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Texas Approves Conservative Curriculum
Macharius writes "Today, the Texas Board of Education approved 11-4 a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the role of Christianity in American history and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light. The article goes on to mention that Texas's textbook approvals carry less influence than they used to due to digital localization technology, but is that even measurable given how many millions of these textbooks will still be used across the country?"
They have books in Texas?
“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.”
Oh boy.
Do you like the fire department? The public library? Public education? Guess what...you like socialism! We really need to throw away the false dichotomy between Capitalism and Socialism. There is room for the two to coexist. I am a Christian myself, but I will fight to the death to prevent a Theocracy of any kind from taking hold in the United States.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
Reminds me of the old (ooooooooooooooooolllllllllllddddddd) textbook my calculus teacher has that managed to sneak through Texas book approval. It had four graphs printed right next to each other, the first of which was a step function, the second a parabola, the third was 2 sqrt functions forming a right-facing parabola, and the last was a right facing absolute function. This was the first time the graphs had been printed in color, too, so the *ahem* naughty word really popped.
You could RTFA :) It contains several of the amendments that were passed.
To comment on a few:
Mr. Bradley ... 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.
Yes, obviously that means it can't have been an issue of race...
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.
The topic of sociology tends to blame society for everything, Ms. Cargill said.
Wow - are they going to stop blaming images, films, porn, rock music and computer games for these things too?
Frankly I'm surprised the politicization of classroom materials hasn't been more flagrant and widespread. I'm also wondering why there isn't more of a flip-flop between liberal and conservative influence on school curriculums as voting blocks swing between conservatives and liberals?
The ping pong of history books that was dramatized in 1984 was also a reality as power shifted and people and principles went in and out of favor in Chinese and Russian totalitarian states. I imagine now we will see it here.
Did we think we were going to make China more democratic? We are the tail and they are the dog. We are becoming more like them every day. The high castes of the conservative party long for it. They see the setup of China's ruling class - the iron grip on history - the apparently successful stifling of dissent - and salivate.
If Thomas Jefferson can be "deemphasized" in American History and the separation of church and state can be erased from the history books, there is no longer any break on this. Freedom of ("liberal") speech is not far behind. Make no mistake, this is a bellweather for how much further our society can fall. It also suggests the way America could balkanize, as different regions of the country no longer share a common history.
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Here's an excerpt from: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/11/us/politics/11texas.html?src=me
There have also been efforts among conservatives on the board to tweak the history of the civil rights movement. One amendment states that the movement created “unrealistic expectations of equal outcomes” among minorities. Another proposed change removes any reference to race, sex or religion in talking about how different groups have contributed to the national identity.
The amendments are also intended to emphasize the unalloyed superiority of the “free-enterprise system” over others and the desirability of limited government.
One says publishers should “describe the effects of increasing government regulation and taxation on economic development and business planning.”
Throughout the standards, the conservatives have pushed to drop references to American “imperialism,” preferring to call it expansionism. “Country and western music” has been added to the list of cultural movements to be studied.
References to Ralph Nader and Ross Perot are proposed to be removed, while Stonewall Jackson, the Confederate general, is to be listed as a role model for effective leadership, and the ideas in Jefferson Davis’s inaugural address are to be laid side by side with Abraham Lincoln’s speeches.
Early in the hearing on Wednesday, Mr. McLeroy and other conservatives on the board made it clear they would offer still more planks to highlight what they see as the Christian roots of the Constitution and other founding documents.
“To deny the Judeo-Christian values of our founding fathers is just a lie to our kids,” said Ken Mercer, a San Antonio Republican.
I'm sure what he really meant to say is that these things are okay as long as it's not the government who is doing these things, then it's a work of the devil.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
Don't bother replying to that guy. All his posts have always looked like that. Real short, idiotic, and hostile.
80-90% of them quickly sink to -1 and all the rest get 5, which probably reflects a political polarization among moderators.
"Liberals and other anti-Christians"
I hate to break it to you, pal, but the vast majority of liberals in this country are also Christians.
It's pretty pathetic seeing the right-wing talk about 'states rights', when they only care about that concept when it suits them.
I would think more Christians would be for removing "In God We Trust" from the money. For one thing, it's obviously a huge lie. Also, it's really ironic if you think about it.
If they want to put something that reflects Christian values on the money, they should use "Render unto Cesar".
Well, then you can say to him that the Constitution says nothing about the right to own guns. He might be thinking of telling you about the Second Amendment says "...the right to bear arms shall not be infringed", but you could just respond that that is ambiguous, as it doesn't specify whether they mean "arms" as in weapons, or "arms" as in the upper extremities. Maybe Madison was just concerned about the government chopping them off, as he may have heard that they do in Muslim lands. Then perhaps that jagoff will resort to references of those coeval extra-constitutional writings, wherein the phrase "separation of church and state" can also be found.
