DOWNLOADS: (303)

PLAYS: (2076)

Embed

With all due respect to our Texan C&Lers, I've noticed a distinct lowering of intelligence as soon as the words "Texas State Board of Education" comes up. Add the name "Tucker Carlson" and well, let's face it, "willfully ignorant" is just about the kindest possible way to describe it. In case you hadn't heard the story, the Texas State Board of Education has decided that today's textbooks are disturbingly biased against Christians, what with that completely unfair inclusion of the Inquisition and Crusades and stubborn refusal to acknowledge Creationism as a valid science. Likewise (because you know those high-falutin' elitists who write the books have to be liberals), there just aren't enough mentions of Muslims being blood-thirsty 7th Century barbarians with only jihad on the brain. I tell you, no one is persecuted in this country as much as the poor Christians.

The Texas State Board of Education will consider a resolution next week that would warn publishers not to push a "pro-Islamic, anti-Christian viewpoint" in world history textbooks, The Dallas Morning News reports.

Members of the board's social conservative bloc sponsoring the resolution cautioned that "more such discriminatory treatment of religion may occur as Middle Easterners buy into the U.S. public school textbook oligopoly, as they are doing now."

They offered no specific evidence of such investments, the newspaper says.

The measure, The News reports, cites some books that are "implying that Christian brutality and Muslim loss of life are significant, but Islamic cruelty and Christian deaths are not."

Oh help me, Rhonda. There's no evidence that any of this is happening, but let's slap a sticker on my kid's textbook saying that the book she's supposed to be learning history--not hate, bigotry and revisionist crap--from is being too sympathetic to Muslims.

And uncanny in his ability to ALWAYS be on the wrong side of every discussion, Tucker Carlson steps in the fray to assert that the Texas Board is absolutely right and there are incontrovertible studies that prove that American textbooks are far too anti-Christian and pro-Islam. All I can say to Mr. My-Career-Is-A-Legacy-Appointment is: PUT UP OR SHUT UP, little man. Show us the studies. 'Cuz I got $1,000 that says you're pulling "facts" out of that rather pear-shaped posterior once again.

Continue reading »

When I wrote that the Texas schoolbook rewrites were important becuase they could happen in other states, I didn't really expect to see the early adopters be the United Kingdom. Yet, the Guardian reports:

Niall Ferguson, the British historian most closely associated with a rightwing, Eurocentric vision of western ascendancy, is to work with the Conservatives to overhaul history in schools.

Speaking at the Guardian Hay festival, the Harvard-based academic, whose historiography is often considered to be an apology for imperialism, laid out his ideas for a vision of the school history curriculum in which, he said, children should be taught that the "big story" of the last 500 years "is the rise of western domination of the world".

In Ferguson's 2004 book "Empire: the rise and demise of the British world order and the lessons" he wrote this:

Between the early 1600s and the 1950s, more than 20 million people left the British Isles to begin new lives across the seas. Only a minority ever returned...To us, their decision to gamble everything on a one-way ticket seems baffling. Yet without millions of such tickets -- some purchased voluntarily, some not -- there could have been no British empire. For the indispensable foundation of the Empire was mass migration: the biggest in human history. This Britannic exodus changed the world. It turned whole continents white." (p. 44-45)

What a remarkable statement. No mention of the reasons for the mass diaspora; at least, not in this introductory paragraph. Just this: It turned whole continents white. The implications of that conclusion are mind-boggling.

This is the man who will be forming the curriculum for British schoolchildren, and here are his plans:

Along with a Channel 4 television series, he plans to produce materials for use in schools: "a four-year history syllabus on the west and the world".

The big question the course would attempt to answer, he said, was how in AD 1500 "the small warring kingdoms of Europe, which looked so feeble compared with the Ming or Ottoman empires, got to be so powerful". He said the syllabus was "bound to be Eurocentric" because the world was Eurocentric.

Answering criticisms from the audience that the project sounded uninterested in the fates of the oppressed, Ferguson lashed out against "the militant tendency" in the audience and said: "Can we get away from this rightwing-historian, apologist-for-empire crap?"

Oh, silly us, caring about the oppressed and those continents that weren't turned white, that aren't white, that aren't Eurocentric. Pity those who don't bow down to the great White Legend in deference.

Wanna bet Rupert Murdoch has a stake in it?

I have a confession to make...

I am insane. I have to be. Yes, I did turn on the live stream of the Texas Board of Education curriculum standards meeting at 9AM Thursday morning and yes, I stayed with it until 6pm, live-tweeting the whole thing until I could stand it no more. Still not content with the assault on my sensibilities, I came back for more at around 8pm, until it finally adjourned at 10pm my time, 1am Texas time.

I did it for you, all for you...

Bless their hearts....

Here's my biggest takeaway, and I mean this with all sincerity and respect: These people should not be doing this. They just shouldn't be. Not because they're evil. They're not. Well, maybe some of them are just a little bit, but more fundamentally they don't have the first clue as to how absolutely screwed up these curriculum standards are getting. Forget the textbooks, no teacher -- not even one with a masters from Harvard or University of Texas or ANYWHERE -- could possibly teach what they've put together.

It's incoherent. It makes no sense. They've created something that I should be able to define without resorting to NSFW terms, especially a compound word that begins with the word "cluster" and ends with an additional four letters, but really, that's what they've made. A colossal one, even.

Some highs (or lows, or you'll wish you were high)

Don't acknowledge truth without a tinge of pettiness

While it was certainly big of them to include a standard acknowledging the 2008 election of the first black President of the United States, it was not without moments. One of the conservative members thought that would be fine as long as he was included as "Barack HUSSEIN Obama". There was a bit of a verbal tussle over this as the more reasonable members suggested that might be just a little bit petty. Ultimately, the Henry Cabot Lodge false equivalency failed, and they agreed to Barack H. Obama. Grudgingly.

