TX Board of Education removes Thomas Jefferson from txtbooks

flywallyfly

That's fine Gimme-- but here is an idea !! Why dont you get your school board to find an alternative to these textbooks? I know that you might have to get off your computer sitting ass and make some calls or move a petition around but then you wouldnt have the state of Texas shaping your kid !!

As far as seceding -- i would never want that and would move if it occured.... but if it did happen I believe the U.S. would be hurt more than this state would since we have the 2nd largest economy in the nation and rank #15 in the world. As a whole, Texas is a "tax donor state" with Texans receiving back approximately $0.94 per every dollar of federal income taxes collected in 2005.[9] I'm guessing the oil refineries might raise their rates for out of Texas sales as well .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Texas

keeponrockin

I don't really mind celebrating Christmas in schools... I'm as Atheist as they come, but still celebrate with my family. It's a time to gather with the people you love, drink, exchange gifts, and be merry! What's not to love? I also don't mind schools teaching about other holidays. When I moved to Canada (grade 4), I had no idea what Ramadan was! You would think that if they taught at least the basics of Christmas and Hannakauh (sp) they would teach the other too. Oh well.

Starfall

Yeah and Rick Perry begged the Feds to help out when Hurricane Ike nailed Galveston... some secessionist he is.

gimmesometruth27 wrote:

this is the state that gave us LBJ and GWB...as far as i'm concerned, they can secede and deal with their problems on their own. i can't be bothered with them...

OK, I'm gonna have to take issue with you on that one. To compare LBJ, the archtect of the Great Society, who signed into law Medicare and the Voting Rights Act, to Chimpy McCodpiece, who single handedly ran this country into the ground, is a bit over the top. LBJ got us into Vietnam, true, but at least that was only ONE bad war. Chimpy got us into two.

As far as Texas, let's also remember that the state gave us such liberal minds as Bill Moyers, Jim Hightower, and Molly Ivins.

flywallyfly

Rick Perry is a real douchebag (and that's not fair to douchebags). Be afraid "ya'll" -- he has national aspirations politically......

TriumphantAngel

ladies and gentleman, i give you Stevie Ray Vaughan. thank you Texas. i love you for that alone, and i can forgive you for almost anything.

Pepe Silvia

i don't know that you could say texas gave us gwb...they at least gave us Bill Hicks!

gimmesometruth27

Pepe Silvia wrote:

i don't know that you could say texas gave us gwb...they at least gave us Bill Hicks!

IMO they can keep both of those rednecks..

weenie

flywallyfly wrote:

Rick Perry is a real douchebag (and that's not fair to douchebags). Be afraid "ya'll" -- he has national aspirations politically......

Yes, be VERY afraid. He's even worse than dubya, and I wouldn't have thought that possible.

That being said, I want to reply to some of the "bashers" of Texas. Granted I live in Austin - which is by far the best city I have ever lived in as far as people, music, environmental concerns and natural beauty goes. I've lived in big cities, small cities, on both coasts and in between. I chose to live in Austin and am glad I did.

Texas, as a state, has a lot going for it - conservative spending, cutting edge technology, strong economy and lots of creative juices emanating from Austin. And, Texans have big hearts. I've dealt with people from Dallas and Houston by phone on all your general "life" type issues and found them to be far more helpful and concerned than say people I dealt with on some of the same issues in places like Atlanta where the power structure is as ignorant as they come.

As for the religious right and the ultra-conservatives making ridiculous rules like taking Jefferson out of history books, what I've seen happen over the past couple of years I've been here is that eventually reason takes over and these archaic rulings are overturned. It doesn't help that we have a Governor who's obviously had a lobotomy.

There are a LOT of bright minds here, but the entrenchment of BIG money and far-right zealots has existed for a very long time. Hopefully one day their influcence will wane. I know I absolutely love the lifestyle and the people I've come to know here in Austin. Perhaps one day Austin's philosophical style can influence the power brokers in the rest of the state. Change occurs slowly. And Texas is one big ass state!

Smellyman

what you described is states and countries every where.

Problem is Texas is becoming more backwards everyday.

catefrances

[quote="Pepe Silvia"though i don't care about the last one since we ARE a constitutional republic...


http://thinkprogress.org/2010/03/12/tex ... textbooks/
Texas Board of Education cuts Thomas Jefferson out of its textbooks.
The Texas Board of Education has been meeting this week to revise its social studies curriculum. During the past three days, “the board’s far-right faction wielded their power to shape lessons on the civil rights movement, the U.S. free enterprise system and hundreds of other topics”:

– To avoid exposing students to “transvestites, transsexuals and who knows what else,” the Board struck the curriculum’s reference to “sex and gender as social constructs.”...[/quote]

how about avoid exposing the kids to bigots..is that anywhere in the curriculum????


some good things do come out of TX though...

