Texas SBOE: Cynthia Dunbar Says We're A "Christian land"

H/T Texas Freedom Network

Repost from Texas Freedom Network

Please support TFN's efforts in any way you can. Our children's future is too important to be hijacked by a few for political purposes.

The Next Steps

By TFN

Here’s an alert the Texas Freedom Network just sent to supporters:
Thanks for joining us for the live-blogging over the last three days. So we’ll sign off with TFN President Kathy Miller’s e-mail this evening to TFN supporters:

Moments ago the State Board of Education cast the final vote on new social studies standards, ending more than a year of political wrangling that invited derision and scorn from the entire educational world. I’m not going to take you through the litany of problems with this curriculum. You can read about those on our blog or in the hundreds of news stories that will appear in the media tomorrow. All of these issues, as serious as they are, are really symptoms of the larger problem — allowing politicians with personal agendas to write our children’s curriculum, rather than teachers and scholars.
That’s why today’s vote is not the end of this fight. It’s the beginning.
For 15 years, all of us at TFN have been committed to safeguarding our children’s education from political ideology. And we’re not about to let up now.
Please make a generous contribution to our efforts today.
Our ultimate goal is nothing less than fundamental change at the State Board of Education. Parents, business leaders and concerned citizens across Texas must join together in our Just Educate campaign  to send a clear message to politicians: stop dragging our children’s schools into the “culture wars.” That’s why TFN is mounting our largest grassroots mobilization effort in the history of the organization. And we are counting on you to take part.
TFN’s strategy is ambitious and aggressive — and you can be sure that far-right pressure groups will continue to shell out millions of dollars to hold on to their power. That’s why we’re asking you for the most generous gift you can make today.
Together, we can do it. Our kids deserve better. Our future depends on it.
With gratitude,
Kathy

Texas SBOE: Dolores Huerta Doesn't Meet Good Citizenship

H/T Texas Freedom Network

Educating the Uneducated Texas SBoE

Texas State Senator Rodney Ellis (D) District 13 attempts to educate the Texas SBoE in an editorial on the Houston Chronicle website.

Now's the time to educate State Board of Education

By STATE SEN. RODNEY ELLIS
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
April 8, 2010, 8:19PM

We already know that the Texas Legislature will face a huge fiscal deficit when it meets in January. But it's clear now that legislators must also address a deficit of trust in the State Board of Education.

Parents have become increasingly concerned about state board members who seem more interested in promoting personal and political agendas in public schools than ensuring that our schoolchildren get a sound education. The last three months have once again highlighted why they are worried.

For nearly a year, teachers and scholars worked hard to craft new curriculum standards for social studies classrooms. Then in just two meetings in January and March, the state board shredded their work, making hundreds of ill-considered changes.

Things got so bad in January that even a Republican board member charged that her colleagues were simply “rewriting history.”

For example, political extremists who control the board changed the standards to suggest that Joseph McCarthy's political witch hunts in the 1950s were justified. They removed the concepts of “justice” and “responsibility for the common good” from a standard on good citizenship. They even claimed that women and minorities who struggled for equal and civil rights over decades owe thanks to the “majority” for finally gaining them.

Board members also exposed their own faulty and superficial research by removing Bill Martin — author of the popular children's book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? — from the third-grade standards. Some members mistakenly thought he was a different Bill Martin who wrote a book about Marxism.

The board's March meeting was not any better. Among scores of changes, the board deleted Thomas Jefferson from a world history standard on Enlightenment thinkers who have influenced political revolutions around the world. Board members said Jefferson, who was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence and argued that “a wall of separation between church and state” is essential for freedom, didn't belong in the standard.

The board also rejected a proposed requirement that students learn why our nation's Founders barred government from promoting one religion over all others. Opponents claimed that the Constitution doesn't really protect religious freedom by keeping religion and government separate.

The board made all these changes without asking for the guidance of even one teacher or scholar at the meetings. Their contempt for real expertise could hardly have been clearer.

This kind of nonsense is not new. For years now, extremists on the board have turned issue after issue before them into a divisive, unnecessary “culture war” battle. Those battles reached a high pitch last year. Despite the pleading of world-class scientists in Texas — including Nobel laureates — and businesspeople worried about the education of their future employees, the board inserted creationist arguments against evolution in new science standards.

As the battle over evolution raged, legislators meeting in Austin considered more than a dozen bipartisan bills aimed at reining in the board's power. Many of those bills would have given authority to set curriculum standards and adopt textbooks to teachers and academic experts with the training and knowledge to make informed decisions.