Ah, the joys of willful ignorance.
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
Clearly you don't live in California. Only outside CA is the political system perceived as Liberal. Those of us who live within the state have learned that there are a few enclaves of urban liberalism, surrounded by by vast areas of rural conservatism rivaling those of Kansas or Texas.
And then there are a number of conservative urban areas, too, like San Diego, San Bernardino, Bakersfield and Orange County.
But the state continues to be portrayed by the rest of the country as a homogeneous liberal wasteland, populated entirely by hippies and surfers.
In reality, NY State is more liberal than the state of CA.
I can see the fnords!
FYI, they removed the requirement that students study the impact of ideas from the Enlightenment and Thomas Jefferson's role as an Enlightenment scholar. Instead, they added Saint Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin, and removed the specific reference to the Enlightenment.
The original requirement was that students be able to:
It is now:
This is, quite frankly, a travesty. The first list had an actual thrust to it (you know, Enlightenment scholars in 1750+). This one is closer to just a list of philosophers that a council of morons thought sounded good - after all, Thomas Aquinas totally proved God exists! And John Calvin came up with Protestantism! Totally what every schoolchild in Texas (and by extension, a large part of the rest of the country) needs to know!
In the late 80s, the republican base was slipping. Bush I barely won against Dukakis. Keep in mind, Bush was at the center of political power his whole life, headed the CIA, and had just completed 8 years as Vice President. His campaign had to resort to a racist attack ad about Willie Horton.
In 1992, Bush lost to Clinton, and many believe it was because he refused to identify himself as a "born again" Christian. Most evangelicals had been uninvolved in politics, until they were discovered by the dying Republican movement. As long as you professed to be evangelical and pro-life, you'd have local preachers pushing their followers to vote for you. Bush II toed the line, and got elected twice for it. The only problem is now the evangelical movements want one of their own in the White House - Sarah Palin - and that's something the ruling business party cannot allow. They brought her in for the VP job, but she couldn't pull the moderate record of McCain. Palin could have been the sideshow, but the business party is greedy, not crazy, and they'll never let her within ten miles of the big red button.
The evangelicals are an enormous and active voting bloc. They do exactly as their pastor or preacher tells them, and nearly half of them are in church every single sunday. Now they are being used up by two seats of power: Republicans and their own church leaders. The Republicans get a voting bloc that will campaign against their own interests, and the church leaders get access to power and a fanatical flock that now worships money, and gives them a bunch of it.
Just try to imagine Christ at a Tea Party rally, protesting tax dollars spent on the ill and the needy, and then signing up to join the Army the next day. The evangelicals have no idea which way is north. They don't even have a coherent set of values left. They are just following orders.
http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?id=6177 is good for general quotes from the Founding Fathers regarding religion. I like:
"The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion." - John Adams
"...Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind." - John Adams
"...an amendment was proposed by inserting the words, 'Jesus Christ...the holy author of our religion,' which was rejected 'By a great majority in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mohammedan, the Hindoo and the Infidel of every denomination.'" - Thomas Jefferson
"Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, more than on our opinions in physics and geometry....The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." - Thomas Jefferson
"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise....During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution." - James Madison
"All natural institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit." - Thomas Paine
Hey here's something the "lazy democrats" tried to pass, but failed:
California isn't half so liberal as you apparently believe it is. While the legislature is dominated by Democrats, there is a very strong Republican political machine in the state that's able to deadlock the legislative process. They've also elected quite a few governors, Nixon, Reagan, Wilson. The state school board is rather conservative. Overall, it looks a lot like Washington does now: the Dems, though in the majority, are ineffective. The Republicans are obstructionist. The policies that are implemented are not strongly liberal.
As I have just pointed out, the new rules state that Thomas Jefferson's writings were not important to the Revolution. As everyone today knows, he was the primary author of the Deceleration of Independence. But school children taught under the new rules will NOT know that.
It is one thing to disagree with a belief or have a political view and want to support it. It is another thing entirely to re-write history with absolutely no regard for the truth. This is simply shameful.
I dislike them because:
For all their vaunted Christian morals and breastbeating on the importance of marriage, they have a higher divorce rate than the national average, and even 50% higher than the atheists and agnostics they despise.
After they fail and ask God for forgiveness, they go right back to the hookers with whom they got caught (c.f., Jimmy Swaggart).
They embezzle millions from their mega-churches, which makes me think they're in it for the money more than the God (c.f., Jim Baker).
They extort millions from their followers by claiming God will kill them if the sheep don't pay up (c.f., Oral Roberts).
