Texas Schools To Promote God & Guns
Byrnzie
Posts: 21,037
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/ma ... us-history
Texas schools board rewrites US history with lessons promoting God and guns
US Christian conservatives drop references to slave trade and sideline Thomas Jefferson who backed church-state separation
* Chris McGreal, Houston
* guardian.co.uk, Sunday 16 May 2010
Cynthia Dunbar does not have a high regard for her local schools. She has called them unconstitutional, tyrannical and tools of perversion. The conservative Texas lawyer has even likened sending children to her state's schools to "throwing them in to the enemy's flames". Her hostility runs so deep that she educated her own offspring at home and at private Christian establishments.
Now Dunbar is on the brink of fulfilling a promise to change all that, or at least point Texas schools toward salvation. She is one of a clutch of Christian evangelists and social conservatives who have grasped control of the state's education board. This week they are expected to force through a new curriculum that is likely to shift what millions of American schoolchildren far beyond Texas learn about their history.
The board is to vote on a sweeping purge of alleged liberal bias in Texas school textbooks in favour of what Dunbar says really matters: a belief in America as a nation chosen by God as a beacon to the world, and free enterprise as the cornerstone of liberty and democracy.
"We are fighting for our children's education and our nation's future," Dunbar said. "In Texas we have certain statutory obligations to promote patriotism and to promote the free enterprise system. There seems to have been a move away from a patriotic ideology. There seems to be a denial that this was a nation founded under God. We had to go back and make some corrections."
Those corrections have prompted a blizzard of accusations of rewriting history and indoctrinating children by promoting rightwing views on religion, economics and guns while diminishing the science of evolution, the civil rights movement and the horrors of slavery.
Several changes include sidelining Thomas Jefferson, who favoured separation of church and state, while introducing a new focus on the "significant contributions" of pro-slavery Confederate leaders during the civil war.
The new curriculum asserts that "the right to keep and bear arms" is an important element of a democratic society. Study of Sir Isaac Newton is dropped in favour of examining scientific advances through military technology.
There is also a suggestion that the anti-communist witch-hunt by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s may have been justified.
The education board has 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.
"There is a battle for the soul of education," said Mavis Knight, a liberal member of the Texas education board. "They're trying to indoctrinate with American exceptionalism, the Christian founding of this country, the free enterprise system. There are strands where the free enterprise system fits appropriately but they have stretched the concept of the free enterprise system back to medieval times. The president of the Texas historical association could not find any documentation to support the stretching of the free enterprise system to ancient times but it made no difference."
The curriculum has alarmed liberals across the country in part because Texas buys millions of text books every year, giving it considerable sway over what publishers print. By some estimates, all but a handful of American states rely on text books written to meet the Texas curriculum. The California legislature is considering a bill that would bar them from being used in the state's schools.
In the past four years, Christian conservatives have won almost half the seats on the Texas education board and can rely on other Republicans for support on most issues. They previously tried to require science teachers to address the "strengths and weaknesses" in the theory of evolution – a move critics regard as a back door to teaching creationism – but failed. They have had more success in tackling history and social studies.
Dunbar backed amendments to the curriculum that portray the free enterprise system (there is no mention of capitalism, deemed to be a tainted word) as a cornerstone of liberty and argue that the government should have a minimal role in the economy.
One amendment requires that students be taught that economic prosperity requires "minimal government intrusion and taxation".
Underpinning the changes is a particular view of religion.
Dunbar was elected to the state education board on the back of a campaign in which she argued for the teaching of creationism – euphemistically known as intelligent design – in science classes.
Two years ago, she published a book, One Nation Under God, in which she argued that the United States was ultimately governed by the scriptures.
"The only accurate method of ascertaining the intent of the founding fathers at the time of our government's inception comes from a biblical worldview," she wrote. "We as a nation were intended by God to be a light set on a hill to serve as a beacon of hope and Christian charity to a lost and dying world."
On the education board, Dunbar backed changes that include teaching the role the "Jewish Ten Commandments" played in "political and legal ideas", and the study of the influence of Moses on the US constitution. Dunbar says these are important steps to overturning what she believes is the myth of a separation between church and state in the US.
"There's been this amorphous changing of how we look at religion and how we define religion within American history. One concern I have is that the viewpoint of the founding fathers is very clear. They were not against the promotion of religion. I think it is important to present a historically accurate viewpoint to students," she said.
