Efforts by Hispanic board members to include more Latino figures as role models for the state’s large Hispanic population were consistently defeated, prompting one member, Mary Helen Berlanga, to storm out of a meeting late Thursday night, saying, “They can just pretend this is a white America and Hispanics don’t exist.”
“They are going overboard, they are not experts, they are not historians,” she said. “They are rewriting history, not only of Texas but of the United States and the world.”
Not that, that's crap.
“I reject the notion by the left of a constitutional separation of church and state,” said David Bradley, a conservative from Beaumont who works in real estate. “I have $1,000 for the charity of your choice if you can find it in the Constitution.”
And this. Regardless of initial verbage, it should be more than obvious why we cannot now try to force people to follow the precepts of one main religion and still say we're within the frame of the constitution. His argument is fairly worthless.
They also included a plank to ensure that students learn about “the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schalfly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association.”
If they are adding more information and not taking away, that can be ok. It depends how this is presented.
Dr. McLeroy pushed through a change to the teaching of the civil rights movement to ensure that students study the violent philosophy of the Black Panthers in addition to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent approach. He also made sure that textbooks would mention the votes in Congress on civil rights legislation, which Republicans supported.
Mr. Bradley won approval for an amendment saying students should study “the unintended consequences” of the Great Society legislation, affirmative action and Title IX legislation. He also won approval for an amendment stressing that Germans and Italians were interned in the United States as well as the Japanese during World War II, to counter the idea that the internment of Japanese was motivated by racism.
Other changes seem aimed at tamping down criticism of the right. Conservatives passed one amendment, for instance, requiring that the history of McCarthyism include “how the later release of the Venona papers confirmed suspicions of communist infiltration in U.S. government.” The Venona papers were transcripts of some 3,000 communications between the Soviet Union and its agents in the United States.
In economics, the revisions add Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek, two champions of free-market economic theory, among the usual list of economists to be studied, like Adam Smith, Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes. They also replaced the word “capitalism” throughout their texts with the “free-enterprise system.”
In the field of sociology, another conservative member, Barbara Cargill, won passage of an amendment requiring the teaching of “the importance of personal responsibility for life choices” in a section on teen suicide, dating violence, sexuality, drug use and eating disorders.
In all of the above, I'm not automatically upset. If concepts are presented factually and evidence is provided, they can and possibly should be discussed. Again, it depends on presentation. Trying to frame it to serve them is not appropriate, but simply including the facts of the situations can be.
Cynthia Dunbar, a lawyer from Richmond who is a strict constitutionalist and thinks the nation was founded on Christian beliefs, managed to cut Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century, replacing him with St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone. (Jefferson is not well liked among the conservatives on the board because he coined the term “separation between church and state.”)
“The Enlightenment was not the only philosophy on which these revolutions were based,” Ms. Dunbar said.
Mavis B. Knight, a Democrat from Dallas, introduced an amendment requiring that students study the reasons “the founding fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring the government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion above all others.”
It was defeated on a party-line vote.
But yeah... this last section is fairly ridiculous.
Texas Approves Curriculum Revised by Conservatives
- 13/03/2010 12:02:15 AM
1115 Views
"Impartial Historical Account" is an oxymoron
- 13/03/2010 12:21:20 AM
420 Views
So is "a sinless life," but that doesn't justify murder. *NM*
- 14/03/2010 12:22:16 AM
140 Views
Strange choice of analogies...
- 14/03/2010 12:17:03 PM
329 Views
I could be wrong, but I think his point was simply...
- 14/03/2010 03:53:23 PM
405 Views
I think it was that it just seems too out of place
- 14/03/2010 04:14:55 PM
448 Views
I dunno, you didn't elaborate much on your oxymoron statement.
- 14/03/2010 04:29:04 PM
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It didn't really seem something that needed elaborating 
- 14/03/2010 05:20:33 PM
482 Views
- 14/03/2010 05:20:33 PM
482 Views
It's about time.
- 13/03/2010 01:17:25 AM
459 Views
Don't forget interned German-Americans in BOTH world wars. *NM*
- 13/03/2010 02:47:25 AM
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*NM*
- 13/03/2010 02:47:25 AM
263 Views
Oh I haven't, but being Italian myself it's an issue close to my heart. *NM*
- 13/03/2010 04:41:19 AM
214 Views
Some of it can make sense
- 13/03/2010 01:28:53 AM
489 Views
Yes, because this article is all about presenting the truth in an unbiased manner *NM*
- 13/03/2010 11:02:20 AM
139 Views
I'm assuming Art. 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli 1797 is banned from Texan history lessons, then?
- 13/03/2010 12:26:41 PM
368 Views
And, along similar lines, both Article VII of the US Constitution and Missouri v. Holland. *NM*
- 14/03/2010 12:26:10 AM
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*NM*
I would assume the Treaty of Tripoli 1797 would outside of the scope of a Texas history lesson
- 16/03/2010 07:54:53 PM
391 Views
Do the states just teach their own history, as opposed to that of what-was-then-the-USA? *NM*
- 16/03/2010 11:57:06 PM
214 Views
They teach both...at least at the college level. U.S. history and Texas History were requirements.. *NM*
- 17/03/2010 05:38:46 AM
216 Views
Texas history or Texas government?
- 18/03/2010 06:53:15 PM
294 Views
Good question....I don't remember if it was history or govt to be honest. *NM*
- 18/03/2010 07:59:10 PM
225 Views
When does revisionist history descend to the level of mere hypocrisy? I weep for my country.
- 15/03/2010 04:16:25 AM
535 Views
calling Zavala a city is a bit of a stretch don't you think?
- 15/03/2010 05:39:03 PM
400 Views
Seguin's a city, or at least town; Zavala is a county.
- 15/03/2010 09:00:54 PM
349 Views
Zavalla is a town as well and city is a bit of stretch for Seguin
- 15/03/2010 10:23:41 PM
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Fair enough, just trying to make clear I was speaking about municipality and county, respectively.
- 29/03/2010 03:49:30 PM
332 Views
See the problem is the argument is total BS
- 29/03/2010 05:27:53 PM
370 Views
Don't you guys essentially list all of the handful guys who fought at the Alamo already, anyway? *NM*
- 29/03/2010 08:55:34 PM
138 Views
There was 190 or so people there so no they are not all in the textbook
- 31/03/2010 05:31:41 PM
381 Views
Do you have any examples of where they are not teaching the truth?
- 15/03/2010 05:42:27 PM
347 Views
I think it is what they are leaving out that is worrisome.
- 15/03/2010 06:58:38 PM
360 Views
I don't see anything sayting they are leaving that out
- 15/03/2010 08:26:50 PM
353 Views
We were talking about this last night
- 15/03/2010 11:38:02 PM
505 Views
Still not sure I see a problem
- 16/03/2010 04:58:50 PM
288 Views
This thread is indeed making me wonder how textbooks are used in the US...
- 16/03/2010 05:05:13 PM
285 Views