I wrote two such bills and co-sponsored another along with three Republican senators. We warned that the state board's political warfare was recklessly undermining the education Texas students need to succeed in our modern economy. Indeed, putting ideological agendas ahead of education will make it harder for Texas to attract and keep the industries and jobs that our state needs to compete.

None of those bills passed the Legislature last session, but they should have served as a clear warning to the board about the limits of our patience with their irresponsible actions. We will certainly consider similar legislation this spring because Thomas Jefferson was right about the importance of public education. “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization,” he wrote, “it expects what never was and never will be.”

Board members appear to have forgotten those words. It's time they were reminded.

Related Posts
Texas Textbook Controversy - Much Ado About Nothing?
Interfaith Alliance Protests Texas Textbooks To Publishers
It's Time to Mess with Texas
Texas Textbooks May Be as Bad as Home School Textbooks

Texas SBoE and the Flinstones

 And there it is there.

Texas Text Book Controversy - Much Ado About Nothing?

                      Image via Wikipedia

On the Newsweek.com blog section The Gaggle - Press, Politics and Absurdity David A Graham seems to think that the Texas textbook controversy is much ado about nothing. I will agree that the HuffPo has been a shrill alarm but then that is what they do. Graham thinks that while it is petty to replace Thomas Jefferson it is no big deal because his replacements also influenced American revolutions. However, is the object of the Texas SBoE to just introduce other historical figures for examination or to deprecate Thomas Jefferson. I think it is the latter.

I also take issue that this is Texas' business and that other states are not affected by there textbook decisions. While any state can have their own textbooks written not all can afford to write their own, particularly in this economy. Additionally,I have yet to see any mention of other states choosing or even exploring this option. In my last post I wrote about how the Interfaith Alliance has protested Texas' textbook changes to top publishers. Even if their wasn't an issue with other states and Texas' textbooks there is still the matter of their own students and what they will learn. Remember, these kids will become a part of American society and the lessons the are taught will carry with them where ever they go.

Lastly, I will concede his last point whole heartedly.

Why You Shouldn't Worry About Texas's Textbook Changes

David A. Graham - Posted Friday, March 26, 2010 2:14 PM

We're now two weeks into the row over changing Texas history-textbook standards, and the story seems likely to persist at least until a final vote in May on the changes. That means several more weeks of hysteria.

Liberals are outraged. The Huffington Post exemplified the shrill alarm that's being raised: "Ultraconservatives wielded their power over hundreds of subjects this week, introducing and rejecting amendments on everything from the civil rights movement to global politics." You'd think Texas had decided to wipe slavery from the textbooks, paint George Washington as an evangelical Christian, and depict Franklin Roosevelt as a radical Trotskyite. Here are five reasons not to get too exercised about the Lone Star state's shenanigans.

It's not that bad. OK, some of them are pretty offensive: Jefferson Davis's inaugural speech will be studied alongside Abraham Lincoln's, and new textbooks will try to rehabilitate Joe McCarthy. Plus Jon Stewart rightfully skewered a board member's paradoxical assertion that Oscar Romero shouldn't be taught because no one knows about him. But most of them aren't that bad. For example, you may heard that Thomas Jefferson was being eliminated from history books!(!!!) Not quite. The third president—whose deism, authorship of the Virginia Statue of Religious Freedom, and coinage of the term "separation of church and state" enrage some conservative Christians—was replaced in a list of thinkers who influenced 18th- and 19th-century revolutions. That's petty, but it's no less true that his replacements—Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin, for example—did, too. Or what about the inclusion of the "conservative resurgence" of the 1980s and 1990s? Well, love ‘em or hate ‘em, Phyllis Schlafly, the Moral Majority, and the Contract with America were significant figures that affected recent American history. Exhibit A: These textbook changes.