On the face of it some of the changes are innocuous but critics say that closer scrutiny reveals a not-so-hidden agenda. History students are now to be required to study documents, such as the Mayflower Compact, which instil the idea of America being founded as a Christian fundamentalist nation.
Knight and others do not question that religion was an important force in American history but they fear that it is being used as a Trojan horse by evangelists to insert religious indoctrination into the school curriculum. They point to the wording of amendments such as that requiring students to "describe how religion and virtue contributed to the growth of representative government in the American colonies".
Among the advisers the board brought in to help rewrite the curriculum is David Barton, the leader of WallBuilders which seeks to promote religion in history. Barton has campaigned against the separation of church and state. He argues that income tax should be abolished because it contradicts the bible. Among his recommendations was that pupils should be taught that the declaration of independence establishes that the creator is at the heart of law, government and individual rights.
Conservatives have been accused of an assault on the history of civil rights. One curriculum amendment describes the civil rights movement as creating "unrealistic expectations of equal outcomes" among minorities. Another seeks to place Martin Luther King and the violent Black Panther movement as opposite sides of the same coin.
"We had a big discussion around that," said Knight, a former teacher. "It was an attempt to taint the civil rights movement. They did the same by almost equating George Wallace [the segregationist governor of Alabama in the mid-1960s] with the civil rights movement and the things Martin Luther King Jr was trying to accomplish, as if Wallace was standing up for white civil rights. That's how slick they are.
"They're very smooth at excluding the contributions of minorities into the curriculum. It is as if they want to render minority groups totally invisible. I think it's racist. I really do."
The blizzard of amendments has produced the occasional farce. Some figures have been sidelined because they are deemed to be socialist or un-American. One of them is a children's author, Bill Martin, who wrote a popular tale, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? Martin was purged from the curriculum when he was confused with an author with a similar name but a different book, Ethical Marxism.
Texas schools board rewrites US history with lessons promoting God and guns
US Christian conservatives drop references to slave trade and sideline Thomas Jefferson who backed church-state separation
* Chris McGreal, Houston
* guardian.co.uk, Sunday 16 May 2010
Cynthia Dunbar does not have a high regard for her local schools. She has called them unconstitutional, tyrannical and tools of perversion. The conservative Texas lawyer has even likened sending children to her state's schools to "throwing them in to the enemy's flames". Her hostility runs so deep that she educated her own offspring at home and at private Christian establishments.
Now Dunbar is on the brink of fulfilling a promise to change all that, or at least point Texas schools toward salvation. She is one of a clutch of Christian evangelists and social conservatives who have grasped control of the state's education board. This week they are expected to force through a new curriculum that is likely to shift what millions of American schoolchildren far beyond Texas learn about their history.
The board is to vote on a sweeping purge of alleged liberal bias in Texas school textbooks in favour of what Dunbar says really matters: a belief in America as a nation chosen by God as a beacon to the world, and free enterprise as the cornerstone of liberty and democracy.
"We are fighting for our children's education and our nation's future," Dunbar said. "In Texas we have certain statutory obligations to promote patriotism and to promote the free enterprise system. There seems to have been a move away from a patriotic ideology. There seems to be a denial that this was a nation founded under God. We had to go back and make some corrections."
Those corrections have prompted a blizzard of accusations of rewriting history and indoctrinating children by promoting rightwing views on religion, economics and guns while diminishing the science of evolution, the civil rights movement and the horrors of slavery.
Several changes include sidelining Thomas Jefferson, who favoured separation of church and state, while introducing a new focus on the "significant contributions" of pro-slavery Confederate leaders during the civil war.
The new curriculum asserts that "the right to keep and bear arms" is an important element of a democratic society. Study of Sir Isaac Newton is dropped in favour of examining scientific advances through military technology.
There is also a suggestion that the anti-communist witch-hunt by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s may have been justified.
The education board has 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.
"There is a battle for the soul of education," said Mavis Knight, a liberal member of the Texas education board. "They're trying to indoctrinate with American exceptionalism, the Christian founding of this country, the free enterprise system. There are strands where the free enterprise system fits appropriately but they have stretched the concept of the free enterprise system back to medieval times. The president of the Texas historical association could not find any documentation to support the stretching of the free enterprise system to ancient times but it made no difference."
The curriculum has alarmed liberals across the country in part because Texas buys millions of text books every year, giving it considerable sway over what publishers print. By some estimates, all but a handful of American states rely on text books written to meet the Texas curriculum. The California legislature is considering a bill that would bar them from being used in the state's schools.
