TX Right-Wingers 'Fix' Textbooks: Jefferson, Kennedy Gone, More Reagan

[Purveyor]

For the next ten years, millions of students in Texas and across the country will read history textbooks suggesting that the actions of witch-hunt instigator Joseph McCarthy were justified. They will read about religious icon John Calvin instead of Thomas Jefferson. They will read a description of the US government that includes the words "constitutional republic" but not the word "democratic."

These are just a few of the changes an ultra right-wing Texas Education Board has tentatively approved for the state's history curriculum. There is one more stage for approval, but the board voted yes to the changes in a 10-5 vote. That's 10 Republicans voting yes and 5 Democrats voting no, making the chances for reevaluation almost negligible.

Once fully approved, it will be a decade before the board reviews the curriculum again.

"I am very distressed," said Mary Helen Berlanga, D-Corpus Christi, who sponsored an unsuccessful amendment to mention that Tejanos were among the fallen heroes of the Alamo.

Most of the board's members make no secret of their intent to instill their own religious and political ideologies into public schools, and the consequences of their activism have far-reaching consequences.

MORE...

http://rawstory.com/2010/03/texas-approves-radical-rightwing-history-books-2/

[Hawkeye-X]

1. Texas will be always dead last on EVERYTHING

thanks to the fundies that has ruined Texas.

[tabasco]

2. Heil Reagan!

[Zomby Woof]

3. No Jefferson?

The author of the Declaration of Independence? The impetus behind the Louisiana Purchase? Lewis & Clark?

Holy Monticello.

Considering how the wingnuts are always appropriating his legacy - "The tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of patriots...", or his many aphorisms on limited government (which like most things about this complex man, were self-contradicted by the way he governed), and so on - you'd think they'd give him SOME mention.

Guess they hate his support of the French Revolution and his skepticism about the divinity of Jesus. You'd think they'd love his slave-owning, however.

[Hansel]

4. The publishers need to stop this dead in its track.

There will be challenges in every state that is forced to use them, including Texas, and the publisher stands to lose their shirts over this.

[Zoeisright]

5. I hope they do lose their shirts.

Publishers need to be brought up short by this. There's such a thing as telling the truth, and then there's the repuke version of events.

[sakabatou]

6. Huzzuh for history revisionism!

:puke:

[jwirr]

7. I have been collecting a private library in just in case. It includes some

very good history books. I already use much of my library to educate my own grandchildren. We may be forced to home school rather we like it or not for several reasons - schools going broke, faux history and science and oil depletion with no more buses.

[karynnj]

8. You wonder in a world where the books are written electronically

whether they could simply created two versions of the textbooks - one as the authors see history and the other amended for Texas. It is very troubling that for many their first exposure to American history will be books that reflect so biased a version of our history. (Not that any text is unbiased, but this is extreme. I still remember an excellent American History teacher in high school, who had us each take a page in the section on Colonial America and to create tables where we listed all the adjectives and adverbs used for each person or group of people. This showed us the more subtle ways bias is introduced. He also had us read a book that dealt with McCarthyism - and this was in the early 1960s - in Indiana. Might be why he was in the school just two years.)