Texas Narrowly Rejects Allowing Academics To Fact-Check Public School Textbooks (csmonitor.com)

jriding writes with news that in a 8-7 vote the Texas State Board of Education rejected a plan to create a group of state university professors to fact-check textbooks approved for the state's 5.2 million public-school students. The CS Monitor reports: "The Board of Education approves textbooks in the nation's second-largest state and stood by its vetting process — despite a Houston-area mother recently complaining that a world geography book used by her son's ninth grade class referred to African slaves as 'workers.' The publisher, McGraw-Hill Education, apologized and moved to make immediate edits."

Comments

If you don't like the textbooks,

[Anonymous Coward]

don't send your children to public education. It's simple. They get dollars for your children being there, remove those dollars.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[Anonymous Coward]

1. This isn't a school problem. It is a school board problem.

2. Where I live, the public schools are better than many of the private alternatives. I know at least 3 children (including my next door neighbor's child) who left public schools for affordable private alternatives and returned 3 or 4 years later. These children ended up way behind the students who stayed in public schools.

If you can afford the top tier private schools, your child will do fine. But, most families cannot afford the equivalent of college tuition for 12 years.

Its not simple.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[BradleyUffner]

don't send your children to public education. It's simple. They get dollars for your children being there, remove those dollars.

As opposed to trying to fix the problem and making the world better for everyone?

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[NotDrWho]

Except, with today's climate in academia, this isn't as black and white an issue as it once was. Sure, no one wants a bunch of bible-thumpers cutting evolution out of a textbook. But what about more controversial issues? Should heavily pro-AGW academics be allowed to remove any references to critics of anthropogenic climate change? Should the Women's Studies chair sitting on the panel be allowed to change the term "history" to "herstory"? Should heavily radicalized academics be allowed to edit a Health Studies textbook to teach your kids that almost every form of heterosexual sex is rape?

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[MickyTheIdiot]

Is it me or are do others here think the next 20 years in the US is going to be an extremely rough ride? In less than 10 years we will have to deal with kids who grew up with these textbooks in our college system. In another 10 years they will start to become our "leaders". in 40 years they will be in the Senate and House making even worse informed decisions than the morons currently there.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[MickyTheIdiot]

It's simple when you have that privilege available to you.

You're yet another person who is selfish or who can't imagine anything outside of his/her own life.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[Anonymous Coward]

"making even worse informed decisions than the morons currently there."

  I doubt it. Thats a pretty high hurdle.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

He pointed out taking the dollars with the child to pay for an alternative school, something many places do ready.

This is fought tooth and nail by big teacher union big government types to like to spout memes like hey you selfish jerk with privilege...! >:-(

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[BonThomme]

This is what your parents said.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[silentcoder]

So ... er... your example of a "controversial" issue is one about which no scientific controversy whatsoever exist ?

The only *controversy* is between science and fossil fuel companies and is about as legitimate as the one that used to exist between science and tobacco sellers and between science and lead sellers. In fact - we have physical proof now that the fossil fuel companies don't even doubt AGW themselves ! They say they do in public, but internally they trust it so absolutely that they based their schedules for arctic drilling on when ice melt would make it most profitable !

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[Anonymous Coward]

There are no "critics" of AGW, only deniers such as yourself with your painfully obvious agenda, trying mixing it in with various kinds of lunatics. You're a scumbag, please eliminate yourself from the gene pool ASAP for the benefit of mankind.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[Anonymous Coward]

For issues such as the ones you raised, you should be educating your children on them outside of school. You can't expect the public education system to raise your children for you, you need to impart in them some of your own knowledge and things like you mentioned definitely fall into that camp. The schools give the fundamental knowledge needed to succeed, it is your job as a parent to hone your children's knowledge to the keen edge you expect them to have. My tax dollars are taking them 90% of the way, the last 10% is all on you. Be a parent.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[Flavianoep]

Stupidity knows no limits.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[Anonymous Coward]

There's not only blatant evidence that facts have been fabricated, there's also key evidence that the sun itself changes its output. Here's some proof from a beloved nerd site that Arctic ice is increasing! https://www.nasa.gov/content/g...

Even the beloved Al Gore said by 2014 there wouldn't be any sea ice http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sci...

Look, we should be encouraging sustainable practices and using less of our resources on this floating rock. What we shouldn't be doing is creating a new tax structure for an already over bloated government and handing the servicing of said "carbon" credit system to the likes of Goldman Sachs to manage.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[Anonymous Coward]

But carbon's absorption lines in the infrared is a hoax perpetrated by scientists.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[sycodon]

Judging from the current activities on Campus today, in 20 years there will no longer be any Higher Education. Just indoctrination camps where people are sent to learn their place.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure he'll be sent off the the camps like the rest of the heretics...like Galileo, Ignaz Semmelweis, Barry Marshall, Gary Taubes, etc.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[danbert8]

On the bright side the liberals will make it free (as in someone else is paying for it)...

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[Anonymous Coward]

How's that pension public worker?

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I hate these assholes who clearly don't have a clue how science works. Science is done by scientists coming to a majority decision on a given issue, then that issue being closed and no longer open to debate. It's basic scientific method

1) Formulate conclusion
2) Obtain mass consensus on the conclusion
3) Adjust any subsequent data until it agrees with the conclusion

Jeez, this is basic science! It's only been around since Aristotle, you ignorant fuckers!

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[Austerity Empowers]

I know at least 3 children (including my next door neighbor's child) who left public schools for affordable private alternatives and returned 3 or 4 years later. These children ended up way behind the students who stayed in public schools.

The reality is that there are a few really good private schools that most middle-class families can't afford (unless your child is exceptional, can demonstrate it on paper, and would be considered an asset to the school to offset the rich-but-dumb kids), and a whole lot of "schools" that will take your money but offer very little. They won't even kick out losers, which is really the best reason private schools exist.

Texas public schools are terrible, but the text books aren't even the worst part. Saddest, Texas public schools aren't even close to the worst they're pretty good by red state standards.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[Immerman]

That's Antarctic sea ice - other end of the world. And the increase is only 1/3 the area of the ice lost in the Arctic. And note that's *area*, not *volume*. Old sea ice tends to get very thick over the decades, young sea ice, not so much. And I would guess that the increase in Antarctic sea ice is related to the ongoing melting of the continental ice sheet - as fresh water flows out to sea the surface water is becoming much less salty and thus freezes at warmer temperatures. (fresh water floats on salt water, and salt lowers the freezing point - that's why they salt roads to remove ice,).

Nobody claims that global warming will be uniform, in fact it's expected that some areas will get colder as weather patterns change. As will transient cold spells such as the polar vortex related freezes we've been having lately.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[Slashdot Junky]

A problem with your approach is that a parent can only employ your so-called solution for his or her own kids. He or she can't also send someone else's kids to a private school. Yet, these other kids are also to be a part of society's future and, potentially, shaping it in a significant way. So, the better approach is to address situations such as this textbook one in Texas so that the majority of kids learn what's right and real and not just the few that, purely by chance, were born into a situation that supported the attending of a private school.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[Immerman]

Right, there's a global conspiracy to create a hoax about something that any high school student can verify with a prism and thermometer (or any college student with access to a proper spectrometer). And FYI it's carbon dioxide that has a strong infrared absorption line. Different molecular compounds have different optical characteristics. Consider that both coal and diamond are pure carbon, but their difference in molecular structure gives them radically different properties.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[PopeRatzo]

That's Antarctic sea ice - other end of the world. And the increase is only 1/3 the area of the ice lost in the Arctic. And note that's *area*, not *volume*. Old sea ice tends to get very thick over the decades, young sea ice, not so much. And I would guess that the increase in Antarctic sea ice is related to the ongoing melting of the continental ice sheet - as fresh water flows out to sea the surface water is becoming much less salty and thus freezes at warmer temperatures. (fresh water floats on salt water, and salt lowers the freezing point - that's why they salt roads to remove ice,).

Nobody claims that global warming will be uniform, in fact it's expected that some areas will get colder as weather patterns change. As will transient cold spells such as the polar vortex related freezes we've been having lately.

You might as well be explaining this to my cat for all the good it will do. At some point, you just have to accept that at this point, climate change denial is simply a religion.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[PopeRatzo]

But carbon's absorption lines in the infrared is a hoax perpetrated by scientists.

And jet fuel can't melt steel beams.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[Austerity Empowers]

This is fought tooth and nail by big teacher union big government types to like to spout memes like hey you selfish jerk with privilege

No, others disagree too. Primarily we take the funding away form the public school, then also add our own private money, and send our kid to a better funded school. Great for those of us who can afford it, very bad for those who cannot afford it. Generally speaking I think public schools have been a tremendous success, so I don't want to see that system dismantled.

What we're failing at is delivering a very high quality education to more capable children, and losing our superstars to mediocrity.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[PvtVoid]

Should heavily pro-AGW academics be allowed to remove any references to critics of anthropogenic climate change?

Um ... yes?

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[Jason Levine]

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

And it will be worth every cent!

