What do you think of the new social studies standards adopted by the Texas school board?

“will include language extolling the superiority of capitalism” <== terrific.

While Texas may desire to include propaganda as fact in their textbooks, many other states will not accept such garbage in their curricula.

Publishers happily publish any textbook for which there is a sufficient market to make press runs profitable.

Some states may adopt the Texas born-again mythology-as-fact approach. Most won’t.

Those that do may find their Boards of Education quickly replaced as occurred in Kansas not long ago.

Free Enterprise System to replace the negative connotations of Capitalism is this a ruse to win over Trekkers?

I think the media is exaggerating the influence of these people.

This doesn’t have anything to do with the question, really, but I was born and raised in New Jersey. When I went to school I took “History” and “Social Studies.” Then I moved to Texas and was surprised when one of my step-kids came home from school with a “Texas History” book. They actually had a class based around Texas history. Are there other states that do this? Is there a Maine history course? Or Oregon? Or New Hampshire? I’m curious.

That said, I’m fine with the capitalism thing. The other two I’m not so happy about. But changing around history about the founding fathers has been done everywhere else and it isn’t until you start doing your own reading that you find out the truth.

@mrentropy – When my older sisters were in school (mid to late 60’s) they took New York State History as their eighth grade history class. (It was eighth or ninth, can’t remember.)

@tedibear39 Hmm. Maybe I just never noticed a NJ history. Or it was ingrained with US history so much they thought it wasn’t necessary.

I think I am absolutely not surprised. Let’s call this # 245,368 of why I will NEVER live in Texas.

Educators should apply the capitalistic principles of supply and demand to help solve this. Colleges should refuse to accept a Texas diploma as valid and you’ll quickly see the demand for whacko school-board members fox-newsing the facts in textbooks will rapidly diminish.

Jim Bowie to Sam Houston. “Looks bad Sam. There’s 30,000 Mexican Army soldiers out there. I don’t think we’re going to be able to hold out.”

Sam Houston replies, “Don’t worry, Jim. Texas school books will fix that.”

@ETpro good description of the situation. The really depressing thing is that what Texas does affects textbooks in every state. We are really, really regressing. Depression and recession brings out the best and worst in people. This decision instigated by religious zealots and re-writers of history is an example of the worst.

@gorillapaws: If they refuse to accept the TX HS diploma then what about all the Democrat-run decaying middle cities which are graduating people who can’t use fractions?

@malevolentbutticklish ” Democrat-run decaying middle cities” what the hell does that even mean? Last I heard it was Bush’s no child left behind program that has been causing most of the problems…

@gorillapaws I reserve the right to call those who use Democrat [sic] run Repugnicons—and that’s a typical Repugnicon trick to divert the discussion to some other subject. There’s no doubt inner cities have their educational problems in the poor districts. The big Texas cities do to. But the graduation rates, college admission rates, college graduation rates and advanced degree rates are all far higher in the blue states than in the red,, so don’t go getting yourself too puffed up about con man education.

@ETpro @gorillapaws: It was gorillapaws who said “Colleges should refuse to accept a Texas diploma as valid”. If the TX diploma shouldn’t be valid then clearly there are many other places that shouldn’t be valid as well… so I take gorillapaws statement to imply Democrat-run decaying center cities also shouldn’t have their diploma honored.

@malevolentbutticklish Colleges do not just accept a high school diploma. They look at class position, SAT scores ans other metrics. Here’s an interesting graph of SAT scores nationwide. Texas does better than much of the South. But if they start teaching fundamentalist Christianity instead of science, that won’t last.
http://www.realonlinedegrees.com/sat-scores-by-state/

@ETpro: I believe the SAT measures aptitude and not knowledge (beyond basic math and vocabulary).

@malevolentbutticklish You just want to be contentious don’t you? Yes, it is the Scholastic Aptitude Test. But what does aptitude mean? It means ability to compute things and do academic work. How do you get the aptitude needed to do college-level academic work? By learning what secondary education teaches. So the SATs are measuring how well the various states are doing at teaching their students to be prepared for college level work.

@ETpro: ... even if revisionist history was taught it shouldn’t change SAT scores much. This is my point. I am not trying to be contentious.

@malevolentbutticklish I will concede that it might not change SATs much unless so long as it isn’t carried much further than current plans. Thanks for the clarification.

@ETpro @malevolentbutticklish It’s been 50 years since I took the SAT test and I don’t remember any history questions. That being said, the Texas move is just a foot in the door for the religious zealots. Next they will be teaching I.D. on par with evolution, the next thing will be to talk about their “end days theology” and young earth theories.

The fact that they are rewriting the Social Studies program is a way to start the young on the road to a narrow minded religious view of the world. That’s what they do in many regressive middle-eastern countries. That is how you make suicide bombers and people willing to submit to a theocracy.

@Ron_C That is exactly what bothers me about the whole mess. It is a step in the direction of a Christian Taliban running America. No dissent welcome or even allowed.

The right to the freedom of and from religion is one of the cornerstones of our liberty, and these religious zealots are determined to chip away at it.

We are on the same page @ETpro I think that we need to stop supporting religions by giving tax deductions for donations to churches and exempting church property from local taxes.

I don’t mind deductions for charity donations but donations to build a new church are not the same as charity.

I also noted, while I was doing my income tax that there are deductions for the salary of the clergy and for missionary work. I am completely against that and it isn’t fair to the non-religious.

After financial reform we need to get rid of religious exemptions (except for actual real charity) from the tax code. Actually, that needs to be part of the reform package.

That is an excellent campaign to launch. Of course, the mighty Catholic lobby would massively oppose it. But the C-Street home that The Family has been renting dirt cheap to members of congress that join their Christian-fascist cult, and claiming as a tax deductible church, is a perfect example of the sort of abuses the exemption broaches. It seems to me to violate the equal protections and separation of church and state clauses of our constitution.

I can understand why a Christian might object to funding abortion, although I believe if they read Exodus 21 with open eyes they will realize their own religions text does not support their position than it is murder. But why should I, as an agnostic, be forced to pay to support their religious proselytizing when I think it all too often corrupts the peace and leads to prejudice and strife?