It's nothing new. Texas's school board is particularly unhinged now—as excellent pieces in Washington Monthly and The New York Times Magazine have demonstrated—but it's always been a bit of an embarrassment. The Washington Post's Valerie Strauss points out that Texas had a prior textbook fiasco, to the tune of $20 million, in the 1990s, because no one thought to check for the thousands of errors in books. Which brings us to our next point:

It's Texas's business. A major source of handwringing is the worry that the rest of the nation's children will be affected by a few wingnuts in Texas. There was a time when a large state like Texas would sway the nationwide curriculum, because publishers would tailor their books to fit major constituents, then sell them to smaller states. But as the Texas Tribune reports, publishers say that's no longer the case—they're now able to sell different books in different markets. That means parents in Berkeley, Portland, and Madison won't have to worry. Of course, parents in Texas may grow concerned about supbar standards, which is why:

It's likely to cause a strong backlash. Divisive changes tend to earn voters disdain and lose popular support. For example, when the Kansas Board of Education came close to adopting a creationist science curriculum, it caused similar nationwide hysteria. But Kansans didn't think the changes made any more sense than anyone else, and they responded by voting out the intelligent-design bloc and installing a conservative but evolution-friendly board, saving the evolution-only curriculum. The process may already be beginning in Texas. The worst-case scenario is that the changes make it all the way to the end of the 10-year curriculum-review cycle—at which point one can hope they'll be revised back to reason.

Besides, it's not like high-schoolers pay any attention to their textbooks anyway.

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Interfaith Alliance Protests Texas Textbooks to Publishers

One of the biggest issues with the Texas textbook controversy is not just what children in Texas will be forced learn but what children in many other states will be forced to learn. The Interfaith Alliance has come out against the Texas textbooks because it forces other states to buy them or create their own. I am glad that a large organization has come out against Texas' textbooks however I wish it was a large secular organization.

If Texas rewrites history, do we all need to read the book?

March 25, 2010, by Maureen Downey

The national furor created by the curriculum changes approved by the social conservatives on the Texas State Board of Education shows no sign of easing.

Now, the Interfaith Alliance has sent a protest to the top publishing companies. Because Texas is such a behemoth among textbook purchasers, many people fear that its constrained world view will show up in textbooks used in other states.
In its release, the Alliance said:

“We do not take lightly the changes approved by the Texas SBOE, and at this point we are working to ensure that other children across the country are not taught an inaccurate history of our country,” said Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, president of Interfaith Alliance and author of the letter sent to the publishing companies.

A Christian conservative bloc of the board voted to incorporate the study of the right to bear arms (the Second Amendment) in the curriculum on First Amendment rights and free expression, and to remove Thomas Jefferson from the curriculum that covers the Enlightenment period.  Equally as important as these votes, the Texas SBOE also struck down an amendment that articulated “the reasons the Founding Fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion above all others.”  The Texas SBOE felt that the Founders did not intend for the nation to have separation of church and state.

“The Texas SBOE members certainly are entitled to believe whatever they want about our country and its history,” Gaddy continued.  “The problem arises when their religious beliefs begin to essentially rewrite history for our children.  Separation of church and state was a core tenet of our nation’s founding.  Whether you like him or not, Thomas Jefferson was a leading thinker during the Enlightenment.  It’s almost unfathomable to think that Texas schoolchildren won’t learn these basic facts now. We urge the publishers to ensure that other children still will.”

Update Friday: Please note that the Interfaith Alliance released the following statement clarifying its original statement:

The proposed social studies standards from the Texas State Board of Education have sparked a national debate, and raised many concerns for those of us committed to protecting the boundaries between religion and government. Based on news reports, Interfaith Alliance issued a press release that implied that the term “Christian Nation” would be included in the new standards; it is now clear that this term is not to appear in the new standards. What is clear, however, is that the amendments proposed to the standards would have the net effect of incorrectly teaching our children that our nation’s founding documents and Constitution were derived from the bible or intended to privilege one religion over another.

Following conversations with Texas State Board of Education member Don McLeroy and others, it is clear that we have differences of opinion about the proposed Texas standards.  That is no surprise.  We remain committed to advocating for standards that are based on history rather than ideology. We will continue our conversations with Mr. McLeroy and other interested parties in an effort to ensure attention is given to our concerns.  Too much is at stake to not challenge indoctrination perpetrated under the guise of education.

Editorial to the Houston Chronicle About Texas SBoE

Image via Wikipedia

In this unsigned editorial to the Houston Chronicle the author sums up the Texas SBoE very nicely.

Textbook failure
Memo to the Texas State Board of Education: America isn’t a theocracy
HOUSTON CHRONICLE - March 20, 2010, 4:09PM

For years the Texas State Board of Education has fallen somewhere between “embarrassment” and “disgrace.” But lately it's reached a new low: hijacking our kids' textbooks to teach a mindset that's downright un-American.

In its revamp of the state's social studies curriculum, a majority of the board has consistently voted to reshape our history. Instead of the messy, complicated past, the extremist members prefer a simple story of triumphant Christian soldiers.