They spend their Christian lives doing everything they can to make homosexuals suffer, only to get busted offering to pay guys at truck stops to receive blowjobs from them (c.f., Bob Allen), or tapping their foot in an airport restroom (c.f., Larry Craig), or using their ministry's travel budget to fund methamphetamine and gay sex party weekends (c.f., Ted Haggard).
In other words, I dislike them because they're hypocrites who claim they're better than everyone else when in fact, they're usually worse, but they're very happy to try to force their morals on me through laws and textbooks.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Ben was a regular at the salons of Paris and London; the organizer of one of these said that of the members, most were atheists, and the rest were still deciding. Franklin never came out and declared, but he probably didn't do so because he thought religion was useful rather than true. It is also interesting that at the time of foundation, about 18% of the American populace attended church regularly (Washington was one of those who gave up in disgust). This number has been growing since then, with a large spike during the Weslyan revival.
The ignorance of history is a major factor here. The founders lived in a world where the excesses of religion wielding political power was a very present thing. Thanks to the separation of church and state, we have been afforded the luxury of forgetting this. But any ideology that deals in absolutes, whether it be secular or religious, will evoke the absolute to disdain lesser goods--and when you think you hold the absolute Truth or Good, all other goods become worthless. The perfect is not just the enemy of the good, it is the mortal enemy of all goods. Life, liberty, happiness, charity, tolerance, knowledge, reason, and anything that is not held up as absolute will be cast aside, along with all who would defend them. Billions have died, and will die, for the idols of dogma. If religion has an evolutionary advantage, it is probably in strengthening ingroup solidarity at the expense of outgroup antagonism; effective in prehistory, catastrophic in a world of globalisation. I suspect that religions will, in this century, claim at least a billion victims, and make Stalin, Hitler, and Mao look like amateurs. In the aftermath, Richard Dawkins will sound positively mild and conciliatory.
There are almost as many Gods as there are believers, and the first thing you will discover when the state imposes religion is that the state's God is not your God. Europe is secular precisely because most European countries have entrenched state religions. The separation of church and state allowed religions to evolve and compete, and is one of the main reasons that America is so religious. If these clowns get their way, religion will be disgraced in America as well. They will do the secularists job for them. Joy is the reason, love is the method, but pain is the teacher.
The question is, how much pain can you stand?
One would think that the spectacle of Islamic Jihadism would be enough to remind us of what religion is when given free reign, but two hundred years of domesticated and tamed Christianity have encouraged the illusion that the creature has changed its nature. It hasn't. It's just biding its time...
I would laugh if your comment was not so insulting.
I'm a Republican and ever since I left college I've been listening to college lectures on tape, in order to expand my knowledge of history and philosophy. The idea that I must be stupid because I have an (R) after my name is almost as insulting when Pres.Carter said I must be "racist" because I attended a Tea Party Rally last April 15.
Stop prejudging people as groups.
We are not groups. We are individuals which means we ALL think differently, even if we do share the same label. Not all Republicans are uneducated brutes, or racists, just as not all Democrats have altars to Marx or Mao.
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"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Brother Glitch23,
Jesus Christ was the Son of God and He died for my sins. We follow God by taking up our crosses and feeding the hungry, visiting the imprisoned, healing the sick and clothing the naked. We preach the good news and the acceptable year of the Lord.
I am a Liberal, I am your Christian brother, and if you don't believe me, just go ask Pop.
And as much as it pains me to point this out, you have some reading to do.
There is nothing wrong with making known our history just because it has a religious foundation, except for those who hate religion.
I'm assuming you're referencing the Puritans, since Jamestown was a fairly commercial endeavor. Your problem is that those Puritans would not have recognized you as a fellow Christian, any more than you most likely recognize Catholics as fellow Christians. If you're a Southern Baptist, Assembly of God or any other Evangelical, you'd have been shunned as a heretic.
BTW, those Puritans you're putting on the pedestal, you might want to read a little Hawthorne, or the history of King Philips' War. The Indians saved the lives of the Puritans that first winter. The children of the Pilgrims paid them back by slaughering the Indians' children and stealing their lands. Like I said, don't take my word for it. Go spend some time with Nathaniel Hawthorne.
"There is no reason to hide that fact unless the agenda is to try to make our country look like it was not founded on religious beliefs."
Sigh. Start reading Jefferson. Read it long, read it hard, and read it in the knowledge that it was written by a man who spent his nights literally cutting and pasting the supernatural out of his copy of the Bible. Read it in the knowledge that the man who wrote this nation's beginning had a decades-long affair with a woman that he owned as a slave.
If you think it's going to be diffiult to square Jefferson with your theology, tighten your seatbelt and hang on, because when you read about the unbridled debauchery that was Benjamin Franklin...
When you can't take that any more, start in on the "Federalist Papers." They're dry, they're tedious, and they'll permanently put to bed any idea that this was meant to be a "Christian" nation.
