Quote: In his book, Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell described a corrupt government which didn't approve of its actual history, so they changed it to one which would made it easier to manipulate the populace. Religious extremists on the Texas State Board of Education now seek to do the same thing, -after having already vandalized the studies of science and health- in the name of censorship and propaganda, and in the hope that all the other states bow to the whim to Texas fundamentalists.
Don't.
It's time to fix this broken system. It's time to revise the system such that uneducated and unqualified political ideologues no longer oppose all the experts in every field of study we need to teach.
Please review the Texas Freedom Network's campaign to de-politicize the classroom, to 'just educate' our students.
For those of you actually concerned about the next generation and what education instills, please review and sign the petition. Link to petition. __________________
But the backdrops peel and the sets give way and the cast get eaten by the play, there's a murderer at the matinee, there are dead men in the aisles
And the patrons and the actors too are uncertain if the show is through and with sidelong looks await their cue, but the frozen mask just smiles
Posted: 23 Mar 2010 16:41
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Posts: 391
Join Date: Nov 2009
I believe, and I could be wrong, that two of these ultra conservatives actually lost their seats in the last election, and this was sort of their last hurrah before the next board comes in and fixes the problem.
Text books have always had a lot of opinion in them. I remember my first day of social studies as a kid where the teacher had us take out the old books (we had recently switched our text books) and compare the perspectives in the old book and the new book with regard to native americans.
Even the elevation of a guy like Jefferson or Washington over say Adams or Hamilton had to do with the various politics of the time (mostly that Southerners wanted the very north eastern story of America's founding to be rooted in the plantations of Virginia and Slavery).
Liekwise with on demand printing becoming more and more the way of the publishing world, one can imagine that Texas' influence will not be what it once was. There will be a Texas version of these books with their emphasis on certain issues, and de-emphasis of others. And there will be a Massachucets version with it's own variations.
Each book will have a list of say 10 founding fathers, and each school will get to pick which to emphasis and which to de-emphasise.
At least that's one theory.
All that said, this is one of the major reasons I plan to send my kids to Catholic School. If you are focused on classical education you don't change your books with the whims of politics either way.
Of course, as Glen Beck would point out, with it's emphasis on Social Justice, the Catholic Church was just indoctrinating me into their socialistic system.
Posted: 23 Mar 2010 17:03
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Posts: 4725
Join Date: Aug 2007
Quote: If you are focused on classical education you don't change your books with the whims of politics either way.
Agree 100%. It's bad enough that history is subjective to begin with, to keep re-editing it is ugly. __________________
But the backdrops peel and the sets give way and the cast get eaten by the play, there's a murderer at the matinee, there are dead men in the aisles
And the patrons and the actors too are uncertain if the show is through and with sidelong looks await their cue, but the frozen mask just smiles
