Right-Wing Activists Rewrite U.S. Textbooks

[BridgeTheGap]

In the minds of some of the “experts” who hold sway over the Texas public school textbooks, Joe McCarthy was an American hero, white men are responsible for civil rights, and “evolution is hooey.” Over the past 15 years, Washington Monthly reports that an activist bloc has methodically taken over the Texas State Board of Education, bent on injecting hard-right ideology into the state’s textbooks. According to these activists, the Founding Fathers never wanted a separation between church and state, and they’re doing their best to break down the wall by changing the schoolbooks in Texas.

The politicized textbooks would be a problem just inside Texas, but economic factors have given the state a huge influence over textbooks throughout the country. Unlike many other states, Texas makes the decisions on a state level on what books local school districts can buy. So when the state makes a decision on what books to purchase for its 4.7 million high schoolers, publishers take notice. The only bigger market for textbooks in the country is California, a state whose budget is in such disarray, it announced that it won’t be buying new books until 2014. In the meantime, an anonymous industry executive told Washington Monthly, “publishers will do whatever it takes to get on the Texas list,” even if that means caving in to right-wing activists.

In what’s already been a fearsome battle, the Texas State Board of Education is in the midst of its once-each-decade meeting to decide which books are purchased throughout the state. The Washington Monthly meticulously documented how conservative activists took over the meetings, forcing out moderates, accusing them of being pawns of the “radical homosexual lobby” and similar claims. With meetings taking place until March, the conservative activists are in prime position to push textbooks in Texas and throughout the country to the right. Don McLeroy, a particularly vocal activist on the state’s school board and a staunch advocate of teaching creationism in schools, told Washington Monthly, “Sometimes it boggles my mind the kind of power we have.”

http://www.utne.com/Politics/Right-Wing-Activists-Rewrite-US-Textbooks-6418.aspx?utm_content=01.18.10+Spirituality&utm_campaign=Emerging+Ideas-Every+Day&utm_source=iPost&utm_medium=email

[BrklynLiberal]

1. Scary shit. a few more decades of this and WE will be the Third World Country..

[RaleighNCDUer]

2. I sometimes wonder if these same people are responsible for the

textbooks that we sold to the Afghan & Pakistani madrassas for 20 years, creating the Taliban.

[sui generis]

3. just one time I'd like to hear "left wing activists re-write history books"

America used to have slaves. And it was wrong. Interracial marriage used to be illegal. And it was wrong. Women didn't used to have the right to vote. And it was wrong. Black people voting weren't counted as whole votes. And it was wrong. It used to be legal to force children into unpaid labor. And it was wrong.

Please everyone, step in - we have some history to "re-write" . . . . dumbass moldy creationists only have one tune - "and it is wrong".

[mzteris]

4. Howard Zinn's

A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present

\Amazon.com Review
Consistently lauded for its lively, readable prose, this revised and updated edition of A People's History of the United States turns traditional textbook history on its head. Howard Zinn infuses the often-submerged voices of blacks, women, American Indians, war resisters, and poor laborers of all nationalities into this thorough narrative that spans American history from Christopher Columbus's arrival to an afterword on the Clinton presidency.

Addressing his trademark reversals of perspective, Zinn--a teacher, historian, and social activist for more than 20 years--explains, "My point is not that we must, in telling history, accuse, judge, condemn Columbus in absentia. It is too late for that; it would be a useless scholarly exercise in morality. But the easy acceptance of atrocities as a deplorable but necessary price to pay for progress (Hiroshima and Vietnam, to save Western civilization; Kronstadt and Hungary, to save socialism; nuclear proliferation, to save us all)--that is still with us. One reason these atrocities are still with us is that we have learned to bury them in a mass of other facts, as radioactive wastes are buried in containers in the earth."

If your last experience of American history was brought to you by junior high school textbooks--or even if you're a specialist--get ready for the other side of stories you may not even have heard. With its vivid descriptions of rarely noted events, A People's History of the United States is required reading for anyone who wants to take a fresh look at the rich, rocky history of America.

http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States-1492-Present/dp/0060528370

[rudy23]

5. This was what I said during W's term when people said "History will judge them harshly"

I said, "Oh no it won't, they will just figure out how to write history."

Who's gonna stop them? Democrats couldn't obstruct a fly.