California Moves To Block Texas' Textbook Changes

eldavojohn writes "Yesterday the Texas textbook controversy was reported internationally but the news today heats up the debate as California, a state on the other side of the political spectrum, introduces legislation that would block these textbook changes inside California. Democrat Senator Leland Yee (you may know him as a senator often tackling ESRB ratings on video games) introduced SB1451, which would require California's school board to review books for any of Texas' changes and block the material if any such are found. The bill's text alleges that said changes would be 'a sharp departure from widely accepted historical teachings' and 'a threat to the apolitical nature of public school governance and academic content standards in California.'"

Comments

Fight them

[Thanshin]

If you can't fight them... Put a fence around and let them devolve in peace.

Re:Fight them

[P0ltergeist333]

That's the problem. Texas buys the most textbooks, and thus has undue influence on the industry. Thanks to scorched earth capitalism, making money is more important than making sure that textbooks are accurate. Anyone who does 10 minutes of research will find that the whole notion of the "Cristian Nation" is laughable. If anything our nation's ideals came from John Locke and his "The Two Treatises Of Government" through Thomas Jefferson.

Re:Fight them

[imgod2u]

He didn't say the founders weren't Christians. He said the founding principles aren't Christian. The founders were smart enough to see how politics corrupts religion and vice versa. They built the government without inserting much if any Biblical principles into it. See anything in the Constitution about coveting wives, worshiping on the 7th day or giving up worldly wealth?

The claims this country is a "Christian" country is very much false. The founders were smart enough to separate their religious beliefs from what they learned through history and philosophy as functional, fair and resilient government.

Re:Fight them

[DesScorp]

So the area now known as Texas rose out of the gulf in 1836? Or was there a conflict in which settlers fought for independence from Mexico?

The latter. But the larger point is that the poster I replied to was making the case that the United States "stole" Texas from Mexico, because the settlers in Texas came from other US states.

This is a false argument on two fronts; one, the settlers left the US to start new lives, literally in another country. This wasn't some secret plot by the United States government... "OK, you guys go live in the Texas territories for 20 years, then rebel, then form your own republic for 10 years, then join the Union. Our plan is foolproof!".

Second, that land didn't originally belong to Mexico. Nor did the land in Southern California, Arizona, or New Mexico. Mexico invaded those lands and conquered the local Indian tribes to get it. Mexican troops had a reputation for utter brutality among the Indian tribes. You think the Indians hated the US? Ask an Apache, Pueblo, or Hopi what he thinks of Mexico.

Re:Fight them

[MightyMartian]

The tradition of religious freedom in the US stemmed from the fact that a number of important early colonial efforts were established by Non-comformists who were being heavily persecuted in England. The inspiration for the 1st Amendment was, by and large, the response to the absurdities of Catholics and non-conformists have to attend Anglican masses at least once a year, and of what amounted to religious tests for most high offices in England (in fact, the highest still denies the throne to a Catholic).

That's what makes so much of this so sad. The Founding Fathers believed well and truly that the State had no business meddling in what went between a man and his god(s). Some of the Founding Fathers were Christians, some stood at the margins and some were clearly not Christian (Jefferson was a Deist, and actually had a rather dim view of Christianity, not uncommon among Enlightenment thinkers). They're job, in their eyes, was to create a government that protected but did not intrude upon what they felt was a fundamental liberty; the right to worship as one wished to. That meant no religious tests, no indoctrination. The State, in their eyes, had no damned business teaching religious beliefs. There are churches aplenty to do that.

That is, I suspect, why Jefferson is such a substantial target, because he was the first to substantially explain the Establishment Clause in his letter to the Danbury Baptists. Here we have one of the major formulators of the Bill of Rights telling people exactly why they had written what they had written, and he's been the chief obstacle in any number of battles between religious fundamentalists, reconstructionists and all manner of whacked-out religious malcontents and reactionaries. The obvious thing to do, at that point, is to minimize his role. The Soviets used to do the same thing, becoming experts and expunging important figures from the historical record. It's odd how fanatics of all political stripes end up acting just about the same.

Re:Fight them

[ArcherB]

Texas wasn't WON, it was TAKEN from the mexicans

Mexico wasn't WON. It was TAKEN from the Spanish. (Who had taken it from the Indians.)

The US wasn't WON. It was TAKEN from the English.

We can do this all day.

Re:Fight them

[Rantastic]

You seem to be missing the point, perhaps willfully. The point is not whether or not the Founders believed in the Christian God, fairies, witches, unicorns, or any magical thinking.

The point here is whether or not the Founders intended for Christianity to be the basis of the government. From their writings, they clearly wanted a government based on reason, not religion.

Is anything not political?

[karcirate]

"apolitical nature of public school governance"

Say what?

Re:Is anything not political?

[Altus]

My understanding was that this bill was intended to prevent the specific changes proposed by Texas from making it into California textbooks. That is not leftist revisionism. Mr. Lee might be a bit heavy on the rhetoric but unless his bill specifically includes proposed changes to the existing curriculum (which, to the best of my knowledge) I don't think its fair to call him revisionist.

It seems to me that you are engaging in exactly the behavior you are calling out.

Re:Is anything not political?

[halivar]

In modern politics, one finds it essential to consider the opposition either stupid, evil, or both. That way we don't have to listen to them anymore.

Re:Thats the way its supposed to work.

[GreatAntibob]

This post misses the point of the entire debate.

Texas is such a large market for textbooks that publishers bend over backwards to produce texts catering to Texas' standards. Other, less populous states don't have the population to force publishers to make any sort of changes. They are mostly stuck with textbook standards set by big states like Texas or California. You can say "live somewhere else", but that's precisely the problem - short of states like New York, California, or Texas, you can't live anywhere else that has an effective say on textbooks. These states are the ones that, through sheer size, drag everybody else along. So, heaven forbid you decide you want to live in state with low population density where you're not surrounded by insufferable right wing nut-jobs or by liberal hippies.

The correct name would be

[daninaustin]

Who calls it the War for Southern Independence? Everyone in the south knows it as the War of Northern Aggression :)

Re:Texas a lot like Peru in the 80s

[yoshi_mon]

What you have here is a buncha people who are independent and are tired of government encroaching on civil liberty and forcing "help" on us.

The huge problem with this argument is where was this outrage when we had 8 years of unchecked infringement on our civil liberty's, government expansion, insane government spending, and a host of other issues. (I'm not going to even go in to your "help" bit as that rebuttal could fill up a whole other post.)

What you are saying rings so hollow in the wake of a lot of crazy things that went on. Instead only because now the media wing of the far right has gone on the warpath are you all acting as if our governments are acting contrary to their purpose. And furthermore because the far right is feeling so threatened we get what happened in Tx, Az, and what is happening in the GOP primary's now. Sure the far left has it's batch of crazy's but your blind if you don't see that it's the far right at this point that is, and has done, an insane amount of damage to the US in almost every way possible.