In the past four years, Christian conservatives have won almost half the seats on the Texas education board and can rely on other Republicans for support on most issues. They previously tried to require science teachers to address the "strengths and weaknesses" in the theory of evolution – a move critics regard as a back door to teaching creationism – but failed. They have had more success in tackling history and social studies.
Dunbar backed amendments to the curriculum that portray the free enterprise system (there is no mention of capitalism, deemed to be a tainted word) as a cornerstone of liberty and argue that the government should have a minimal role in the economy.
One amendment requires that students be taught that economic prosperity requires "minimal government intrusion and taxation".
Underpinning the changes is a particular view of religion.
Dunbar was elected to the state education board on the back of a campaign in which she argued for the teaching of creationism – euphemistically known as intelligent design – in science classes.
Two years ago, she published a book, One Nation Under God, in which she argued that the United States was ultimately governed by the scriptures.
"The only accurate method of ascertaining the intent of the founding fathers at the time of our government's inception comes from a biblical worldview," she wrote. "We as a nation were intended by God to be a light set on a hill to serve as a beacon of hope and Christian charity to a lost and dying world."
On the education board, Dunbar backed changes that include teaching the role the "Jewish Ten Commandments" played in "political and legal ideas", and the study of the influence of Moses on the US constitution. Dunbar says these are important steps to overturning what she believes is the myth of a separation between church and state in the US.
"There's been this amorphous changing of how we look at religion and how we define religion within American history. One concern I have is that the viewpoint of the founding fathers is very clear. They were not against the promotion of religion. I think it is important to present a historically accurate viewpoint to students," she said.
On the face of it some of the changes are innocuous but critics say that closer scrutiny reveals a not-so-hidden agenda. History students are now to be required to study documents, such as the Mayflower Compact, which instil the idea of America being founded as a Christian fundamentalist nation.
Knight and others do not question that religion was an important force in American history but they fear that it is being used as a Trojan horse by evangelists to insert religious indoctrination into the school curriculum. They point to the wording of amendments such as that requiring students to "describe how religion and virtue contributed to the growth of representative government in the American colonies".
Among the advisers the board brought in to help rewrite the curriculum is David Barton, the leader of WallBuilders which seeks to promote religion in history. Barton has campaigned against the separation of church and state. He argues that income tax should be abolished because it contradicts the bible. Among his recommendations was that pupils should be taught that the declaration of independence establishes that the creator is at the heart of law, government and individual rights.
Conservatives have been accused of an assault on the history of civil rights. One curriculum amendment describes the civil rights movement as creating "unrealistic expectations of equal outcomes" among minorities. Another seeks to place Martin Luther King and the violent Black Panther movement as opposite sides of the same coin.
"We had a big discussion around that," said Knight, a former teacher. "It was an attempt to taint the civil rights movement. They did the same by almost equating George Wallace [the segregationist governor of Alabama in the mid-1960s] with the civil rights movement and the things Martin Luther King Jr was trying to accomplish, as if Wallace was standing up for white civil rights. That's how slick they are.
"They're very smooth at excluding the contributions of minorities into the curriculum. It is as if they want to render minority groups totally invisible. I think it's racist. I really do."
The blizzard of amendments has produced the occasional farce. Some figures have been sidelined because they are deemed to be socialist or un-American. One of them is a children's author, Bill Martin, who wrote a popular tale, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? Martin was purged from the curriculum when he was confused with an author with a similar name but a different book, Ethical Marxism.
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Comments
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. - Louis Brandeis
EV - Canberra, Newcastle, Sydney 2011; Sydney 2014.
WTF is wrong with people?
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln
Old religious wackjobs trying to infect the next generation.
I hope there is a left-wing uprising against this, I just don't understand how any public education system could actually vote in favour of this. I've heard the term history is being re-written by the winners but never heard of it being re-written by a bunch of fundamentalist texans.
Somehow, I got it in my mind that Jesus was more about Peace... uless, He would have used guns to force people to believe in Him. But, still... I just don't see it.
Someone... please, enlighten me.
...
P.S. Please, don't try to bring the "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword." thing on me. Taking one line from Jesus' instructions to His disciples dishonors and disrespects Jesus' word. Recite the sentence in its entirety and try to argue that.
Hail, Hail!!!