Pepe Silvia

there's links to some of the things mentioned at the site

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_ts1253

U.S. history textbooks could soon be flavored heavily with Texas conservatism
Mon Mar 15, 5:17 pm ET
The nation’s public school curriculum may be in for a Texas-sized overhaul, if the Lone Star state’s influential recommendations for changes to social studies, economics and history textbooks are fully ratified later this spring. Last Friday, in a 10-to-5 vote split right down party lines, the Texas State Board of Education approved some controversial right-leaning alterations to what most students in the state—and by extension, in much of the rest of the country—will be studying as received historical and social-scientific wisdom. After a public comment period, the board will vote on final recommendations in May.
Don McElroy, who leads the board’s powerful seven-member social conservative bloc, explained that the measure is a way of "adding balance" in the classroom, since "academia is skewed too far to the left." And the board's critics have labeled the move an attempt by political "extremists" to "promote their ideology."

The revised standards have far-reaching implications because Texas is a huge market leader in the school-textbook industry. The enormous print run for Texas textbooks leaves most districts in other states adopting the same course materials, so that the Texas School Board effectively spells out requirements for 80 percent of the nation’s textbook market. That means, for instance, that schools in left-leaning states like Oregon and Vermont could soon be teaching from textbooks that are short on references to Ted Kennedy but long on references to conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly.

Here are some of the other signal shifts that the Texas Board endorsed last Friday:

- A greater emphasis on “the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s.” This means not only increased favorable mentions of Schlafly, the founder of the antifeminist Eagle Forum, but also more discussion of the Moral Majority, the Heritage Foundation, the National Rifle Association and Newt Gingrich's Contract With America.

- A reduced scope for Latino history and culture. A proposal to expand such material in recognition of Texas’ rapidly growing Hispanic population was defeated in last week’s meetings—provoking one board member, Mary Helen Berlanga, to storm out in protest. "They can just pretend this is a white America and Hispanics don’t exist," she said of her conservative colleagues on the board. "They are rewriting history, not only of Texas but of the United States and the world."

- Changes in specific terminology. Terms that the board’s conservative majority felt were ideologically loaded are being retired. Hence, “imperialism” as a characterization of America’s modern rise to world power is giving way to “expansionism,” and “capitalism” is being dropped in economic material, in favor of the more positive expression “free market.” (The new recommendations stress the need for favorable depictions of America’s economic superiority across the board.)

- A more positive portrayal of Cold War anticommunism. Disgraced anticommunist crusader Joseph McCarthy, the Wisconsin senator censured by the Senate for his aggressive targeting of individual citizens and their civil liberties on the basis of their purported ties to the Communist Party, comes in for partial rehabilitation. The board recommends that textbooks refer to documents published since McCarthy’s death and the fall of the Soviet bloc that appear to show expansive Soviet designs to undermine the U.S. government.

- Language that qualifies the legacy of 1960s liberalism. Great Society programs such as Title IX—which provides for equal gender access to educational resources—and affirmative action, intended to remedy historic workplace discrimination against African-Americans, are said to have created adverse “unintended consequences” in the curriculum’s preferred language.

- Thomas Jefferson no longer included among writers influencing the nation’s intellectual origins. Jefferson, a deist who helped pioneer the legal theory of the separation of church and state, is not a model founder in the board’s judgment. Among the intellectual forerunners to be highlighted in Jefferson’s place: medieval Catholic philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas, Puritan theologian John Calvin and conservative British law scholar William Blackstone. Heavy emphasis is also to be placed on the founding fathers having been guided by strict Christian beliefs.

- Excision of recent third-party presidential candidates Ralph Nader (from the left) and Ross Perot (from the centrist Reform Party). Meanwhile, the recommendations include an entry listing Confederate General Stonewall Jackson as a role model for effective leadership, and a statement from Confederate President Jefferson Davis accompanying a speech by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln.

- A recommendation to include country and western music among the nation’s important cultural movements. The popular black genre of hip-hop is being dropped from the same list.

None of these proposals has met with final ratification from the board—that vote will come in May, after a prolonged period of public comment on the recommendations. Still, the conservatives clearly feel like the bulk of their work is done; after the 120-page draft was finalized last Friday, Republican board member Terri Leo declared that it was "world class" and "exceptional."

—Brett Michael Dykes is a national affairs writer for Yahoo! News

FiveB247x

Let's give Texas back to Mexico.