What are your thoughts on the attempts by the Texas state board of education to apparently whitewash new curriculum standards for teaching social studies, history, and economics to K-12 public school students?

It is a travesty. To me, this is similar to the thinly veiled attempts to introduce intelligent design into the science curriculum and then say that it isn’t creationism redux. Instead of calling it history, now we’ll just call it Intelligent Past.

(Sigh)..........Texas….....We are not as advanced a species as we believe. The rest of us should be ashamed to be human because of these weak-minded individuals. They’re making us look bad lol.

They’re really upset about that pesky Enlightenment and Age of Reason, aren’t they?

I’d love to hear their reasoning for this…

So to the people who were wondering why Texas is hated so much: now do you see why?

The more you try to change the past, the more you’ll realize that you can’t.

@Blackberry

I’m not ashamed about being human, but I’m not high-5ing myself about being a white male. ;-/

@DominicX @Facade @jaytkay @brownlemur @Blackberry

Thank you for your answers and I feel the same about this as you do.

And they accuse Obama of trying to brainwash children….
I do not have enough hands to facepalm as much as this warrants.

I was going to include snippets from the article itself, however, if I did that my answer would be bloody long.

I believe that this, if it passes, shall cause Texas, and possibly more of America, to revert to pre 1950’s teaching and people who are taught this way are going to incorporate it into their lives and their belief systems. This new curriculum would mean that those taught this way would not even know the important roles of hardly any other than white Christians, mostly male white Christians.

They are eliminating things like the KKK and lynchings from history. Combine that with almost only teaching about whites, this is a huge step back for any non whites.

This sets the stage to eliminate all of the civil rights, tolerance, and even women’s rights movements. Basically, if you are a minority, homosexual or bisexual, transgendered, not Christian, and possibly a woman, you are going to be screwed. History, itself, is being rewritten and sanitized in such a way as to eliminate all of us (I am not white) from history.

I can tell you first hand that teaching about successful non whites helps non white children. Even though my people were not included in the history texts, the non whites who were taught about gave me, as a boy, some hope that I could, as a non white, have a chance. Non whites were really not taught about that much when I was a boy but they were taught about. In this curriculum, non whites are, basically, going to be eliminated.

Another thing is, I would think, that white children who do not hear about success stories of non whites would be raised to think that whites have more of a chance to make it and are better than non whites becuase, after all, look at all the whites who did such great things. What is wrong with those non whites that they do not succeed? After all, history does not record successes so there must not be any.

If I was Native American, I would be extremely irritated by this because ”Native Americans are hardly mentioned, even though one member of a Texas tribe in his testimony before the board reminded them, ‘We were here a long time before you were.’”

They are even going to change how WWII is taught because the parts they are removing teaches about changing gender roles and leads to acceptance of different gender roles. I would think part of why they are removing it is because these changes lead towards tolerance of transgenders, homosexual and bisexual people.

The vote to pass this is in May and I hope, for the future of this nation, that it does not pass.

One other quote from the article should show how worrisome this is:

”Bear in mind, this is not just another wacky Texas-centric story. The curriculum standards adopted by this state will be incorporated into the nation’s textbooks in 2011 and remain for at least a decade, because Texas, with nearly 5 million students, is one of the publishing industry’s biggest clients.”

Thomas Jefferson is no longer really an important Founding Father, but Phyllis Schlafly is so prominent a figure she now has a place in Texas textbooks.

It is time for the sane states to get together and set up a national board, with top educators for every state, which sets the standards that all the other states will demand in their school’s textbooks. Then who cares if Texas teaches their students that the earth is flat, things don’t fall because of gravity but because they want to be closer to the earth, and the sun orbits the earth—not the other way around.

did you know in the south they still refer to the civil war as The War of Northern Aggression? For real.

How absurd. WTF, Texas?! WTF?

Maybe there is something in the water down there. I hope all the cons in Texas avoid returning the census form the wicked, evil gubment mailed to them. Otherwise, the gubment might get their address. Never mind the fact the Census Form came addressed to them, they can wear their tin-foil hats when handling it so the thought-sensing ink won’t work.

If all the Texas con men refrain from being counted, the state should lose half their representation in Congress and they won’t any longer be such a drain on the taxpayers of the other states. Right now, Texas gets far more in federal dollars than they pay in. Blue states with vibrant economies have to finance their nuttiness.

I think the other states whose citizens don’t want their children to be educated by the Christian Conservatives better gang up and fight back.