Texas approves textbooks with Moses as Founding Father

[phantom power]

Christian conservatives win, children lose: Texas textbooks will teach public school students that the Founding Fathers based the Constitution on the Bible, and the American system of democracy was inspired by Moses.

On Friday the Republican-controlled Texas State Board of Education voted along party lines 10-5 to approve the biased and inaccurate textbooks. The vote signals a victory for Christian conservatives in Texas, and a disappointing defeat for historical accuracy and the education of innocent children.

The textbooks were written to align with instructional standards that the Board of Education approved back in 2010 with the explicit intention of forcing social studies teaching to adhere to a conservative Christian agenda. The standards require teachers to emphasize America’s so called “Christian heritage.”

In essence, Christian conservatives in Texas have successfully forced a false historical narrative into public school textbooks that portray Moses as an influence on the Constitution and the Old Testament as the root of democracy.

- See more at: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/progressivesecularhumanist/2014/11/texas-approves-textbooks-with-moses-as-founding-father/#sthash.TSGOMA5T.TGUzecze.dpuf

[octoberlib]

1. This is sick.

[shenmue]

2. Sue them

Sue their asses off.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

8. yes

[haikugal]

12. This right here^^^^^sue them!!

What sick, deluded fools are in charge in Texas!

[Turbineguy]

3. Probably an attempt to reduce homeschooling.

Verily I say unto you: fear not, for now you can learn ignorance at your nearby public school!

[A HERETIC I AM]

49. No it's not

It is an attempt to institutionalize Christianity

They know the influence of Christianity is waning. Efforts like this are designed to stem that tide.

It's going to get a lot worse before it gets better

[Turbineguy]

56. Maybe it's like the NRA

spurring gun sales.

[arcane1]

4. Not good n/t

[betterdemsonly]

5. It is a nightmare to be transferred to Texas and other Southern states for this very reason

They have bad public schools and it is the fault of the stupid politicians people elect down there.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

9. They think that dinosaurs were around the same time as humans!

[hifiguy]

6. How fucking stupid can Texas get?

I truly feel sorry for all the sane and sensible people who live there. That state is too big to be a lunatic asylum and too small to be a country.

That whirring you hear is Madison and Jefferson hitting 10,000 rpm in their crypts.

[cantbeserious]

7. Stupid Is As Stupid Does ...

eom

[FrodosPet]

10. Maybe they meant Amos Moses?

[yuiyoshida]

11. Well if you plan to have a

Theocracy, than I guess this is the place to do it. They will eventually want the US Government to be a Theocracy as well...their CHRISTIAN NATION.

and watch out non-Christians... we will be the next target for discrimination of the worst kind ever.


I can hear it now: "Ya'll wanta be Buddhist? Go back to Buddaland!! This here is a Christian Nation, so you better convert or else..."

[haikugal]

13. If it happens it'll be more like A Handmaidens Tale. Horrific!

[yuiyoshida]

14. or the Salem Witch trials...

eom.

[haikugal]

15. Oh yeah! Big time!

We're talking about very primitive, un-evolved people. Kiss civilization goodbye!

[yuiyoshida]

18. I hope that

California than becomes the first state to secede, and to become its own country. We could do it if necessary. We have the resources to certainly do it.


**edited

[yuiyoshida]

24. Thanks I will fix that now..

[Warren DeMontague]

44. right on.

If that came off as dickish, it wasn't intended to.

[yuiyoshida]

45. No you were fine...

someone else became dickish, I posted a Bernie Sanders video, and made an effort to put down that the speech was in 2011. Well this guy jumped all over me saying that, THAT WASN'T HIS SPEECH TODAY!!...blah blah blah.

I told him if he would have looked it said 2011, and BESIDES THAT, ITS NOT the freaking date that counts, its the content of the message, but you know some people have to be Jumping on people's stuff, just to make themselves look good, and make them happy!!