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

Nobody claims that global warming will be uniform,

No, in fact what "global warming" mostly does is warm up cold place and cause more precipitation in dry place, while changing the already warm places much less. At the peak of the Eocene, the entire globe was covered with vegetation at any latitude, with tropical and subtropical vegetation far into Northern Europe. That's not exactly the "scorched earth" picture we always get with global warming articles.

The terms "global warming" and the use of global average temperatures as the primary measure to communicate about this are propagandistic choices made by people who want to get people that "global warming" is a disaster. Because the misrepresentation was too blatant, eventually, the term was changed to "climate change".

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[Anonymous Coward]

The ironic part is that some would say that this is how things are TODAY.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[Jason Levine]

At one point, we considered moving our son to a private school. It turned out that the school would have cost us $16,000 a year per child. (We have two children.) They offered financial breaks but we heard from multiple people that taking these meant opening up all of your spending to the school for them to scrutinize. (e.g. "Why did you take this one annual family vacation during summer break when you could have paid us more money?") It was way too expensive for us so we stuck with public schools. Since then, we have increased our advocacy to help public schools against politicians who seem hell-bent on closing all public schools and funneling money to their corporate donors (testing companies, charter schools, etc.).

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[Anonymous Coward]

Then we should admire their foresight because a lot of their fears came true.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

It's simple when you have that privilege available to you.

I want poor families to have the same privilege as rich families when it comes to education: send their kids to a school of their choice. The way to do that is to give kids school vouchers.

What snobs like you want is to railroad poor kids into lousy public schools, while they move into expensive suburbs with good schools, and while their political heroes send their kids to top private schools.

You're yet another person who is selfish or who can't imagine anything outside of his/her own life.

No, that's what you obviously are.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[ragefan]

Also they'll become Doctors and forget which probe goes in your mouth and which goes in your anus!

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[dcw3]

you just have to accept that at this point, climate change denial is simply a religion.

Says the Pope!

Re: If you don't like the textbooks,

[silentcoder]

Its not a scientific debate unless the critics argument is science, backed by evidence. There is no scientific debate about this because the theory has a megafuckton of supporting evidence from virtually every hard science practised by mankind and the deniers have not a shred of evidence whatsoever. Hell most of their arguments are not even coherent. When you confuse artic with antarctic all you prove is that you dont even know preschool level geography.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[Immerman]

That's quite possibly true in terms of what a new equilibrium would look like (though the planet has been covered by deserts plenty of times as well), but completely ignores the centuries of transition - such small timescales are effectively invisible in the geologic record, but surviving them with civilization intact will likely be far more expensive than avoiding them would be.

And during the transition deserts will be likely without extensive human intervention - the existing vegetation can't migrate fast enough to keep up with the moving climate lines, and volatile emissions from vegetation appear to play a major role in cloud seeding.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[bickerdyke]

In another 10 years they will start to become our "leaders". in 40 years they will be in the Senate and House making even worse informed decisions than the morons currently there.

Don't worry. The current "leaders" are still making enough to send their kids to some "proper" schools. And tuition fees are high enough to keep anyone else out. And with textbooks like that, it's only making sure that no "mudbloods" can get into those circles by academic merits.Like the aristocracy of old, they prefer to stay among themselves.

Look at the presidential candidates: A few clans are already trying to turn the US into a family business!

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[bickerdyke]

Well, while technically correct, there's a slight difference between "someone else is paying for it" and "everyone chipping in a bit" to pay for something everyone profits from but would be too expensive otherwise.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[Anonymous Coward]

in 40 years they will be in the Senate and House making even worse informed decisions than the morons currently there.

Do you mean "they will be making less-informed decisions that the morons currently there?"
You're suggesting that they will be making informed decisions, just worse.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[dywolf]

they argue against it because its stupid.

the cost of operating a school does not scale linearly with the number of students, specifically in the downward direction. much like, where income tax is concerned and why an across the board flat tax is stupid, there is a minimum cost of living that does not scale down even if income does, operating a school has certain fixed/minimum costs, even if there is only 1 student.

this is how education gets underfunded, leading to a cycle of poor performance at schools where money has been taken out in order to follow students elsewhere.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[tompaulco]

Well, while technically correct, there's a slight difference between "someone else is paying for it" and "everyone chipping in a bit" to pay for something everyone profits from but would be too expensive otherwise.

Why would it be too expensive otherwise? What monumental earth shattering improvements have we made that have taken college from being a $5,000 a year investment to being instead a $25,000 a year investment in the last 20 years? Instead of making everybody cough up to keep feeding the pig that has grown too large, why don't we instead figure out where all the money is going and stop the waste?

Re: If you don't like the textbooks,

[Anonymous Coward]

The next twenty years will indeed be bad. Read "The Fourth Turning."

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[Anonymous Coward]

On the bright side the liberals will make it free (as in someone else is paying for it)...

You haven't been paying attention to what's happening. In 20 years, graduating college seniors will be called "serfs" or "indentured servants"

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

but completely ignores the centuries of transition - such small timescales are effectively invisible in the geologic record, but surviving them with civilization intact will likely be far more expensive than avoiding them would be.

There is little to support that assertion. The IPCC doesn't predict that. There is no evidence for it geologically. And it frankly doesn't make sense, given that the projected climate change isn't all that much faster than what we have already experienced and that people adapt to without even noticing.

And during the transition deserts will be likely without extensive human intervention - the existing vegetation can't migrate fast enough

Again, you are guessing, and quite wrongly. When precipitation goes up, deserts don't grow first and the shrink, they shrink immediately as they are settled by pioneering plants. Of course, mature plants of the right type may take decades to settle, but that's a different matter.

Re: If you don't like the textbooks,

[NotDrWho]

Its not a scientific debate unless the critics argument is science, backed by evidence.

It's also not scientific debate if one side has created an unfalsifiable hypothesis and alters any contradictory data until it supports said hypothesis.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[NotDrWho]

Well, now you know how bible-thumpers feel about removing all references to evolution, don't you?

You both know that silencing your critics is right because your critics' opinions are so obviously wrong.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[onkelonkel]

Of course not. You have to set it on fire first. A kerosene blowtorch will happily heat steel to about 1500 F. It won't actually melt, but it will be glowing cherry red, and bend like toffee.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[oh_my_080980980]

You mean public schools in Texas.

Re: If you don't like the textbooks,

[oh_my_080980980]

Glad you agree the Oil Industry has created an unfalsifiable hypothesis.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[oh_my_080980980]

Critics or haters. Seems to me the people who object to climate change are haters. Course it's sad that you hate scientists and the scientific process. But then I would expect nothing less from someone who schills for the oil industry.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[Immerman]

Actually there is - pretty much every major climate shift has been accompanied by large extinction events. Just because the regional climate is becoming more hospitable to some life, doesn't mean the existing life isn't dying off, or that the new life it's becoming more conductive to can get there right away.

Sure, the tropics may eventually extend to the poles, but tropical vegetation can only spread by so many yards per year, and in the mean time the existing vegetation is dying off. The effect is even more pronounced for relatively isolated ecosystems such as high mountains. The plants and animals that call them home generally aren't well suited to crossing plains, so as their ecosystem warms they die off, without the ability to move to more polar latitudes. Similarly the low-altitude Amazon Rainforest ecosystem is unlikely to be able to traverse the mountainous chokepoints of Central America - the organisms simply aren't evolved for mountainous living or high altitudes. Some plants will make the leap it in migratory bird droppings, but whether they can survive without the supporting ecosystem they evolved for is an open question.

As for the speed of climate change, yes it IS much faster than anything mankind has experience in thousands of years. At least on a large scale - you can't honestly compare small high-speed changes with large changes that require ecosystems to move thousands of miles to adapt. And if you're comparing the climate adaptability of migratory hunter-gatherers to that of an industrialized society, then perhaps you need to check your assumptions.

And where deserts are concerned, yes, if rainfall increases immediately they should benefit. But you need vegetation, especially trees, immediately upwind to make that a safe assumption - otherwise the increased heat will tend to kill off the borderline vegetation, while the moisture simply passes overhead until it does encounter enough organic volatiles to trigger cloud formation (this is actually a major issue in southern India, where large-scale deforestation has resulted in increasing desertification of the downwind coasts. Meanwhile man-made ecological reserves within the dead zone have led to much increased rainfall downwind.)

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[phantomfive]

This is what your parents said.

To be fair, we then ended up with Bush. So they weren't entirely wrong......

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[operagost]

Number one, there is a controversy. I know you think only famous cosmologists, mechanical engineers who used to host science shows for kids, and the fossil fuel companies count. But there are actual CLIMATE SCIENTISTS who have doubts, not to mention a large potion of the public.

Second, unless you're a fan of damnatio memorae, controversies should be mentioned even if they were wrong. You know, like aether theories, eugenics, phrenology, bloodletting...

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[LifesABeach]

Who ever modded you down is as big a dumb fuck as the Texa(s) State Board of Education.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[NotDrWho]

You got me. I'm just an oil industry shill who spits on scientists for fun on weekends.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[chmod a x mojo]

Should heavily pro-AGW academics be allowed to remove any references to critics of anthropogenic climate change?

