{"id":1592,"date":"2010-05-22T02:59:16","date_gmt":"2010-05-22T09:59:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=1592"},"modified":"2010-05-22T03:20:52","modified_gmt":"2010-05-22T10:20:52","slug":"texas-passes-textbook-propaganda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2010\/05\/22\/texas-passes-textbook-propaganda\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas Passes Textbook Propaganda"},"content":{"rendered":"

The state of Texas has decided to rearrange history\u00a0to indoctrinate students with GOP propaganda.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\"texas-indoctrinate\"<\/a> Today, the right-wing Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) will give final approval of content for state social studies curriculum. The standards will \u201cdictate what is taught in all Texas schools<\/a> and provide the basis for textbooks and student achievement tests over the next decade.\u201d Yesterday, this unqualified board \u2014 which includes a woman who thinks public education is a \u201ctool of perversion<\/a>\u201d and a chairman whose real profession is a dentist<\/a> \u2014 continued to inject their right-wing ideology into the state\u2019s standards, pushing for inclusion of more conservatives, more Confederate glorification, and more distortion of progressive viewpoints.<\/p>\n

Whether To Require Students To Learn Obama\u2019s Middle Name:<\/span> Republican David Bradley is one of the leaders of the SBOE\u2019s far-right faction. Yesterday, he suggested that if students were going to learn about Barack Obama as the first African-American president, they should also learn his middle name \u2014 Hussein. However, fellow Republican Bob Craig objected, saying, \u201cThe intent of what you\u2019re doing is pretty obvious<\/a>, but I don\u2019t think it is necessarily correct,\u201d pointing out that other presidents like Kennedy and Reagan don\u2019t have their middle names in the standards. Bradley eventually withdrew his amendment, and the board decided<\/a> to list Obama as he is on the White House website: Barack H. Obama<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Elevating Confederate Leader Jefferson Davis To The Level Of Abraham Lincoln:<\/span> There was \u201cprolonged debate<\/a>\u201d yesterday over whether to \u201cinclude Confederate President Jefferson Davis\u2019 inaugural address with a lesson on Abraham Lincoln\u2019s philosophical views.\u201d Far-right Republican Cynthia Dunbar said that excluding Jefferson would be an attempt to \u201cwhitewash\u201d history<\/a>. (TFN Insider adds, \u201cBut that\u2019s what Davis\u2019s address does! The address doesn\u2019t even mention the reason southern states seceded: slavery.\u201d) Eventually, the SBOE votes to keep in Davis and require students to \u201ccontrast\u201d his speech to Lincoln\u2019s speeches.<\/p>\n

Requiring That Historical Figures \u2014 Except Conservative Ones \u2014 Must Be Dead For Students To Study Them:<\/span> Yesterday, SBOE voted to strip United Farm Workers of America co-founder Dolores Huerta from a third-grade list of \u201chistorical and contemporary figures who have exemplified good citizenship.\u201d Several officials argued that she is a socialist<\/a> and therefore should be excluded. But perhaps the most blatantly biased objection came from Bradley, who said:<\/p>\n

I am very reluctant to include persons who are still alive.<\/span> By definition of \u201chistory,\u201d you must be dead, because you never know when you might embarrass us later.<\/p>\n

\u2026<\/p>\n

Of course, the board has had no problem including Wallace Jefferson<\/a>, the Republican chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court, or right-wing figure Phyllis Schlafly<\/a>… [emphasis original<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Think Progress<\/a>><\/p>\n

For all intents and purposes, they are transforming Texas classrooms, and those in whatever other states follow the Texas standard to save money, into indoctrination centers teaching children what to think, not how to think.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course Texas can count on the GOP Reichsministry of Propaganda, Faux Noise,<\/em> for support.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Fox_News_Nazi\"<\/a> It\u2019s apparent that Fox News is fully on board with the conservative effort to change the Texas curriculum in order to mold it to their Christian right revisionist view of history. Yesterday, despite having originally booked somebody from the \u201cother\u201d side (\u201cPeople From The American Way”)<\/strong> Martha MacCallum hosted only a far right, Texas conservative Christian supporter of the conservative changes whose views went unrebutted by MacCallum who agreed with her. Turns out that People for the American Way were, according to their<\/strong> commentary<\/a>, told that the segment had been scratched<\/strong>. (Guess Fox had its fingers crossed when they said that!)\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <News Hounds<\/a>><\/p>\n

Can you believe that Faux<\/em> was so afraid of presenting a fair and balanced perspective that they lied to PFAW?!!?<\/span><\/p>\n

Isn\u2019t it bad enough that these Texas kids are exposed to GOP propaganda on Faux Noise<\/em>, without getting it in school too?<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The state of Texas has decided to rearrange history\u00a0to indoctrinate students with GOP propaganda. Today, the right-wing Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) will give final approval of content for state social studies curriculum. The standards will \u201cdictate what is taught in all Texas schools and provide the basis for textbooks and student achievement tests […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-religion","category-5-id","category-47-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1592\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}