Slashdot Mirror
Texas Schools Board Rewriting US History
suraj.sun picked up a Guardian (UK) piece on the Texas school board and their quest to remake US education in a pro-American, Christian, free enterprise mode. We've been keeping an eye on this story for some time, as it will have an impact far beyond Texas. From the Guardian: "The board is to vote on a sweeping purge of alleged liberal bias in Texas school textbooks in favor of what Dunbar says really matters: a belief in America as a nation chosen by God as a beacon to the world, and free enterprise as the cornerstone of liberty and democracy. ... Those corrections have prompted a blizzard of accusations of rewriting history and indoctrinating children by promoting right-wing views on religion, economics, and guns while diminishing the science of evolution, the civil rights movement, and the horrors of slavery. ... Several changes include sidelining Thomas Jefferson, who favored separation of church and state, while introducing a new focus on the 'significant contributions' of pro-slavery Confederate leaders during the Civil War. ... Study of Sir Isaac Newton is dropped in favor of examining scientific advances through military technology."
Unless there was a "revision" made to 1984...
According to my Texas High School textbook, there was no President John Adams. There was a John Quincy Adams, but he would obviously never say anything so foolish.
John Adams? What did he do, he was only President for one term! He didn't write the Declaration of Independence, or go overseas as one of our first major diplomats. That was Jesus, all Jesus!
If you can read this, it means that I bothered to log in.
Why do you think the GOP is tearing itself apart? Free enterprise is an entirely different religion than Jesusitude. Seriously, read Ayn Rand.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
It's time for the US to give Texas back to Mexico. This will solve many problems, such as: (1) lying textbooks, (2) warmongering presidents, (3) Mexicans illegally streaming across the border for jobs, and (4) country and western music.
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Mussolini
That reminds me: Why is Millers like making love in a canoe? 'Cause it's f*cking close to water.
Texas: "We must close the ignorance gap with Kansas!"
Table-ized A.I.
Oh, you crazy optimists...
(Incidentally, the above link is on the sane side of the lunatic fringe. The real crazies are the ones who think that Newton was divinely inspired, and they don't want none of Einstien's "Relativist" jew-physics... Yes, there are people who think that the "theory of relativity" is somehow connected to "cultural relativism")
Don't be ridiculous. My copy of 1984 has remained wholly unrevised, unabridged, and unaltered since the day Jeff Bezos wrote it.
Warning, do not approach.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
It's time for the US to give Texas back to Mexico.
Sure. You just have to get the okay from Texans, who'd probably go independent first. For that matter, they'd probably burn their own cities and salt every farm & ranch before joining Mexico.
Manifest Destiny [...] The White Man's Burden. Well meaning ideas
Those notions were born of rationalizations for exploitation, not good intentions.
You can't take the sky from me...
Why can't they just use the *real* history book like Californians do?
Regulation will *always* be used by the powerful to buttress their power and position. Always.
The only check against that is a limitation on government power. That is what the founding fathers were attempting to do.
Adding regulation only makes matters worse.
Yikes...I had no idea addition was so complicated you needed to get a diety involved.
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
Forgive this guy, he has only read the latest Texas version of 1984, which deals more with people joining the Army to become better people, and shooting down evil atheists and muslims.
And how it shows.
Yeah, that's a sentence fragment. I can do that. That's how I roll.
You, on the other hand, need to quit molesting colons. Commas are not salt. You don't get to just sprinkle some on whenever the mood strikes. I've had drugs in surgery that caused fewer hallucinations and less confusion than one of your run-on sentences. I've never seen someone in such dire need of both spellcheck and a dictionary.
I want you to stop what you're doing, right now, and run to an office supply store like your life depends on it. I want you to buy boxes and boxes of red pens and pencils. I want you to fly to the nearest campus and scream, "Is there a Freshman Comp TA in the house?!" until some bespectacled grad student takes pity on you. I want you to hand them your boxes of red and beg them to beat you with them until you reach the First Enlightenment of Grammar.
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."
he was a scientist, right?
Forgive this guy, he has only read the latest Texas version of 1984, which deals more with people joining the Army to become better people, and shooting down evil atheists and muslims.
Oh yes, the Heinlein version!
Well Sir Isaac Newton is born a 25 December. "There can be only one"
There's no scientific consensus that life is important.
Is there a reputable group called something like "Texans for Educational Sanity"? Where do we sign up and send cash to help put a stop to this crap?
Whoa whoa whoa, lets not go off the deep end here and start slinging words around about Texas like "developed".