As far as taking "In God We Trust" off the currency, it is for the same reason as what I stated above.
Sigh. That motto was put on US currency in 1956, during the same wave of panicked nationalist fervor that spawned Hoover and McCarthy. Are you sure the Church should be laying claim to that?
But since we're talking about Christianity and Coins, let's go back to the book we really ought to be reading. When the Zealots asked Christ "Is it lawful to pay taxes unto Ceaser?" it wasn't a financial question. You didn't exactly file a W-2 with Rome. Taxation under Rome was a lot closer to outright mugging. Why do you think tax collectors like Zacchaeus were so hated?
What the Zealots were really asking was "Don't you think it's time to throw off Roman bondage and establish Isreal as God's Holy Nation again?"
Look at His answer. Give it to them. Look at His other answers. Sell all that you have, and give to the poor. If they take your shirt, give them your coat too. If they make you a slave, do more than they ask you too. Resist not evil men. Give to any who asks. Here, take this, care for this man and if you need any more, charge it to my account. I'll pay it. Put down that sword, I don't need you to fight for Me, my Kingdom is not on this world and if you're fighting over things that are here, you have missed the point. Yes, I'll die to save people who do not deserve it. I'll die to save the people who are actually killing me.
My Kingdom. Is. Not. Here.
Those men in Texas have forgotten this. They don't want to take up their cross. They want to lay down the law. They seek to further the Kingdom by political will, rather than by feeding the hungry, healing the sick, clothing the naked and visiting the imprisoned.
And my real fear for those men is they'll be asked why they didn't one day...
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
The atheists and others who believe in the separation of church and state
Um, Render unto Ceaser that which is Ceaser's and Render unto God that which is God's? Remember Pontius Pilate's question? Are you a king? The response? My Kingdom is not of this world. As far as this world goes, our Lord Jesus Christ believed in the separation of church and state. He specifically chose not to join the Zealots who wanted to overthrow pagan Rome and found a new free Isreal loyal to God. You want to talk about evil Liberals suppressing religion, can you imagine living in a world where the cities you lived in were officially dedicated to a Pagan god?
And Christ chose not to bother with it. He had larger concerns than temporary distractions like the rule of Rome.
But let's suppose you got the Theocracy you want. Which Christian Church is to hold sway? Will you follow a President loyal to the Pope? No? Greek Orthodox? An Anglican, perhaps? No? Want a Good Ol' American denomination, do you? Episcopalian? Methodist? Seventh Day Adventist? Plain ol' Baptist? Church of Christ? Oh, you'll be happy so long as it's Evangelical? Really? Southern Baptist? Assembly of God? Vineyard Ministries? Got a favorite in there, do you?
We can't even get the followers of Pat Robertson, Benny Hinn and Robert Schuller to agree on a coherent plan of action. When you try to wed civil power with Christian religious authority, it results in endless fighting. You might want to ask the British about that.
There's a reason why the first Amendment begins with "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." That's why the Founding Fathers used weasel words like "Creator" and "Nature's God," because they specifically did not want to reference Jesus Christ the Messiah or Lord God Almighty Jehovah. By the way, more reading to do -- "Deism."
If the liberals who hate religion would ever get their way to lay down the law then all religion would be banned in this country unless it was talked about and practiced within the confines of a church or home.
Hi. Remember me? The Liberal? No one is looking to ban religion in this country. For goodness' sake, the Sheriff's office directs traffic at the churches on Sundays in my town. Our previous attorney general was the son of an Assemblies of God minister and a fervent supporter of that church. To imply that the Christian Church in America is under any kind of persecution is to dishonor the memory of all the Christians who actually were persecuted and actually did die for their Faith.
But let's suppose it happened, let's suppose Obama really did turn out to be Lucifer's left hand, and the First Amendment got repealed next week. Let's suppose a profession of Christianity merited summary execution starting next Monday.
Do you suppose it would endanger the Church at all? Or will you join me in believing that God Almighty alone decides the fate of the Body of Christ? By the way, that decree actually happened once. Rome decided to stamp out Christianity once and for all. All the Roman swords and lions did was fan the flame of the Word all the way across Europe.
Do you know why? Because Men and Earthly politics do not decide the fate of the Church. God doesn't need the support of the Legislature, or the school board or the Media.
Since this is Slashdot, after all, God ... doesn't need a starship.
I have good news for you, Brother Glitch. God is still in His Heaven, and all the evil sandal-clad long-haired dope-smoking Liberals of the world do not pose a threat to His Church. He built that church on a rock, and the very gates of Hell will not stand against it, so I don't think Nancy Pelosi is much of a problem.
You can relax. We're covered.
Well, we're covered on that problem. As I continue to read the Gospels, we seem to have other issues. It seems that our Lord (Luke 4) has come to preach good news to the poor, t
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."