Is there any repeatable and testable data sets that argue against AGW?

No, there is only hand-waving and vague ideas that have already been incorporated into current and past working models? Then you mention the doubters in a brief passage and actually teach science .

As for the rest of the drivel, that is exactly why there should be a mixed board reviewing what is being taught, so bullshit without fact can be caught and stomped out. As a matter of fact, without a review and fact checking body, it is more likely that your examples can happen.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[danbert8]

How do I profit from other people getting a degree? Since I'm not running a business that needs educated employees, more people with degrees just devalues my degree that I had to pay for.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[Anonymous Coward]

"A problem with your approach is that a parent can only employ your so-called solution for his or her own kids. He or she can't also send someone else's kids to a private school."

And you see that as a problem? Sorry -- but in my world parents raise their children the way THEY decide -- not someone else. How far do you want to go? Plato's Republic far? Take everyone's kids away and put them in a school away from their parents -- so neither child nor parent knows the other?

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[Anonymous Coward]

The way to do that is to give kids school vouchers.

What snobs like you want is to railroad poor kids into lousy public schools, while they move into expensive suburbs with good schools, and while their political heroes send their kids to top private schools.

No, vouchers take money away from public schools, thus decreasing the standards.
Vouchers entail all the same discriminatory an exclusivity issues as charter schools.
vouchers rarely pay for all costs of private school, so the "poor" family still has to pay money they can't afford. The answer is obviously to IMPROVE public schools, not try to destroy them with voucher schemes.
Three questions :
Who support charter schools?
Who supports vouchers?
Who is always trying to slash public school funding?
the answer is the same to all questions

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[JesseMcDonald]

How do I profit from other people getting a degree? Since I'm not running a business that needs educated employees, ...

You profit from the fact that there are people out there with the necessary skills to invent and supply goods and services that benefit you. However, that is not to say that you should be paying for those degrees directly, any more than an employer should be paying for its employees' degrees directly; you pay for the goods and services you use (just as an employer pays its employees' wages), and a portion of that money eventually ends up in the hands of those who paid for their training in the necessary skills. This ensures that the students are motivated to choose worthwhile courses of study and to take advantage of the educational opportunities afforded by their tuition—since they're the ones who will be paying off those loans by putting the fruits of their training into practice.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there any repeatable and testable data sets that argue against AGW?

Is there any repeatable and testable data sets that *FOR* AGW? Being as we only have one earth, I'm pretty sure there is no repeatable data. And I'm not sure how you would test it either, without building another duplicate planet as a control.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[Jawnn]

Yeah, I hate these assholes who clearly don't have a clue how science works. Science is done by scientists coming to a majority decision on a given issue, then that issue being closed and no longer open to debate. It's basic scientific method

1) Formulate conclusion 2) Obtain mass consensus on the conclusion 3) Adjust any subsequent data until it agrees with the conclusion

Jeez, this is basic science! It's only been around since Aristotle, you ignorant fuckers!

You and I must have learned quite different definitions of "science" Yours sounds like, well... bullshit. So unless you can actually show that climate science as followed your silly methodology, how about you STFU? Take your time. We'll wait.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[Jawnn]

He pointed out taking the dollars with the child to pay for an alternative school, something many places do ready.

This is fought tooth and nail by big teacher union big government types to like to spout memes like hey you selfish jerk with privilege...! >:-(

Yes, and they'd be absolutely correct. Charter schools are nothing but a way to rig the system to favor those with the juice to tilt things in their kids favor. Mind you, I'm not defending the teachers' union. Their intractability when it comes to methods to ensure that the public gets what they're paying for has been... misguided, to say the least. Nevertheless, public education is so important that everyone involved needs to just make it fucking work. Charter schools don't do this, not by half. We could start though, by borrowing a page out of the charter schools' playbook, expelling the "problem child". Too many schools have been the dumping ground for the problems created by poor parenting. Make sure mom and dad know what's at stake.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[pnutjam]

You can't argue with someone who would prefer to be a feudal lord. They'll shit in a bucket if it means everyone else is shitting in a smaller bucket. I prefer plumbing.

The hardest part is convincing them that they won't necessarily be on top when shit fall apart.

Re: If you don't like the textbooks,

[tbannist]

Its not a scientific debate unless the critics argument is science, backed by evidence.

It's also not scientific debate if one side has created an unfalsifiable hypothesis and alters any contradictory data until it supports said hypothesis.

Hmm...

Hell most of their arguments are not even coherent

Seems he was right. If the hypothesis was really unfalsifiable there wouldn't be any "contradictory data" and therefore nothing to "alter". Your arguments are not even coherent.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[dywolf]

because what's being suggested is -how it used to be- .
its not some untested, untried theory.
state colleges used to be nearly free because they were supported by tax dollars.

the tax cuts came first, then shrinking budgets, then tuition jumps, then the student loan program (creating profit motive for wall street based on lending for an education that -everyone- wants), then even larger tuition jumps fueled by a combination of easily available financing (similar to high healthcare costs caused by the presence of the insurance industry), every school thinking they need high profile sports teams, and a few other factors.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[JesseMcDonald]

While I'm sure your statement is true enough, taken at face value, I would appreciate it if you would take a moment to explain how you intended it to apply to any of the previous comments in this thread.

Re: If you don't like the textbooks,

[jd2112]

Or will become brain surgeon presidential candidates who think the pyramids of Egypt are grain elevators.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[wyHunter]

We are already seeing it with little snowflake having temper tantrums on college campuses.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[JesseMcDonald]

A problem with your approach is that a parent can only employ your so-called solution for his or her own kids. He or she can't also send someone else's kids to a private school. Yet, these other kids are also to be a part of society's future and, potentially, shaping it in a significant way.

So send everyone to the private schools. Instead of having separate public and private schools, just set up a scholarship program good for any accredited private school. The cost-per-student of private schools is not very different from public schools; the reason private schools seem to cost more (to the parents) is merely that the public schools are subsidized with taxes. Get the government out of the business of running the schools, and limit their role to defining accreditation standards and seeing to it that everyone gets a chance to attend.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[budgenator]

On the bright side, if your degree is devalued enough, they will not outsource your job to some third-world cesspool.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[budgenator]

You haven't been paying attention to what's happening. In 20 years, graduating college seniors will be called "serfs" or "indentured servants"

You mean instead of Interns, externs and residents, we're going to start calling them what they are?

Re: If you don't like the textbooks,

[Anonymous Coward]

So how do charter schools that base admissions on a lottery conform to your criterion?

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[JackieBrown]

It was way too expensive for us so we stuck with public schools. Since then, we have increased our advocacy to help public schools against politicians who seem hell-bent on closing all public schools and funneling money to their corporate donors (testing companies, charter schools, etc.).

The school choice would help defray the cost of the private school and there are several types of Charter schools - several of them free (well, as free as public schools.)

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[JackieBrown]

Three questions :
Who support charter schools?
Who supports vouchers?
Who is always trying to slash public school funding?
  the answer is the same to all questions

Those who want their children going to a better school?

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[budgenator]

Arctic Ice seems to be rebounding, but it's too early to tell if it's a trend or an anomaly.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[budgenator]

Right, there's a global conspiracy to create a hoax about something that any high school student can verify with a prism and thermometer (or any college student with access to a proper spectrometer). And FYI it's carbon dioxide that has a strong infrared absorption line. Different molecular compounds have different optical characteristics. Consider that both coal and diamond are pure carbon, but their difference in molecular structure gives them radically different properties.

It would be quite challenging for a High-Schooler to demonstrate CO2 absorption lines with a self-made instrument, glass is rather opaque to infrared at the CO2 absorbance bands so the optics would have to be made out of a salt, and the thermometer would really be a platinum wire bolometer, not impossible but challenging.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[mattack2]

What monumental earth shattering improvements have we made that have taken college from being a $5,000 a year investment to being instead a $25,000 a year investment in the last 20 years?

I have no idea if your numbers are correct, but even assuming they are, the cost has really "only" gone up 3.2x, not 5x as one would assume given those raw numbers.

Since, according to http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cp..., $5000 inflation adjusted from 25 years ago is $7803.08.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

You're putting up one straw man and piece of FUD after another. Let's return to your original point: you were saying that climate change isn't uniform and were trying to imply that that puts us at greater risk. I was pointing out that the non-uniformity of climate change, in fact, puts us at an overall less risk, because from everything we know, climate change tends to make cold, biologically unproductive regions warmer, and dry regions wetter.

Actually there is - pretty much every major climate shift has been accompanied by large extinction events.

That's a straw man and unrelated to the original point. But let's run with it for fun. Several large extinction events were probably caused by asteroid impacts, volcanism, or biological innovation; climate change was a consequence of those events, not a cause. The few cases where extinctions with no other known cause coincided with climate change was due to cooling. I don't know of any case where warming has been demonstrated as the cause of any large extinction event. In any case, most climate change doesn't seem to lead to extinction at all; we have had dozens of rapid temperature oscillations by more than 10C over the last few million years with no large extinctions. Furthermore, paleontology is probably also not a good guide anyway; animals and plants today have been through so much climate change that they are likely adapted to highly variable climate.