Godfather.
it's from the old testament so before jesus was born...
Jeremiah 46:10
"But that day belongs to the LORD, the Lord Almighty-
a day of vengeance, for vengeance on his foes.
The sword will devour till it is satisfied,
till it has quenched its thirst with blood.
For the Lord, the LORD Almighty, will offer sacrifice
in the land of the north by the River Euphrates. "
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Why not (V) (°,,,,°) (V) ?
The Old Testament? Oh, from what I understand it's just a bunch of crap about 'Ancient Jew laws'... except the part where God hates fags... and Crea... er... Intelligent Design was invented. I think we're supposed to glance over that stuff... mostly ignore it.
Hail, Hail!!!
http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/i ... rist_2.JPG
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
thoughts on this?
In the 1980s, many radical anti-war activists of the 1960s and 1970s acquired a new identity and became tenured college professors. Among them was William Ayers, a founder of the infamous Weather Underground, the organization that set bombs in public buildings such as the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon.
Ayers escaped prosecution only because of government misconduct in collecting evidence against him. Ayers later boasted: "Guilty as hell. Free as a bird." In a remarkable coincidence, Ayers was quoted in the New York Times on the morning of 9/11 as saying, "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough." Later that week, Ayers was quoted in the New York Times Magazine as saying "This society is not a just and fair and decent place."
Ayers enrolled in Columbia Teachers College, where he picked up a Ph.D., and emerged as a Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.He launched a new career, directing his revolutionary energy into changing classroom curricula instead of setting bombs.
Ayers's political views are as radical now as they were in the 1970s. "Viva President Chavez!" he exclaimed in a speech in Venezuela in 2006, in which he also declared, "Education is the motor-force of revolution."
Ayers has been on a decades-long mission to transform education into anti-American indoctrination and to get young people to demand that government control the economy, politics and culture. We see the result in 2008 post-election surveys: seven out of every ten voters between the ages of 18 and 29 now favor expanding the role of government, and agree that the government should do more to solve the nation's problems. It's obvious which party and which candidates will get their vote.
One might assume that Ayers's peculiar resumé would put him on the outer fringe of the leftwing education establishment. However, Ayers developed quite a following as he taught resentment against America. In 2008 he was elected by his peers as vice president for curriculum of the American Education Research Association, the nation's largest organization of education professors and researchers.
http://www.eagleforum.org/psr/2009/jan09/psrjan09.html
do you have any examples of his anti-american teachings?
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
So this is where you get your dis-information?:
The Eagle Forum
We oppose opening U.S. northern and southern borders to a North American Community, or Security and Prosperity Partnership, or any kind of economic integration.
We oppose all encroachments against American sovereignty through United Nations treaties or conferences that try to impose global taxes, gun registration, energy restrictions, feminist goals, or regulation on our use of oceans.
We support the deployment of an anti-ballistic missile defense to protect American lives.
We support establishing English as our official language.
We support the private enterprise system and reject the false dogmas that tax-and-spend government or a global economy can solve our social and economic problems.
We support the sanctity of human life as a gift from our Creator, as proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence.
We support congressional action to curb the Imperial Judiciary by refusing to confirm activist judges and by withdrawing jurisdiction from the federal courts over areas where we don’t trust them, such as the Pledge of Allegiance, the Ten Commandments, the Boy Scouts, and the definition of marriage.
We support the right of individuals to keep and bear arms, as guaranteed in the Second Amendment.
Eagle Forum exposes the radical feminists
Eagle Forum successfully led the ten-year battle to defeat the misnamed Equal Rights Amendment with its hidden agenda of tax-funded abortions and same-sex marriages.
We oppose and deplore the dumbing down of the academic curriculum through fads such as Outcome-Based Education and courses in self-esteem, diversity, and multiculturalism.
We oppose liberal propaganda in the curriculum through global education and Political Correctness.
We support parents’ rights to guide the education of their own children, to protect their children against immoral instruction and materials, and to home-school without oppressive government regulations.
We oppose the feminist goal of federally financed and regulated daycare.
doesn't seem very 'middle of the road' to me....
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
"Viva President Chavez!" and "Education is the motor-force of revolution."
Sure, sounds like a dangerous lunatic. How about you post these quotes in their full context? And whilst you're at it, can you explain what changes he sought to make with regards to classroom curricula? Thanks.
talk about deflecting attention from the crazy, gun/jesus woman that the thread was about....
