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."
"As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion..."
--Treaty of Tripoly
Ratified by the Senate, signed by President John Adams in 1797.
I hope that clears things up for these right wing wackos who are confused about our founding fathers' intentions. I hope to see this quote up on a sidebar in the next issue of their books.
I'm wondering why omit Newton, he was a very devout Christian. One of his greatest regrets was not making a theological breakthrough that matched his scientific discoveries. Heck, he was also a strong advocate of maintaining virginity (perhaps too strongly, he died a virgin and reputedly call that his greatest accomplishment).
This classic quote doesn't have much to do with rewriting history, I'm afraid.
I'm afraid it does. It is one of the basic points of the book, and what the entire Ministry of Truth is all about. Shortly after the above quote, this appears:
'In memory. Very well, then. We, the Party, control all records, and we control all memories. Then we control the past, do we not?'
IAIFARSIJDPOOTV - I Am In Fact A Reality Star; I Just Don't Play One On TV
But the textbook companies will not stand up to it. The Texas School Board has been influencing textbooks for all of America for many decades. Texas is a populous state, so it is a big market for textbooks. Furthermore, Texas is unique in that textbooks are adopted statewide for all the schools in the state. That means huge numbers for the publishers, and that gives the publishers' ears to the School Board.
I do not remember the attempts at influence of the fundamentalists to be quite so blatant in the past. Perhaps they are becoming emboldened in these times of the Tea Parties.
Manifest Destiny ... look it up. Think of it as a democratic jihad. Not a good idea. The British had a similar notion: The White Man's Burden. Well meaning ideas that just result in a lot misfortune.
Bitter and proud of it.
You know, back when it was the US and the Republic of Texas?
Not really, it's a lot cheaper to just use open source text books for most things. Granted things like science won't do so well with that, but many things like math and English don't really need to be particularly up to date. Last I checked an open source book cost something like $23 for a print edition.
I love the aping of a plot point from 1984. Unfortunately, being that they're morons, they don't know the extreme irony of what they're doing. The sad part is neither will the students of Texas if this miseducation process goes ahead.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
California is going open source with their textbooks. The side effect of them trying to save money is that they may actually be helping stop this sort of lunacy by opening up the editing process to many more people.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
>By definition a Troll is someone who makes defamatory ad hominem comments about the poster, instead of bothering to legitimately address the subject of discussion.
That would actually be a "flamer".
A troll is someone who deliberately presents a false and/or stupid opinion in order to generate a reaction in their audience.
Welcome to the internet!
Infinite time means everything that can happen, will. You being you is absolutely incidental. You do not exist.
I especially like the one about ditching Isaac Newton in favor of military technology. Not only did the law of gravity give the first definitive equation for the ballistic trajectory of cannonballs, artillery shells, etc., but Newton switched from being a physicist to being a devout Christian theologian later in his life. I would've thought they'd love Newton, but nooo, they're so ignorant they're chopping out someone who falls right into their key focus areas. Either that, or maybe he was the wrong kind of Christian.
We are the 198 proof..
The Free Market was destroyed long before you were born. The Free Market today is a misnomer, there is no Free Market.
What has failed is the idea that the Government can control Economy with politics. Rockefeller created the Federal Reserve by colluding with Government Officials, who should have never been allowed to create such an entity in the first place.
Once you have the Fed, the Free Market is out of the window. Instead you have the real Government printing money and giving it to the preferred corporations at a very low artificial rate. Where is the Free Market in this? You have some corporations colluding with the Government to create regulations to prevent competition. Where is the Free Market in that?
It is not the Free Market that allowed people to make billions by doing 'money manipulation', it is the policy of the Government, which has adopted the Keynes ideas that the normal Economy should be controlled because normal Free Market economy is cyclical, it has a Boom (expansion) and a Bust (contraction) and before the Fed, when there was Free Market, the US standard of living was constantly rising and prices would not go up all the time but would come down due to actual competition. The Government took Keynes ideas and applied it to its own purposes because Keynes is about removing the Bust from the Economic cycle, which is actually a BAD thing because it does not allow the Economy to restructure, cut the fat, get rid of some jobs that are really not needed.