Sure, the tropics may eventually extend to the poles, but tropical vegetation can only spread by so many yards per year,

That's not how deserts get reclaimed. You're mixing up the effects of slow ecological progression with "spreading". Even if seed dispersal was a problem, humans could easily and cheaply help the process along.

The effect is even more pronounced for relatively isolated ecosystems such as high mountains. The plants and animals that call them home generally aren't well suited to crossing plains, so as their ecosystem warms they die off, without the ability to move to more polar latitudes.

Again, a straw man and with little support. Animals and plants are very good at "crossing plains" because they have experienced these kinds of massive climate change many dozen times over the last few million years. As elsewhere, we can also help them along if we wanted to. Finally, the loss of a few high mountain ecosystems is unfortunate for biologists and museums, but hardly a big deal for humanity or the planet.

As for the speed of climate change, yes it IS much faster than anything mankind has experience in thousands of years.

This is another straw man. I don't see what you think it is relevant to or in response to.

And where deserts are concerned, yes, if rainfall increases immediately they should benefit. But you need vegetation, especially trees, immediately upwind to make that a safe assumption

You said that "during the transition deserts will be likely without extensive human intervention - the existing vegetation can't migrate fast enough". Again, there is no evidence for that, and nothing you said changes that. In fact, deserts are already shrinking today, probably due to climate change. Good thing too.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[Immerman]

Okay, didn't know that about glass, and still find it suspicious - if that were the case then you wouldn't need IR filters in cameras, etc, and would probably have proven problematic for Herschel's accidental accidental discovery of infrared. But okay, maybe for far infrared you'd need a special prism.

But a wire bolometer? Maybe if you were trying to accurately find the frequency of absorption line, but just to detect it's presence you don't need much resolution. In fact you might not even really need the prism - just shine an IR source on the thermometer through both a reference gas and CO2.

Re: If you don't like the textbooks,

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you. One of the founders of this country (Thomas Jefferson) was more proud of having established a FREE college than he was about being president. One accomplishment is on his tombstone, the other is not.

Conservatives love to rewrite the history of this country to favor their ultra selfish worldview. The reality of our history, especially the parts of it that really worked like free education and a high wage union-friendly middle class, they have no use for.

Re: If you don't like the textbooks,

[Anonymous Coward]

Better than the deal you have. If you're so special and awesome, how'd you let your employer steal your retirement? Our are you just trying to justify your misery by projecting it on others like most conservatives do?

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[Anonymous Coward]

What, you mean the boomers that are currently FUBAR'ing absolutely everything right now?

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[Slashdot Junky]

You seem to be responding to something for which I didn't advocate. I believe parents should be expected to and to actually raise their kids. This is separate from the approach, whatever it happens to be, taken in a school setting to educate a kid. Parents can still contribute to the kid's learning even when we have a public school system, and they should since there is so much to know about life that can never be covered completely in any State-defined curriculum.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[Slashdot Junky]

How do you propose society manage the kids that don't have parents or guardians that care enough to get the kid into and kept in one of the many private schools that would exist and fit the kid's educational needs? Are you going to step in to help these kids? Probably not. How would you manage the kid's need to get to and from school even when the private school that fits is located across town? Are you going to give these kids a ride to their school? Probably not.

A public school system can and certainly does generally remove many of the burdens of educating our children. It can also accomplish this at real cost, not cost-plus-profit. It seems to me that the private sector normally operates with earning a profit as the highest priority. There are and will always be many kids that come into the world that would have to go it alone if not for society providing assistance through programs paid for by someone else. It doesn't matter if it tax-derived or private dollars or paid for through higher prices charged to those that can pay. These kids and those that got lucky at birth all are society's future. I believe it is in society's best interest to do what society can to prepare every kid, within reason, for said future.

So, let's say government does get out of the business of running schools and needs to only focus on regulating all of the existing and new private schools. Might it just be possible that the cost of regulation could be pretty high? A government-run public school system doesn't need the same level of oversight and regulating given that the system likely is as it specifies. Consequently, the cost of the self-oversight and self-regulation would be lower. In your system, the tax payer is still paying for the education of every kid through scholorships[I read vouchers] and also paying to regulate where they hadn't needed before. Government probably is also still funding much of the transportation costs since someone must pay to get the kids to and from school.

Again, I believe it is in society's best interest to do what society can to prepare every kid, within reason, for the future. I believe the better prepared a kid is, the less likely the kid is to be burden to society down the road. Burdens of all types cost money and, in many cases, more than what society would pay through the public school system. Just consider the costs associated with policing, prosecution, and imprisoning.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[dave420]

It's amazing that someone has to ask such an obvious question. Hint: it's called "civilization", and we all benefit from more people having more education. Study after study has shown this.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[pnutjam]

My comment is directed at the people complaining about others degrees devaluing theirs. That is only true in the smallest microcosm. Bringing others up, always helps you reach higher, but some people are happy to wallow in the mud as long as it's slightly better mud then someone else's.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[david_thornley]

Have you read what the IPCC does predict, with stated degrees of confidence? It's not pretty.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[david_thornley]

That isn't a rebound. That's two years of ice being above an anomalous low, and still being significantly below average.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[david_thornley]

Scientifically, speaking, I don't care what the public thinks. I care what the people who study things think.

Would you care to name climate scientists with doubts? And what do you mean by doubts here? We are warming up the surface of the planet, and it is going to have bad effects (it already has had some). There's plenty of room for argument about how the warming will proceed and what it will do.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[david_thornley]

It's not a majority decision. If the majority of scientists in a field think one thing, and a significant minority think another thing, we've got a scientific controversy. What a scientific consensus means is that the evidence has convinced pretty much all of a large number of smart people who study the issue, are trained to be quarrelsome, and who know that coming up with a different explanation for things, or finding something unexpected, are the ways to eminence in their field.

It isn't a matter of politics, because climate scientists all over the world agree. It isn't a matter of lack of evidence, or some climate scientists would be poking holes in it for fun and profit. It isn't a matter of suppressing publication, since anything that looks halfway reasonable can get published in a journal somewhere, or at least on the author's web site. It isn't a matter of focused funding, because there's different funding sources out there. It isn't necessarily easy to find them, but a scientist who can disprove something so widely considered true has a real incentive to find funding necessary to demonstrate a scientific breakthrough.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[JesseMcDonald]

How do you propose society manage the kids that don't have parents or guardians that care enough to get the kid into and kept in one of the many private schools that would exist and fit the kid's educational needs? Are you going to step in to help these kids? Probably not. How would you manage the kid's need to get to and from school even when the private school that fits is located across town? Are you going to give these kids a ride to their school? Probably not.

Do you really think that these problems are difficult to solve? Probably not.

Putting aside the fact that kids with uncaring parents are unlikely to benefit as much from school in the first place, parental involvement being one of the key requirements for success, I never said that the requirement to see to it that your kids attend some school should be lifted. Whether the parents care or not, their kids will go to one of the available schools.

Arranging transportation is the parents' responsibility. Most cities already provide public transit, and more than a few rely on it for getting kids to and from school. For those few cases where the only schools that fit are outside of commuting range, there are always boarding schools.

It can also accomplish this at real cost, not cost-plus-profit. It seems to me that the private sector normally operates with earning a profit as the highest priority.

There is nothing wrong with having a profit motive; it ensures that you have an interest in providing the best value, as perceived by those paying the bills. In any case, "private" does not have to mean "for profit". An education co-op, for example, is a perfectly viable model for a private school system.

A government-run public school system doesn't need the same level of oversight and regulating given that the system likely is as it specifies.

Do you really believe that? The cost of regulation still exists, as someone still has to define the standards the school is expected to meet, and if you're not bothering to have an outside party enforce the standards, a public school is just as likely to cheat on them as any private school.

In your system, the tax payer is still paying for the education of every kid through scholorships[I read vouchers]

Vouchers imply that the public schools are the default, and those going elsewhere get a portion of the funds that would be spend on their child to attend some other school. Without the public schools there would be no point in calling them vouchers.

Externalizing the cost onto the taxpayer is an inevitable consequence of trying to ensure that every child can attend school regardless of the family's financial state, without relying on (private, voluntary) charity. That is a problem, but it's not one I was trying to solve here.

Again, I believe it is in society's best interest to do what society can to prepare every kid, within reason, for the future. I believe the better prepared a kid is, the less likely the kid is to be burden to society down the road.

I agree with you here. This is why we can't afford to leave education to the public school system.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

Have you read what the IPCC does predict, with stated degrees of confidence? It's not pretty.

I think most of what they predict would simply go unnoticed and be accepted as normal by people growing up with it.

In any case, what matters really is the cost/benefit tradeoffs, not whether it is "pretty".

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[LordKronos]

Okay, didn't know that about glass, and still find it suspicious - if that were the case then you wouldn't need IR filters in cameras, etc, and would probably have proven problematic for Herschel's accidental accidental discovery of infrared. But okay, maybe for far infrared you'd need a special prism.