[haikugal]

25. Texas is operating on the fact that school books are ordered in bulk and whatever Texas uses the

rest of US school districts will have to use the same books. This has been the wacky rights plan of operation for at least a decade now. It's sick and crazy but it works.

http://www.nea.org/home/39060.htm

[arcane1]

26. It amazes me that this still works.

[yuiyoshida]

27. I hope the board of Education in

California says "NO THANKS" and will either print their own, or turn to Canada for text books.

[haikugal]

28. It costs more money which is the leverage they're using.

[yuiyoshida]

29. California had a surplus this year...

And aren't we still doing the lottery thing, to raise money for Education? If Texas is the only place to get text books, than we best start printing our own.. (Berkeley Press?) or buy them from Canada!

[malaise]

16. Guess that's about the

Burning Bush - but which one???

[Fumesucker]

17. The fact that people are speaking out against this only goes to show...

Only goes to show that Christians are the most persecuted minority in the USA.

[betterdemsonly]

20. People need to do more than talk

There should be consequences at this point. Every business that moves jobs to the theocracy states justifies this shit.

[HarmonyRockets]

19. Old

This article is from November 2014.

[haikugal]

36. I'll look for something more recent..

I assume you're responding to my link to the NEA.

[Warren DeMontague]

21. Well, it's not like the size of the Texas schoolbook market causes it to have any undue influence

On the curriculum of the other 49 states....

Oh, wait.

[malthaussen]

23. Does Texas still set the standards for textbooks elsewhere?

I seem to recall a bit about Texas textbooks being adopted by other states. I suppose the whole Bible belt would endorse these.

Somebody should tell these fools that Moses is the second-most important prophet in Islam, and watch their heads explode.

-- Mal

[haikugal]

35. California is taking action, I hope others do as well.

Controversial changes may be in store for your textbooks, courtesy of the Texas state school board.


by Tim Walker


History, Winston Churchill famously said, is written by the victors. Don McLeroy no doubt agrees.

McLeroy is a dentist from Bryan, Texas, a self-described Christian fundamentalist, and an outgoing member of state school board of education (SBOE). Over the past year, McLeroy and his allies formed a powerful bloc on the 15-member elected board and pushed through controversial revisions to the statewide social studies curriculum.

“Sometimes it boggles my mind the kind of power we have,” McLeroy recently boasted.

To many Texans, however, what’s more mind-boggling are some of the revisions. Critics charge that they promote Christian fundamentalism, boost conservative political figures, and force-feed American “exceptionalism,” while downplaying the historical contributions of minorities. (See slideshow below for examples of the changes.)

Rita Haecker, president of the Texas State Teachers Association, believes the year-long review process deteriorated into a political and divisive spectacle.

“The circus-like efforts of right-wing board members,” Haecker said, “to impose their own religious and political beliefs on the public school curriculum have been and still are a national embarrassment.”



Don McLeroy

The standards will guide textbook purchases and classroom instruction over the next decade — and maybe not just in Texas. National publishers usually cater to its demands because the school board is probably the most influential in the country. Texas buys 48 million textbooks every year. No other state, except California, wields that sort of market clout.

But Jay Diskey, executive director of the Association of American Publishers’ School Division, says fears of a Texas-style national social studies curriculum are overblown because publishers are more accustomed nowadays to producing customized textbooks for different states.

But California isn’t taking any chances. A bill recently introduced in the state legislature seeks to prevent Texas-approved changes from seeping into textbooks in the Golden State.

Even if their reach is limited to Texas, will the new standards capsize social studies classrooms across the Lone Star state? Probably not, says Kirk White, a middle school social studies teacher in Austin.

http://www.nea.org/home/39060.htm

[Igel]

51. Not really.

California's influence is larger when it's in the textbook buying business.

Last cycle California had a budget crunch and sat it out. That gave Texas a bit larger influence.

Common Core, for subjects it exists for, swamps Texas' influence. My kids new science textbooks this year were lightly warmed over Common Core, even though the regs explicitly say TX schools can't use common core.