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/us_and ... 141121.stm
Texas schools to get controversial syllabus
Saturday, 22 May 2010
Education officials in the US state of Texas have adopted new guidelines to the school curriculum, which critics say will politicise teaching.
The changes include teaching that the UN could be a threat to American freedom, and that the Founding Fathers may not have intended a complete separation of church and state.
Critics say the changes are ideological and distort history.
However, proponents argue they are redressing a liberal bias in education.
Analysts say Texas, with five million schoolchildren, wields substantial influence on school curriculums across the US.
The BBC's Rajesh Mirchandani in Los Angeles says publishers of textbooks used nationally often print what Texas wants to teach.
Students in Texas will now be taught the benefits of US free-market economics and how government taxation can harm economic progress.
They will study how American ideals benefit the world but organisations such as the UN could be a threat to personal freedom.
And Thomas Jefferson has been dropped from a list of enlightenment thinkers in the world-history curriculum, despite being one of the Founding Fathers who is credited with developing the idea that church and state should be separate.
The doctrine has become a cornerstone of US government, but some religious groups and some members of the Texas Education Board disagree, our correspondent says.
The board, which is dominated by Christian conservatives, voted nine-to-five in favour of adopting the new curriculum for both primary and secondary schools.
But during the discussions some of the most controversial ideas were dropped - including a proposal to refer to the slave trade as the "Atlantic triangular trade".
Opponents of the changes worry that textbooks sold in other states will be written to comply with the new Texas standards, meaning that the alterations could have an impact on curriculums nationwide.
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln
That's terrible... And frustrating.
That's just what we need, our next generation being brainwashed by misleading facts and some lunatic Christian's agenda. :x
Texas doesn't elect these board members. They are appointed by the governor. We can only change them if they lose their state senate or state legislature elections.
Before you all generalize this entire state, and thereby committing the same offenses as this stupid board of education, just know that no one down here supports these changes, yet we are powerless to stop them. Even voting out the people responsible doesn't help.
Some of you people are just as guilty by generalizing. That's like someone saying they wished all Americans would disappear just because you don't like Bush or Obama.
This is a sensative subject to me as I was a history major in college and I actually fear what my kids are being taught in school, knowing they will have to forget everything once they get into college.
BOS-9/28/04,9/29/04,6/28/08,6/30/08, 9/5/16, 9/7/16, 9/2/18
MTL-9/15/05, OTT-9/16/05
PHL-5/27/06,5/28/06,10/30/09,10/31/09
CHI-8/2/07,8/5/07,8/23/09,8/24/09
HTFD-6/27/08
ATX-10/4/09, 10/12/14
KC-5/3/2010,STL-5/4/2010
Bridge School-10/23/2010,10/24/2010
PJ20-9/3/2011,9/4/2011
OKC-11/16/13
SEA-12/6/13
TUL-10/8/14
You mean The Butthole Surfers wouldn't approve of this bill? And if Bill Hicks were still alive he wouldn't approve?
It just sucks that two lame ducks got to drive these changes on their way out the door. McLeroy lost his bid for re-election in the March 2 primary. I don't know where Dunbar is going but she is leaving too.
We can hold out hope though that the new board can undo the damage.
BOS-9/28/04,9/29/04,6/28/08,6/30/08, 9/5/16, 9/7/16, 9/2/18
MTL-9/15/05, OTT-9/16/05
PHL-5/27/06,5/28/06,10/30/09,10/31/09
CHI-8/2/07,8/5/07,8/23/09,8/24/09
HTFD-6/27/08
ATX-10/4/09, 10/12/14
KC-5/3/2010,STL-5/4/2010
Bridge School-10/23/2010,10/24/2010
PJ20-9/3/2011,9/4/2011
OKC-11/16/13
SEA-12/6/13
TUL-10/8/14
BOS-9/28/04,9/29/04,6/28/08,6/30/08, 9/5/16, 9/7/16, 9/2/18
MTL-9/15/05, OTT-9/16/05
PHL-5/27/06,5/28/06,10/30/09,10/31/09
CHI-8/2/07,8/5/07,8/23/09,8/24/09
HTFD-6/27/08
ATX-10/4/09, 10/12/14
KC-5/3/2010,STL-5/4/2010
Bridge School-10/23/2010,10/24/2010
PJ20-9/3/2011,9/4/2011
OKC-11/16/13
SEA-12/6/13
TUL-10/8/14