No need to remain suspicious. Simply look it up yourself. That's what google is for right? But I'll do it for you anyway.

Visible light is in the 390-700 nm wavelength.
Glass is transparent mostly in the 350 to 2500nm range, and is almost completely opaque outside of the 250 to 4000nm range
CO2 absorbsion occurs at 4257, 7204, 14992nm (more commonly notated as 667, 1388, and 2349 cm-1, in case you want to search to do your own verification)

So you can see there is a ton of IR in the 700-2500 range that glass is nearly completely transparent to. That's why you can have IR cameras. But CO2 is WAY out of range.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[lsatenstein]

Is it me or are do others here think the next 20 years in the US is going to be an extremely rough ride? In less than 10 years we will have to deal with kids who grew up with these textbooks in our college system. In another 10 years they will start to become our "leaders". in 40 years they will be in the Senate and House making even worse informed decisions than the morons currently there.

Time to become a citizen of anthor country. The USA is too big, It should be broken into at least two parts -- west and east, and each part split between north and south.

With that splitting into halves, elections, taxes, costs, etc. will drop substantially for each half. Remember, every 7 workers needs a foreman, and every 7 foreman needs a manager, and every 7 managers --- oh well, you got it. Smaller is better but too small is too much overhead.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[budgenator]

You only need the IR filter if you don't want the near IR light to hit the sensor, it can be a really cool effect.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[danbert8]

So you mean me? The civil engineer who designs the pipes to get the shit out of your house? Yeah, I really want your life to be shit. Stop assuming just because people don't want to hand out free educations to people with no economic reason to get a degree that they are horrible people who want to shit all over your life. Fuck you and the horse you were handed out. I volunteer all the time and contribute when I see someone doing the best they can. I went to college. The people not able to pay back their loans were the lazy asses drinking and partying for 5 years to get a degree with no job prospects. No amount of philosophy degrees improve my life. But they have done a good job at raising the barrier of entry into a lot of jobs. It used to be that you only needed a high school education for a lot of entry level jobs that would raise people out of poverty. But now there are so many unemployed degree holding people out there that employers have raised the bar to requiring a 4 year degree with nothing to show for it.

Making a 4 year degree a benefit for everyone will just make a 4 year degree the new high school diploma except now the poor have another 4 years with no income before they can get a slightly above minimum wage job.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[danbert8]

No, no study has shown this. Yes there is a correlation between a wealthy society and high education. But it could just as easily mean that richer people can afford to educate. Rural poor in 3rd world countries aren't poor because they don't have an education. They don't have an education because they are poor. Educating them may improve their chances of moving up the economic ladder, but it sure isn't any guarantee.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[danbert8]

Philosophy degrees (and many others) don't give anyone skills to invent or supply goods or services to benefit me. If they wanted to help me, they could have skipped college and became a skilled worker that is lacking in new labor like welding, plumbing, or electrician work. I hire those guys out all the time and the only good ones are ageing fast.

I would support free education for degrees that have an economic benefit to society. But those degrees are easy to pay off after college. The people who want free education are the ones going into majors that won't pay back the loans they are taking out or are so overcrowded with graduating majors that they have flooded the market.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[pnutjam]

Yeah, you.
A glut of degrees is not responsible for company's demanding degrees. The general refusal of companies to invest in R&D or training, in lieu of stock buybacks or executive compensation is the driving factor there.. The high cost of education also has more to do with state's clawing back education dollars then anything students or universities are doing.

Your parents and grandparents, maybe you, received many more public dollars towards their education then today's students. There was a time when anyone with the desire to get a degree could count on federal loans and part time work to fulfill their dream. Barring excessive outside obligations, anyone had the opportunity. That time has passed. Now it's either crippling debt or family wealth that allows you to get an education. I

want to go back to a time where anyone who wanted to learn, had the opportunity. I want to live in a community full of educated people, not simpletons like yourself.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[danbert8]

Well you can go live in the communities with the people who want free college and I'll happily keep my community. Calling me a simpleton and then outright refusing to accept that economics has anything to do with the discussion is kind of ironic if you ask me. But I'll just keep this note describing me as a simpleton next to my degree and professional engineering license.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[pnutjam]

Well, you appear to have calmed down. Your response merited worse then simpleton.
Plenty of degree holding people stopped thinking years ago. I also have a degree.
The only one ignoring economics is you. You can't cheap your way out of stupidity, but educated people can work wonders.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[danbert8]

Maybe I don't understand economics as well as I think I do. Explain to me how increasing the supply of educated workers without a change in demand doesn't result in lower worker pay... Or are you saying that the demand for educated workers is unlimited?

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[pnutjam]

I wouldn't say demand is unlimited, but it is much more elastic then your assumptions.

Remember kids: Socialism is bad!

[Anonymous Coward]

I learned that in public school.

In other news...

[Cutriss]

Slashdot ownership overwhelmingly rejects having article summaries proofread.

"Texa"...Give me a break.

Re:In other news...

[SpockLogic]

Texas trying to out stupid Florida and winning !!!

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot editing still leads both by a wide margin.

Re:In other news...

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

> Texas trying to out stupid Florida and winning !!!

You mean Texas trying to out stupid Florid and winning !!!

You screwed that joke up, pal. You had your chance. Next!

Re:In other news...

[Pseudonymous Powers]

Hey, don't mes with Texa.

In the age of social media...

[Anonymous Coward]

... all you have to do is find the mis-facts yourself and post openly and broadly. Companies probably don't want to be shamed repeatedly if they're in the information business. Call it open-source fact checking.

Donna Bahorich

[Anonymous Coward]

She's a Texas governor Abbot's crony who's in charge of Board of Education. Keep in mind she isn't qualified to run any education system and doesn't believe in it. She homeschooled her own children and sent them to private schools.

Re:Donna Bahorich

[Anonymous Coward]

She's a Texas governor Abbot's crony who's in charge of Board of Education. Keep in mind she isn't qualified to run any education system and doesn't believe in it. She homeschooled her own children and sent them to private schools.

So Obama isn't qualified to lead because he sends his kids to private school?

Re:Donna Bahorich

[Anonymous Coward]

Just shoot yourself.

Re:Donna Bahorich

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't "Conservatives" like Rick Perry always flappin' their jaws about abolishing the Federal department of Education?

Re:Donna Bahorich

[Anonymous Coward]

Crony isn't qualified to lead the board of education due to being fundamentally opposed to it is like Obama not being able to lead the country because of what?

Maybe if Obama espoused beliefs that America was evil and should be demolished then he wouldn't be qualified to be president. But as it is your analogy makes no sense, and is nothing but an attempt to make this political.

Re:Donna Bahorich

[wyHunter]

That's not why he isn't qualified to lead. There are many other reasons.

Re:Donna Bahorich

[Anonymous Coward]

Since his Kids go to private school perhaps some day they'll be qualified to be president;

Fact check or PC checking?

[Wycliffe]

How is it factually incorrect to call a slave a worker? Fact checkers would not fix that. Now the PC police might but which set of PC police do you allow to run your school? My guess is that the author actually used "worker" in an attempt to be PC because they knew that slave was a loaded word. Unfortunately for the author, it is impossible to please the PC police because if you try to downplay slavery, one side gets mad, if you skip over it, another group gets mad, and if you tell it too harshly you either have people up in arms that you were too graphic or another group saying that you still weren't harsh enough. I'm all for fact checking but PC checking is a game no one can win. The best you can do is try to rotate through authors of different backgrounds but even this is bound to fail as there are always going to be authors that a subset of people think are too extreme either one way or the other.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, there's a side that gets offended if the word 'slave' is used? What were they? guest workers?

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[gstoddart]

How is it factually incorrect to call a slave a worker?

Oh, I don't know ... because worker seems to imply they had some choice in this instead of being property. Tell you what, we could subject you to the same things as the slaves were, and you could tell us your thoughts on the difference.

This isn't about being PC, this is about pretending people who think that saying "well, it wasn't that bad" aren't morons.

"Workers" aren't chained up, brought thousands of miles, bought and sold, killed or maimed at will.

You simply can't talk about slavery and try claim you're being "PC" by referring to them as "workers" instead of what they really were. At that point you're just saying stupid shit like "well, slavery was a matter of historical perspective, and if you were a landowner these were valuable employees". This is literally whitewashing history to gloss over the details and downplay what actually happened.

That's not PC. That's fully intellectually dishonest, and re-casting slavery to pretend it wasn't that bad. This is fully revisionist history and dishonesty so a bunch of white folks can pretend like it was all a big misunderstanding ... and I say this as a pasty white guy.

Essentially Texas has said their education is no longer about facts, which means who knows what kind of crap will creep into textbooks.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Arguably, it depends on context:

If I said "Class, the 'Triangular Trade' is the term used to describe the trade route by which Caribbean sugar was shipped to the northern colonies, where it was turned into rum, and the rum shipped to west Africa, where it was traded for workers, who were needed to produce sugar in the Caribbean." it is hard to say, with a straight face, that I am being anything close to accurate: Yes, slaves do work, and people who work are workers, so quoth Merriam Webster; but it's clear that I'm omitting a rather important little detail about the whole arrangement; in a way that can only be described as cravenly dishonest.

