It's already a mess, and getting messier. And I apologise for the politics, but this is important.
If you haven't been following, Texas is rewriting their history curriculum, and rewriting history at the same time.
They're removed references to Thomas Jefferson (that deist!), and separation of church and state, and even the fact that Hispanics died defending the Alamo. They added sections on the "conservative resurgence" of the 80s and 90s, but no reference to liberal ideas. They raise Reagan to superhero. They teach McCarthy was a good guy, just terribly misunderstood.
Why should non-Texans care? Because Texas buys a lot of textbooks, so the publishers are likely to try to sell them to other school boards. These are the children who will be running the country some day. I'd rather they didn't use their false view of history to run the country into the ground. I'm an unabashed liberal (I've been bashed, but not abashed) and if they tried to publish books that gave a false lefty view, I'd be against that too. The key word is false. If they wrote that the Kennedys saved America and slavery existed up to the civil rights movement of the 60s, and conservatives were a failed genetic experiments, I'd object. We can't compete in the world if our children are taught rubbish. The publishers assure us "it's so easy to print different books that this will be the Texas edition and it won't affect the thinking parts of the country." I paraphrase. After Citizens United, we were assured that that ruling would only have a minor effect on elections. That lie will be in the next Texas history book, I guess.
Why should you and I care? Here's what one of the perpetrators of this crime said:
Board member Barbara Cargill, R-The Woodlands, objected to a standard for a high school sociology course that addressed the difference between sex and gender. It was eliminated in a 9-to-6 vote.
She worried that a discussion of that issue would lead students into the world of “transvestites, transsexuals and who knows what else.”
As a who-knows-what-else, I'm concerned. A discussion of differences among people! Heaven forbid!
Long live the master race.
If you think I'm exaggerating, read this article in the Statesman. There are lots of other stories from major publications as well.
Showing posts with label Barbara Cargill. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Barbara Cargill. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
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