The Government cannot allow the Bust because no Government is a producer. Government is a burden on Economy and during a Bust it has to shrink by reducing spending. Government cannot have that, they want their jobs forever and ever in an ever growing 'economy'.
So they print money left right and center, print bonds and t-bills when they really should have been raising taxes for their spending, but Governments know that it is not a popular move, to raise taxes for actual spending. So the borrow and print, debasing the currency while propping up huge Monopolies and regulating out the competition.
Event he income tax is the manifestation of the Government's agenda to keep the inflation going and setting the economy to failure because income tax is a disincentive against production. Income is not what a person spends on him/her self, it is money that is not spent on anything for pleasure, instead the money is re-invested.
Free Market Economy NEEDS investment. It needs liquidity, it needs people saving money and putting it back to work. Government reduces the incentives to put money back to work and it creates liquidity in the form of DEBT and not in the form of savings.
Government printing and lending policies lead to banks getting free money and then they gamble with it. Of-course they do, I would totally gamble with huge wads of cash if it was not actually MY money and I never had to be responsible for losing it!
Government insuring the banks, insuring the mortgages, insuring insuring insuring everything, creates huge moral hazard. People do not gamble hugely like that with their own money knowing that there may be real consequences. Government removes the consequences and gives out the free money.
Government created Monopolies are huge economies of scale who benefit ridiculously from Globalization, unlike small and medium size businesses. Government props up Huge Monopolies because those pay the most in bribes, it just makes sense to grow your own gigantic money laundering machines. When USSR fell apart and the world became Global, the Monopolies created by the Government moved out of the US to places with cheap production costs and little if any regulations.
Government created the Monopolies and the reasons for them to move. Minimum wage laws, regulations that were useful for Monopolies to keep the competition down became a nuisance. So they move production.
Government encourages consumption based economy from all fronts, from the Keynes ideas of fake consumption
You can't handle the truth.
Here's what a real leftist government would look like.
Heh, let me compare what you said to Norway, which is considered pretty much the most socialist country in a socialist Europe currently under a socialist government.
Immigrants would be given amnesty and a path to citizenship.
No, we have illegal immigrants but there's no general amnesty for them.
The top marginal tax rate would be closer to 90% than the current 35%.
47.8%
Regressive taxes like sales tax and vehicle taxes would be eradicated.
VAT is 25%, vechicle taxes are a complex mix of weight, horsepowers, emissions etc. but highest in the world.
There would be a massive investment in a single payer government run health care system for all.
Yes.
A massive reinvestment in education from bottom up, focusing on leveling the inequality of poor school districts in minority neighborhoods and inner cities.
Yes, though the school system is underfunded it is far more equal than the US.
Wall Street would be heavily regulated and much of what currently goes on would be illegal.
Mostly no, nobody is stupid enough to try a soviet plan economy. The Oslo Stoch Exchange is quite regular.
Housing, food, and a meaningful job would be a right just like speech currently is.
Housing yes. Food yes. Meaningful job? No. Though the government does try to act anti-cyclical creating jobs in downturns unlike California etc. which seem to be cutting adding to the downturn instead.
Workers would collectively own the businesses they work for.
No. But there is a larger public sector and more government ownership interests.
The level of income inequality would be unacceptable.
Yes. Progressive taxes and strong unions have made the income inequality much less.
And the military industrial complex would be dismantled, removing the troops we have stationed over seas. We would also never use our military again in an unprovoked war of aggression.
Norwegian troops are in Afghanistan as well, this is more geopolitics than a left/right policy.
THAT would be a leftist party.
Yes. Far to the left of the Socialist Left party on some areas. The democrats aren't exactly left by my standards but you are setting the bar where any party will fail.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
>I was taught that the Civil War was fought to free the slaves from their southern oppressors.
> In reality, the north controlled the federal government and set a history of economic policies
> that ignored the well-being of the southern states. Slavery was the last straw; abolition would
> have crushed the southern economies
So slavery was the part of the southern economy that was keeping it viable. In other words, the war was fought over slavery.
> Secession happened out of fear and desperation to preserve a way of life.
Yes, a way of life where slavery was not only acceptable, but essential.