If I said: "So, this pie chart shows a breakdown of workers, by occupation, in South Carolina in 1850." I would still be combining enslaved and free laborers into the same pool; but the objective of my lesson would be 'how is the workforce structured?' which makes my elision of 'how is the workforce motivated?' less a lie-by-omission; though it would be a better lesson if I also showed "breakdown of slaves, by occupation, in South Carolina in 1850", and "free labor, by occupation" for comparison.

That's the thing with natural language; many words are 'synonyms' in that at least one definition of word A is more or less the same as one definition of word B; but almost all words have enough distinct nuances to them that you can't get anything like transitivity or well-behaved equivalence relations without brutalizing the meaning of a text(which is kind of an amusing party game: start with a sentence and see who can most entertainingly distort it, exclusively by replacing words with ones that are allegedly 'synonyms'; but not helpful for information transfer).

What I don't know, offhand, is the context used in this particular textbook.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, there's a side that gets offended if the word 'slave' is used? What were they? guest workers?

My hard drive didn't work, so I noted it's jumpers were set for black guy instead of white guy.

FTFY

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Anonymous Coward]

Workers get paid and are not considered property. Slaves do not get paid and are considered property. Those two words are not interchangeable.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, I don't know ... because worker seems to imply they had some choice in this instead of being property.

Maybe. Or not. Worker to others may "imply" (i.e. it actually means) someone who does work (either under duress - as in this case - or not.)

Of course, deliberately misreading interpretations into innocuous texts seems to be a sport of certain demographics of the population. No doubt certain other demographics will be up in arms, because "'workers' in this context implies 'men'" and doesn't even begin to mention the plight of women....

Hyperbole - you couldn't make it up.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Not to defend it, but then they would have used the word slave twice in close proximity, a writing no no.

Oh, wait. They used the word worker twice anyway.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Dunbal]

A worker is a person who does work. What do you think slaves did in the fields - play charades? Sing? No, they did work. Hard work. You're the one inventing that workers have to be paid. If you work for a week and your boss is an asshole and doesn't pay you, does that mean you're a slave? No. Is an intern who does work for free considered a slave? No.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to defend it, but then they would have used the word slave twice in close proximity...

Hang on... the publishers used the word slave, and some 3rd-party professional offendee complained that (and the publishers backed down because) they.... didn't use the word slave?

I dread to think what the English curricula books are like.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[cdrudge]

The actual wording of the textbook reads:

The African Slave Trade between the 1500s and 1800s brought millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations.

While that alone may technically be accurate, it's a great mischaracterization of the situation. It's even more egregious because the section of the book it's in is under "Patterns of Immigration". It's not really immigration when it's a forced migration to a place you're not even recognized as a full human let alone any chance, at that time, of being a citizen.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about a deal, You can use "slave" with questionable ubiquity provided you have a section on all the black slave owners. You want to be genuine right? Then lets not sugar coat it. The Europeans bought those slaves from black Africans(of rival tribes). The Black plantation owners, The Irish, Asian, Native American subjugations. Sure, lets give them the truth, the WHOLE truth. That was the point you were trying to make right? Your just as pissed about the American text book coverages of the Mexican American war, Vietnam, et al right?

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[jbmartin6]

parent is probably used to seeing 'worker' as a synonym for 'employee'. I can't support this conclusion, but you may have gotten eight puppies with that post.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Anonymous Coward]

The sentence in question:
“The Atlantic Slave Trade between the 1500s and 1800s brought millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations."
The issues is with the use of the word 'workers' instead of 'slaves'.
The sentence is factually correct either way.

Both versions cover the necessary facts of the time concerning how slavery (evil) provided cheap labor which made the economics of agricultural plantations (good) possible.
This is not so much an issue of fact, but rather one of emphasis or spin.
Did the original version under emphasize the evils of slavery?
The answer probably mostly depends not on the debate, but rather on you attitude coming into the debate.

If you start from the premiss that slavery was bad and absolutely no good came from it, then I can see that one can't ever under emphasize the evils of slavery.
It may not be PC to say it, but that premiss seems incorrect.
Slavery permitted the development of the Americas which seems good.
The slaves paid dearly, but their ancestors ended up with a better life which seems good.
This particular use of slavery seems to have gotten humanity to the general consensus that slavery is evil which seems very good.

I think if you can find some pointy headed liberals that are willing to weigh the good and bad in things, then fact checking might be good.
If all you can find are PC police, then perhaps not.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Anonymous Coward]

A worker is a person who does work.

Suuure. Everytime a kid helps parents to wash dishes or vacuum clean, the kids becomes a worker, right? And all stay at home moms count as workers, because they do work, right? Just because the word "worker" starts with "work" does not mean everyone who does work is worker. That is not how the word is used in English and that is not how the kids will interpret the word.

If you work for a week and your boss is an asshole and doesn't pay you, does that mean you're a slave?

No, because I am not his property and can leave the company. I can also sue the company. Both are something workers do when companies do not pay them. Slaves can not leave nor sue.

Is an intern who does work for free considered a slave? No.

No, because a.) free interns are supposed to learn there and not to do useful work and b.) interns are not property and can leave. When company uses intern to do useful work, company is breaking the law.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Anonymous Coward]

But it's also clear and un-ambiguous from the actual wording that they are referring slaves.

I can't see how anyone could read it and not know that the 'workers' are slaves.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Anonymous Coward]

And Slave.

This is a poor choice of words, most definitely. But a complete whitewashing would be if they replaced "The Atlantic Slave Trade" with "A worker placement firm."

I point this kind of thing out to my kids all the time, and I hope that I'm raising critical thinkers, because everyone has an agenda, subconsciously or otherwise. Including me.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[king neckbeard]

It's disingenuous to call a slave a 'worker' because it intentionally leaves out important context. The fact that they were slaves instead of free men is an important thing to understand in a history book.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[gurps_npc]

Workers get paid.

Slaves don't.

If you can't tell the difference, then please submit your resume to me today, I'm Hiring

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Dunbal]

worker [wur-ker]

noun

1. a person or thing that works.

2. a laborer or employee: steel workers.

3. a person engaged in a particular field, activity, or cause: a worker in psychological research; a worker for the Republican Party.

4. Entomology.

a member of a caste of sexually underdeveloped, nonreproductive bees, specialized to collect food and maintain the hive.

a similar member of a specialized caste of ants, termites, or wasps.

5. Printing. one of a set of electrotyped plates used to print from (contrasted with molder2.).

6.any of several rollers covered with card clothing that work in combination with the stripper rollers and the cylinder in the carding of fibers. From here.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're off on a tangent dude. Yes, slavery has existed (and still exists today to some extent) across all races and nations. But the textbook is referring to the slave trade between the US and Africa. Nobody is saying "whitey bad" which is what you seem to be worried about.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[PopeRatzo]

How is it factually incorrect to call a slave a worker?

You might ask a slave that question. I'm sure he'd happily clarify the distinction.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[umafuckit]

Not to defend it, but then they would have used the word slave twice in close proximity, a writing no no.

Oh, wait. They used the word worker twice anyway.

But repeating the word "slave" isn't the issue. It's the use of the word "worker" that's the problem. They said: "The Atlantic slave trade ... brought millions of workers from Africa ..." They could have said: "The Atlantic slave trade ... brought millions of people from Africa ..." Then there would have been no problem.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Anonymous Coward]

They could have said: "The Atlantic slave trade ... brought millions of people from Africa ..." Then there would have been no problem.

Of course there would. The People's Militia for Colored Otherkin would have been up in arms, and on the publisher's backs, for not being inclusive enough.

As I said earlier: "Hyperbole - you couldn't make it up."

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Wycliffe]

It's disingenuous to call a slave a 'worker' because it intentionally leaves out important context. The fact that they were slaves instead of free men is an important thing to understand in a history book.

And it would be disingenuous if it was intentional and there was no mention of slaves elsewhere. The fact that the "offending" sentence already used the word slave once in the sentence shows that they weren't trying to hide the fact that they were slaves.

A few more way to write it would be:
The African Slave Trade between the 1500s and 1800s brought millions of men, women, and children from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations.
The African Slave Trade between the 1500s and 1800s brought millions of people from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations.
The African Slave Trade between the 1500s and 1800s brought millions of them from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations.
The African Slave Trade between the 1500s and 1800s brought millions from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations.

Are these all offensive too because they fail to use the word slave a second time?
Sure, they could have picked one of these other sentences which might have been better but don't assume the author was being disingenuous and trying to imply something when most likely the word selected was done haphazardly with very little intentional thought.

But if you want it to be the most factual and truthful, how about this one:
The African Slave Trade between the 1500s and 1800s brought millions of african natives captured and sold primarily by their native country men and rival tribes from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[blueg3]

It's immigration (and emigration) whenever a group of people migrate from one region to another, regardless of what the reason is or how they're treated.