What's a little eugenics between friends?

After tonight, there is an extra word nestled in the following standard:

analyze causes and effects of events and social issues such as immigration, Social Darwinism, race relations, nativism, the Red Scare, Prohibition, and the changing role of women; and...

It reads this way now:

analyze causes and effects of events and social issues such as immigration, eugenics, Social Darwinism, race relations, nativism, the Red Scare, Prohibition, and the changing role of women; and

That's right. Our kids in Texas will possibly learn about eugenics. Why do I say possibly? Because there are two ways to word a standard. One is to use the term including, which means everything may be on a standardized test and therefore must be covered. The other is to use the term "such as", which means the teacher must teach the concept but has the option to use some or all of the terms.

It sounds like a benign enough compromise until you begin to consider the insidious ways it was used to denigrate in some cases and slide references into the material in others. Like eugenics, for example. Or to downgrade the elevation of our first Hispanic Supreme Court justice, Sonia Sotomayor, to a "such as" when the original list without her was an "include". But, they did manage to remove Phyllis Schlafly from that same list, so there's that, anyway.

Speaking of Phyllis Schlafly...

Continue reading »

On May 19th, the Texas Board of Education will meet to approve the final Social Studies curriculum and textbook changes that caused such a stir back in March.

Since that meeting, even more changes have been proposed which, if adopted, promise to rewrite history for Texas schoolchildren to the conservative narrative. Uber-winger Don McLeroy's proposals:

• Undermine the doctrine of separation of church and state. McLeroy wants to substitute an unintelligible standard asking students to "contrast the Founders' intent relative to the wording of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause, with the popular term 'Separation of church and state.'"
• Attacking social programs. McLeroy proposes children "discuss alternatives to long-term entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare" as a solution to the current ratio of workers to retirees. This is a particularly odious theme, given that the ratio will be entirely different by the time these children are at the peak of their careers.
• Skew focus toward conservatives. McLeroy's logic:
  

  "This is relevant to assessing the policies of the various ideologies that have shaped where we are as Americans," said McLeroy, who has joined with other members of his board bloc to put a more conservative slant on the social studies standards.

  For example, high school students will have to learn specifically about leading conservative groups from the 1980s and 1990s in U.S. history, but not about identified liberal or minority rights groups.

• Removal of all references to the terms "justice" and "equality".

Continue reading »

Meet the graduating Texas senior class of 2020 and beyond. This group of students has some unique identifying characteristics, products of an education based upon textbooks crafted with an agenda. If you were to test them on their knowledge, here's what you'd discover:

• They don't know who Thomas Jefferson is and why he's significant, but they do know who John Calvin is and believe he was instrumental to the formation of our nation.
• They believe the terms church and state are interchangeable.
• They do not believe in evolution as fact, but are inclined to embrace creation theory or intelligent design as the explanation for how the universe came into existence.
• They believe the right to bear arms is a first AND second amendment right granted by the Constitution. (see 11:12 entry)
• They do not understand the term "democracy", but can define "constitutional Republic" and apply it to the American system of government.
• They don't know that the United States Constitution bans placing one religion over others.
• They can name at least three pro-free market factors contributing to European progress in medieval times. (Yes, I'm serious. Read the 6:43 pm entry)
• They cannot define capitalism, but are completely familiar with the idea that taxation and government regulation inhibits free enterprise.
• They ignore Hispanics and their role in various historical events in the United States, such as the Alamo.

Continue reading »

There have been so many lunatic ideas coming out of the mouths of insane people lately that I'm surprised I found something new and exciting. Want to protect your kids at school? Arm them with text book shields: via Right Wing Watch

Bill Crozier, a Union City Republican going against incumbent Democrat Sandy Garrett, said he believes old textbooks could be used to stop bullets shot from weapons wielded by school intruders. If elected, he said he would put thick used textbooks under every desk for students to use in self-defense. (video ) "The bullet did not penetrate the book."

Download | play -WMP

He seems to think that kids will be able to block an assailant armed with an AK-47 by shielding themselves. Ummm....this isn't TJ Hooker, I'm not trying to rain on his parade, but I think a nut might be able to aim at a few different spots. I'm just saying.

Blessed are the sneaky bastards TBogg

Sometime back we referred to Mel Gibson's theological snuff film as Crouching Jesus, Hidden Agenda. Now reader Ed (no, not that Ed, the other one) provides us with a link where handy tips are provided for slipping Jesus through the eye of a needle cracks:

If you are worried that your local schools are teaching children that religion has no place in the study of biology, please consider donating biology-related books, posters, CDs, and DVDs with religious content to your school. These materials can be given to public libraries, too, and even directly to science teachers who can keep them in the classroom as convenient reference sources. Students benefit greatly from being exposed to alternatives to the theory of evolution, which is the bias of most textbooks used these days.

These donations are completely legal, and provide a very good way to provide balance in the school without formally challenging the agenda of the mainstream curriculum.

[...]

"These donations can also be tax deductible, but are best made anonymously so that a connection is not easily made to the religious affiliations of the donor. Purchases made at Amazon.com can be sent directly to the school's librarian." (my emphasis)

Oh. And if you want to have some fun, there's a contest to rename Intelligent Design. Why? Here's why:

As you know, lately we have enjoyed increasing success in getting religious explanations of life reintroduced into public school curricula, and we believe our strategy of "repackaging" every 10 years has been a critical contributor to this success. In particular, it has allowed our members to appear more "fair and balanced" at school board meetings.

Because appearing to be "fair and balanced" is much more important than actually being "fair and balanced".