As for much of this, it's mostly anti-Texas hysteria--gotta get people outraged for fundraising. I was on the textbook adoption committee for my textbook and kept getting spammed with claims about what the textbooks in front of me said. But many of the claims were a year out of date, and the textbooks I had weren't even the final copies. They were still making changes in response to errors of fact or presentation. (It's hard to write a textbook without making a mistake.) In some cases it was anti-Peason hysteria. Usually they're a web of a few organizations citing each other's citations of previously cited citations so that it sounds like there's a mass of outrage and a wave of opposition when, in fact, it's a handful of people in a small number of organizations. It gets tiresome to try to trace the line of ludicrous assertions.

Take one of the more egregious examples. One of the articles substantiating the OP has this:

Among their findings: The books “exaggerate” Judeo-Christian influence on the Founding Fathers and “include misleading information that undermines the Constitutional concept of the separation of church and state.”

In fact, a government textbook published by McGraw-Hill states, “Thomas Jefferson once referred to the establishment clause as a ‘wall of separation between church and state.’ That phrase is not used in the Constitution, however.”

How horrible. Pointing out that something not in the Constitution is, in fact, not in the Constitution. The phrase "in fact" seems to say that the writer thinks this bit of detail somehow is "misleading information" that exaggerates the "Judeo-Christian influence." I just don't see it. In fact, I often don't see some of the things that these writers say "could mislead" or "might suggest" or "possibly will lead students to think."

I suppose adding that the "wall of separation" language is from Jefferson's letter to a Baptist congregation in Dansbury, CT, saying he didn't have the authority to declare a day of national Thanksgiving would have been right over the top.

There are standards, which are more important than the textbooks. And teachers, who use (or don't use) the textbooks. Heck, for all the fighting over the science textbooks last year, I didn't use my science textbook once this year.

[n2doc]

30. Funny, I missed that part about Moses having elections in the desert

And listening to the people. All I remember is that he told everybody they had to wander out in the desert for 40 years. No vote was held on that.

[moondust]

31. Why not the money changers?

Aren't they the true spiritual fathers of Texas, Brownbackistan, and other red states?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

32. Yeah. And, the inauguration party was real doozie.

Burning bushes, golden calves, talking in tongues, stone tablets, thunder and lightning, and some old geezer shouting at the sky.

[okasha]

33. There's a catch to this.

When the Democrats on theTSBOE got creationism eliminated from science textbooks, the conservatives' retort was to lift the requirement that school districts choose only from the texts recommended by the BOE. That means that districts are not required to adopt these propagandist texts and that Texas has less influence on books available elsewhere.

[haikugal]

38. Good news, I think....

[Exilednight]

37. I am preparing to move to Houston and

marry a very wonderful wiman with two beautiful little girls. Ironically, she chose to send her girls to a Lutheran school so as not to subject them to this stupidity.

[safeinOhio]

39. That there

Mosaic law from the Middle East?

[sakabatou]

40. Ugh

[RKP5637]

41. Apparently preparing for the Christian Taliban version of ISIS. This is so stupid and dangerous.

I wish Austin could be pulled out of Texas, and Texas flushed away, encouraged to secede. What a disastrous place bringing Idiocracy to the US.

[Grammy23]

42. Mr. Sherrod, my 10th grade American History teacher in the

1963-64 school year at Arlinton Heights High School in Ft. Worth is probably spinning in his grave.

[Gothmog]

43. It is tough living in Texas as times

This is so very sad

[no_hypocrisy]

46. Texas is where the other 49 states buy their

textbooks. Your kids will be taught this crap.

[AuntPatsy]

47. And I'm teaching my grandchildren to think for themselves and question everything...

Horrified, seems even some teachers are..

[undeterred]

48. Do they understand that Moses was a Jewish leader?

[douggg]

50. Moses? It certainly shows that "America was founded on Christian principles"

is a lie.

[muntrv]

52. This is one reason why Texas will not get businesses from

California to move to Texas. Silicon Valley believes in science.

[restorefreedom]

53. i don't see this holding up

some parent will take it to court and win. this is religious indoctrination in a public school. not to mention it is not historically accurate. but that part never bothers the crazies

[awoke_in_2003]

54. I have grandchildren...

that will be subjected to this nonsense. It sickens me.

[herding cats]

55. I thought this was satire.

I'm speechless seeing that it isn't.