It's a little bit of a tricky word territory because it would be inaccurate to call them "immigrants". That word is usually used in modern English to refer to non-forced migration, so could make the reader draw inaccurate conclusions.

It is, though, completely reasonable to put the event under a discussion of "Patterns of Immigration", because that is clearly referring to large-scale movements of people with important sociological and historical impacts. Historically, many major human migrations have been the result of slavery, exile, genocide, and other such unpleasant and rather non-voluntary reasons. They're still called migrations.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[bluefoxlucid]

Oh, I don't know ... because worker seems to imply they had some choice in this instead of being property.

Slave labor is still labor. They're still workers, and they still need to get paid. The difference is we pay them what we want, not what they want; sometimes we don't pay them enough, and they starve, and it's expensive.

That's something a lot of people miss: there's all kinds of novels written in worlds where they reference some backwards nation or evil corporation using slave labor and thus having infinite resources because it's free. Problem is you have to feed your slaves or they die; you have to give them medical care or they don't produce as good a rate of return; and somebody has to make that shit. Slaves are farming food? That's great. You can take, say, 90% of it, and the other 10% is their pay because they need to not die or you'll need to spend 60 times their monthly budget on a new slave to replace them. Think about how useless an 8 year old is as a worker; do you want to sink all that slave labor into building a new slave, 8 or 10 or 14 years before it's even useful? Maybe you can get a better deal paying sailors for 10 months of their time sailing to another country, abducting people, and sailing back with their catch.

Slave labor wasn't as bad as people believe... if you lived long enough to be slave labor. Getting abducted from your home, dragged packed like sardines in the ship, more than half your comrades dying of disease and malnutrition, poked, prodded, sold, screamed at... if you made it, what you got was a shitty life akin to poverty in prison. People imagine slave masters constantly beating slaves while smiling wickedly with demon fangs poking out of their mouths; in reality, the actual labor wasn't too bad, just everything else about life sucked--particularly the part about being property, confined to a barn like some sort of mule, and occasionally raped.

What it was was inefficient, expensive, and nationally embarrassing. It was so embarrassing we instituted a compromise in the Union whereby half of all states would be slave states for some 50 years, after which the Federal Government was allowed to legislate slavery away. Then we got in a war with ourselves about the whole thing. The end of slavery was put on the horizon, and then we took it by force when we got there because that's what we agreed on.

People want to write revisionist history. Some folks want to downplay the facts; others want to play them up until we're looking back on gloating, horned demons. The truth is somewhere in the middle--but not right in the middle, like the "fair and balanced" advocates want you to believe. Averaging the wrong views doesn't get you the right view; it's usually off-center.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Anonymous Coward]

But it's also clear and un-ambiguous from the actual wording that they are referring slaves.

I can't see how anyone could read it and not know that the 'workers' are slaves.

It's clear and unambiguous to an adult, who already knows about slavery and the slave trade. If you're a child, learning about it in school, you don't already know those things. You might wonder what portion of those workers were slaves, or why it was called the slave trade if it was just a migration of workers.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think there are very few people who when they hear the word "worker" would infer from that "slave", indeed in a "modern" context "worker" is a positive description. We have a word for people who have to work under duress - it's slave, so that's the word to use.

"The Atlantic Slave Trade between the 1500s and 1800s brought millions of slaves from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations."

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, I don't know ... because worker seems to imply they had some choice in this instead of being property.

Workers in socialist countries generally didn't have choices: they were assigned jobs and required to do them. Should they be called "slaves" as well then? I think the countries themselves would insist they are called "workers".

"Workers" aren't chained up, brought thousands of miles, bought and sold, killed or maimed at will.

And it is unclear that any of those were actually true for the majority of US slaves if you look at the statistics. The majority of slaves owned in the US were likely domestic help, like nannies, cooks, and maids, which implies that they weren't chained up. The great majority of slaves in the US weren't "brought thousands of miles", they were actually born in the US.

instead of what they really were

Your mental image of slavery like prison chain gangs is obviously as inaccurate as imagining that slavery was regular employment. I'm not defending the term "worker", but obviously, something went wrong with your education as well because you are clearly confused even on basic facts about slavery.

and I say this as a pasty white guy

More importantly, you say it as someone with a political agenda, and someone who likely supports the kind of politics (the Democrats, progressivism) that brought us segregation and massive discrimination in the first place.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Anonymous Coward]

> because worker seems to imply they had some choice in this instead of being property
Not really.
Worker implies that someone works.
Employee implies that you get payed and have a choice.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Nidi62]

Slave labor wasn't as bad as people believe... if you lived long enough to be slave labor. Getting abducted from your home, dragged packed like sardines in the ship, more than half your comrades dying of disease and malnutrition, poked, prodded, sold, screamed at... if you made it, what you got was a shitty life akin to poverty in prison. People imagine slave masters constantly beating slaves while smiling wickedly with demon fangs poking out of their mouths; in reality, the actual labor wasn't too bad, just everything else about life sucked--particularly the part about being property, confined to a barn like some sort of mule, and occasionally raped.

The thing about slavery in the US is that people hear it and think of massive plantations utilizing scores of slave labor in horrible conditions, when the reality was much different. Slaves were an expensive investment akin to machinery today. The majority of slaveholders only owned at most a handful of slaves (if that much) and treated them fairly decently. Beating a slave regularly has as much logic as a modern farmer taking a sledgehammer to his tractor because it broke down. Now, was it a horrible system that deprived people of their free will and humanity? Absolutely. Did things like arbitrary beatings and rapes occur? No doubt. But they weren't widespread, and a lot of poor white farmers lived in conditions not too dissimilar than slaves did. About the only differences between poor whites and the slaves was that the whites were still allowed to own property and participate in politics.

I'm sure someone will miscontrue what I said and claim that I said slavery wasn't bad, which it was. But I will admit that I am one of those people that believes the Civil War wasn't really about slavery, but that slavery was simply a symptom of larger underlying factors that caused the war. So that probably makes me a racist in some people's eyes.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Anonymous Coward]

Employees get paid.

Workers do work.
Employed workers,
conscripted workers,
volunteer workers,
enslaved workers.

All valid uses of the term worker.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

It's disingenuous to call a slave a 'worker' because it intentionally leaves out important context. The fact that they were slaves instead of free men is an important thing to understand in a history book.

The context is provided right there: "The African Slave Trade brought millions of workers...", so they are obviously not pretending that these people came voluntarily. The fact that these slaves were "workers" from an economic point of view because economics drove a lot of the dispute between the North and the South.

There is, however, a far bigger problem with the sentence: the numbers are off by an order of magnitude. The total number of slaves brought to the US from Africa was around 388000; it was never "millions".

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Workers work, slaves are FORCED to work. Hence all slaves are workers, but not all workers are slaves. Employees are a subset of workers who are paid by an employer, but not all workers are employees.

Also what type of immigrant do you expect the "slave trade" to bring in? The name kind of says it all.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[bluefoxlucid]

That's all true, but they weren't exactly lauded kings. They were treated like slaves, and people have to take that out to absurd conclusions: the occasional beating, the rape, the right to just kill them for looking at you wrong, it all translates to evil men satisfying their sadistic bloodlust at all hours of the day.

It's really the kind of mistake fiction writers frequently make: the bad guy doesn't have motivations; he's just evil. He stomps on children and kicks puppies so he can gloat about how deliciously evil he is. Even Holt Fasner and Vladimir Harkonen weren't like that; Fasner only cared about himself, and Vladimir *was* a sadistic ass, but neither of them were evil just to be evil. Even Vladimir Harkonen believed what he did was creating progress, bringing order to a universe fraught with the weak and the unstructured, an untamed wilderness that needed to be paved over and modernized into a giant industrial machine where men labored for more progress; his sadism was a personality quirk, not a big red sign to show that he was evil embodied.

To give slave owners motivations is to make them human; and to make them human is to admit you have the same motivations. Slaves would be useful, and the fruit of slave labor would be desirable; and you reject slavery because it's wrong, and so you try to strangle off that recognition that it would be useful. Most people can't fathom the act of taking the correct course because the things you'd like are simply morally wrong; you're only a good person if you find those things undesirable and have no interest at all. If you simply turn away from the temptation and stand fast to what you believe is right, you're just a black-hearted devil dressed up like a white knight.

Nobody wants to admit that Adolf Hitler was the logical conclusion of every-day human thinking.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Austerity Empowers]

My issue is mostly that there's a lot of seeing the forest for the trees and injecting modern politics into history in a confusing way. When teaching about the triangular trade, the specific aspects of life of "the workers" may not be quite as important as the flow of money and goods. It's important to understand how the economy worked and what a balance sheet might have looked like. The focus should have been on economics. It should be pretty dry, but it should be immediately clear how very profitable this all was. Slavery paid for that, absolutely, and that would be clear in studying the balance sheet. The most important things to note I think, is who revolted. The slaves? No. The colonists first. Then the plantation owners. For some reason these guys were most upset. I think studying the balance sheet is the answer, along with some human nature (i.e. those who stand to lose fight first, those who seek to gain may not fight).