Last week the board voted to remove Thomas Jefferson — Thomas Jefferson! — from a list of Enlightenment thinkers who changed the world. The Enlightenment, with its emphasis on reason over tradition, doesn't sit well with the board.

Equally inconvenient is the Constitution's First Amendment, which begins: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The idea — one of those brave young Enlightenment ideas — was that the United States doesn't officially embrace any single religion.

We are a democracy, not a theocracy; a live-and-let-live country where we're all free to worship as we choose. It's a crucial idea, and one that separates Texas from the Taliban.

But the board didn't like it. By 10-5, it voted down a proposal that teachers “examine the reasons the Founding Fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring government from protecting or disfavoring any particular religion over all others.”

Religious freedom? Phooey.

How did we get into this mess? Unfortunately, we elect our board officials in partisan elections that few Texans notice. And since democracy works only when people pay attention, it's easy for extremists to slide into office.

You could argue that democracy is already repairing that wound, that the board has become so terrible that we voters have started to pay attention. In the most recent Republican primary, of the five ultraconservative incumbents running, three lost outright, and one is in a runoff.

But should we have a system that works only after it has sunk this deep into dysfunction? We agree with state Sen. Rodney Ellis, who argues that the entire State Board of Education should be put up for a sunset review and reconsidered from the ground up.

Maybe we should elect our board members in nonpartisan elections. Maybe they should be appointed by the governor and approved by the state Senate (a process similar to the way federal judges are appointed). Or maybe curriculum authority should move from the state board to the Texas commissioner of education, who's appointed by the governor — a higher-level politician that more voters pay attention to.

None of those solutions will be free of politics. Refining a school curriculum is always messy, a battle among competing interests with fiercely held beliefs.

And that's OK. Theocracies are simple. Democracies aren't.

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It's Time to Mess with Texas

You would have to be living in a cave to not know what is going on in Texas with text books. Texas is doing its damn best to earn the title of, "Most Fundamental Creationist State". Not only are they white washing their text books by removing such important Americans as Thurgood Marshall and Cesar Chavez, they are also removing the teaching of Enlightenment and Thomas Jefferson from a standard about the influence of great political philosophers on political revolutions.

A few other highlights lowlights:

*There was never such a thing as the separation of church and state.

*"Capitalism" is being replaced by "free-market system" in all books that talk about economics because "free-market system" is warmer and fuzzier because we all know that "capitalism" is great!

*Sen. Joseph McCarthy was right. There were communists in all branches of government so he had a right to bring people before Congress, accuse them of stuff, and cause folks to rat out their neighbors.

*The Japanese Internment wasn't racist because we locked up Germans during World War II as well.

*While the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was the face of the Civil Rights Movement, those violent Black Panthers were there, too. Besides, King and the other African Americans who marched for their rights weren't the main people responsible for the advancements in civil rights. They wouldn't have been able to do anything without the votes of those kind, white Republicans in Congress.

*The students will be taught about the Republican resurgence, the Moral Majority, the Contract With America, and the National Rifle Association.

So what should be done? How do you mess with Texas? There are the traditional methods of letter writing and boycotting both of which are a good start.  But, I think we need to go much further. I think we should ask our respective state's higher education systems to deny credit to students of Texas public schools. California's UC system has already blocked credit for certain courses taken at Christian schools and prevailed in court.

It is time to mess with Texas.

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Texas Social Studies Curriculum Update

American Humanist Association - Action Alert
Texas Social Studies Curriculum Update: We're Almost There!

The Texas State Board of Education recently made public the first draft of their new curriculum—and it looks like your hard work has paid off! Bob Bhaerman, education coordinator of the Kochhar Humanist Education Center, has carefully reviewed the draft recommendations and overall has found them to be satisfactory. The curriculum does not appear to paint the United States as a "Christian nation" in any way, nor does it include other historically inaccurate or misleading standards.

Thank you for your support on this important issue.

Despite this welcome development, however, there are still a few sections of the curriculum that could call into question its ideological impartiality. We need to keep the pressure on the Texas State Board of Education to make sure the final version gets it just right. One particularly troubling area includes directives to teach about the influence of religious conservatives and the Moral Majority—without paying equal attention to progressive figures or movements.

Please click here to send a letter to the Texas State Board of Education, commending the first draft but urging them to maintain an impartial balance when it comes to covering ideologies in the final curriculum.

This is a step in the right direction. But, the pressure has to be kept up.