay the hell out
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
