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Conservative Textbook Curriculum Passes Final Vote In Texas
suraj.sun sends in a followup to a story we've been following about the Texas Board of Education's efforts to put a more political spin on some of their state's textbooks. From the Dallas Morning News:
"In a landmark move that will shape the future education of millions of Texas schoolchildren, the State Board of Education on Friday approved new curriculum standards for US history and other social studies courses that reflect a more conservative tone than in the past. Split along party lines, the board delivered a pair of 9-5 votes to adopt the new standards, which will dictate what is taught in all Texas schools and provide the basis for future textbooks and student achievement tests over the next decade. Texas standards often wind up being taught in other states because national publishers typically tailor their materials to Texas, one of the biggest textbook purchasers in the country. Approval came after the GOP-dominated board approved a new curriculum standard that would encourage high school students to question the legal doctrine of church-state separation — a sore point for social conservative groups who disagree with court decisions that have affirmed the doctrine, including the ban on school-sponsored prayer."
California is all over this already. They're pushing to ban all textbooks using Texas' information.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
"Under God" was not originally in the Pledge of Allegiance. Francis Bellamy wrote the pledge in 1892. The phrase "Under God" was added in 1954.
Actually the superior educational system in Germany has helped them a lot. They are the number one exporter of manufactured goods. And they're able to make all these superior manufactured goods despite the fact that they are among the most labor-friendly societies in the world. Labor unions in Germany are much stronger than here in the US and take a greater role in management than their US counterparts. A single union, the German Confederation of Trade Unions, organizes 25% of all German workers. Even though they only have open shops in Germany, union membership is higher than in the US.
Meanwhile, here in the US, we're destroying labor unions and hemorrhaging manufacturing jobs.
It seems that Germany's superior educational system (which is government-funded through university by the way) has helped them a lot. You'd think that as America falls further and further behind the rest of the world in areas such as health care, education, legalized marijuana that there would be more of an effort to learn something from other countries. Instead, some of us (Texas, for example) seem intent on making our society dumber.
The most important thing to note is that this decision by the Texas School Board will effect the textbooks in many other states. Yet Texas ranks 49th out of the 50 states in education. Instead of trying to raise the standards to match the states that are the most successful in education students, we're intent on lowering our standards to match the states that are the worst.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Little by little the United States of America is becoming the Corporate Socialist States of Jesus.
"In God We Trust" did not show up on United States currency until around the time of the Civil War and was not officially a motto on the currency until 1956.
Sadly there is a large segment of the population that believe the United States is a Christian nation because of things like "One nation under God" and "In God We Trust" but they never actually studied any real history and don't realize those statements are in our government because they put them there not the people who formed this nation.
There's a few projects like that. As far as I know, they aren't really in widespread use.
A professor of mine once said that if you really want to know the material you should try writing a textbook on it. He was in the middle of writing various textbooks on Group Theory and Abstract Algebra. I think that's good advice for any expert in any field.
Here are some links I found after a quick google search:
California Open Source Textbook Project
Textbook Revolution
Open Textbook Repository
An open source Linear Algebra Textbook
A list of open source Math textbooks
Hope this helps!
My page.
That's not at all an argument in favor of the "living document" mode of legal interpretation. It's an argument in favor of amending and updating the laws with the times, which is certainly what we should be doing. The idea of a "living [legal] document" that can mean a different thing now than it did 200 years ago without amendment is absurd, since it does, in fact, mean that we can interpret the laws however we please. As everyone knows, however, when every interpretation is true, none is true. Good progressives should step away from legal nihilism and simply advocate rewriting laws when we need to.