We want to focus on slavery because it is morally repugnant today (and many back then thought so too, but didn't take it up...because of that balance sheet). But in terms of hitting the high points of US history for junior high or high school? It wasn't really the most important thing to understand in great detail immediately. The bill for the slaves came due in the mid-20th century. Talking about slavery is historically more important, I think, when talking about more recent US history. Just where did all these black people come from and why are they pissed off? Ah, now we should talk about who paid for the triangular trade and what the cost of that cheap labor really was. If nothing else, our children should be taught that actions have consequences and that nothing is free, even if it doesn't complain immediately. We can then let them participate in politics on indentured servants (H-1B, etc.), and our economic relationship with China and why it is like it is and just who is likely to fight if we don't manage that relationship carefully...

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[dywolf]

its an exercise in lying/misleading with literal truth.
like the related field of lying with statistics.

the things said are literally true, but presented in a way to confer a meaning different than face value.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[tompaulco]

But it's also clear and un-ambiguous from the actual wording that they are referring slaves.

I can't see how anyone could read it and not know that the 'workers' are slaves.

It's clear and unambiguous to an adult, who already knows about slavery and the slave trade. If you're a child, learning about it in school, you don't already know those things. You might wonder what portion of those workers were slaves, or why it was called the slave trade if it was just a migration of workers.

Give kids some credit. They are not dumb.
Kids are also learning in their English class to look for synonyms and not use the same word repetitively, especially in the same sentence. I would expect a professional wordsmithing company like Mcgraw-Hill to do the same, as indeed they have.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or what creeps will crap into textbooks.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[tompaulco]

How is it factually incorrect to call a slave a worker?

You might ask a slave that question. I'm sure he'd happily clarify the distinction.

If there are actual slaves in existence (I'm guessing there are, I mean we have ISIS and we have dictators in Central and South America and Africa), then I highly doubt that he would clarify the distinction, happily or otherwise.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Anonymous Coward]

Kudos to the child who uses their critical thinking skills and questions whether "Atlantic Slave Trade" might actually be dealing with non-slaves. Even the lightest research (e.g. wikipedia) says this is not the case, but it's a valuable exercise to question it.

The lazy thinkers will by default assume that The Atlantic Slave Trade was probably just about slaves, not the other way around.

In that sense, I see this as a good thing. We should be teaching kids to be critical thinkers and that textbooks are not absolute truth. This is a textbook example.

But I would have worded it differently, personally.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's actually not the actual wording. You got one word wrong.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[theendlessnow]

How about this spin:

The primarily Mexican undocumented immigrants came to do the jobs that no one else would do for a less than fair wage.

Wonder how the PC police will render that if it were in a textbook.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[oh_my_080980980]

Look up the word slave. Ass-hole.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[oh_my_080980980]

For further reading check out Nazi propaganda or better yet read Orwell's 1984. Yup definitely an ass-hole.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[phantomfive]

Slave labor wasn't as bad as people believe....just everything else about life sucked--particularly the part about being property, confined to a barn like some sort of mule, and occasionally raped.

That sounds bad

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[JackieBrown]

I think there are very few people who when they hear the word "worker" would infer from that "slave", indeed in a "modern" context "worker" is a positive description.

"The Atlantic Slave Trade between the 1500s and 1800s brought millions of slaves from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations."

I would hope that our public school students would know from the context that the "Atlantic Slave Trade" was bringing in slaves

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Anonymous Coward]

About the only differences between poor whites and the slaves was that the whites were still allowed to own property and participate in politics.

If you think the above is remotely true, that the effects of slavery were limited to property and voting, then you're a product of the kind of privilege and systemic denial that is at issue here. At the very least, slaves did not have freedom of movement or freedom of association (not even their own families!), nor in most cases did they have access to education.

Libertarians should stop trying to white-wash slavery in some Gone With The Wind patina.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[PopeRatzo]

If there are actual slaves in existence (I'm guessing there are, I mean we have ISIS and we have dictators in Central and South America and Africa)

You don't have to go that far to find "actual slaves". You can find quite a few right there in the state of Texas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[edtice1559]

Yes and I see not wanting to use the word slave twice so close together. So how about forced-laborer or something that doesn't have any connotations of being partially voluntary. Ed

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Anonymous Coward]

While you're railing against "PC police" perhaps you could explain why any mention of the KKK and Jim Crow were removed from the same textbooks. Was this just the Texas school board being the lovely and PC-free angels they are?

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Attila Dimedici]

More importantly, using the word "workers" signals that these slaves did work that would otherwise need to be done by free labor. It tells you something about the economics of the slave trade.

It is also worth noting that not all workers are slaves and not all slaves are workers (for example, almost all gladiators in ancient Rome were slaves, but we would not normally class gladiators as workers).

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Anonymous Coward]

Texas also tried to change references of African Slave Trade to Atlantic triangular trade. Stop trying to defend these privileged, gerrymandering racists.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[KGIII]

Some folks just want to be offended. They will find a reason for outrage no matter what you do. There is, as near as I can tell, absolutely nothing you can do to prevent someone from being unhappy - I'm not sure it's even worth trying in *most* situations. The 'net has enabled greater levels of communication. This means the volume level, from the professional class of offended people, is louder than it used to be.

No, I do not think this will result in a better society. Yes, I do think this means that society has improved - we're able to be outraged over trifling matters and not our baby having been eaten by a lion. So, there's that.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[mschaffer]

All language implies. There are not absolutes in language.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[bluefoxlucid]

There's having your teeth pulled, and there's having your mouth shit in and then having your teeth pulled without painkiller.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[ThisIsAnonymous]

I just had to highlight these...

Slave labor wasn't as bad as people believe...

in reality, the actual labor wasn't too bad

I'm not sure if any of us can determine how difficult/bad any sort of labor/job is for anybody else. I think that might have been the entire problem originally..."It's not that bad..."

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's disingenuous to call a slave a 'worker' because it intentionally leaves out important context."

What if it was in the context of the "slave trade". Slaves weren't brought in ANYWHERE to be slaves -- it's a class, not an occupation. They were brought in as slaves to work. The context of the book (and in fact the sentence in question) is DISCUSSING the Atlantic Slave Trade. How many times would you use "slave" in a sentence before it's enough? "The slaves slaved in the slaved worked cotton fields". Geez. It's like a warped "smurf" language.

This is crazy PC micro-management.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Anonymous Coward]

I had one in all seriousness ask "what did the Declaration of Independence do?".

So you may be being too optimistic.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Fire_Wraith]

We can argue endlessly over whether it's widespread or not. The simple fact is that those enslaved persons had no recourse whatsoever except to try and flee, or to engage in violent rebellion. This is a severe flaw in and of itself. It's like suggesting that massive pervasive government surveillance is okay, because they only rarely abuse it. The problem is the power imbalance itself, the abuse is just a feature of that.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[bluefoxlucid]

That's true; but the point was more toward the extreme views people hold: they know something is bad, so it must be as bad as they can possibly imagine. Rational decisions work best when you hold a realistic world view.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[ChrisMaple]

Fact check: Of the approximately 11 million slaves brought from Africa to the new world, about 450,000 ended up in the area of the current continental United States. NOT MILLIONS

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[riskkeyesq]

But I will admit that I am one of those people that believes the Civil War wasn't really about slavery, but that slavery was simply a symptom of larger underlying factors that caused the war. So that probably makes me a racist in some people's eyes.

Evidently you missed a couple of salient declarations.

From South Carolina's secession assertion:

We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.

From the Confederate Vice President's "Cornerstone Speech":

The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions—African slavery as it exists among us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away... Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it—when the "storm came and the wind blew, it fell." Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. It was about slavery. The attempt to paint it otherwise is disengenous.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Bartles]

If they are people that are working, then they are workers.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about a deal, You can use "slave" with questionable ubiquity provided you have a section on all the black slave owners. You want to be genuine right? Then lets not sugar coat it. The Europeans bought those slaves from black Africans(of rival tribes). The Black plantation owners, The Irish, Asian, Native American subjugations. Sure, lets give them the truth, the WHOLE truth. That was the point you were trying to make right?

My American history book, admittedly, more than two decades ago, did have sections on the mistreatment of Irish, Italians, Asians, and Native Americans, yes.

The relatively few Black Slave owners in the US, not so much. Might as well worry about the Female or the Jewish. Nor the politics of Africa at the time, FWIW. I think the book would have been a bit too large if it were to cover that subject, the same reason they didn't cover the vagaries of Japanese history with the Ainu.

Your just as pissed about the American text book coverages of the Mexican American war, Vietnam, et al right?

I'm certainly concerned about the accuracy of those sections.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you. Posting anon 'cause I decided to upvote you instead.

I ran across something similar recently when researching the concept "the Civil War was not about slavery". To me, the Missouri compromise and the Compromise of 1850 tell me that it was.

And the direct secession statements cemented the idea. Yes, although there were other considerations, it was primarily about slavery (or, in some eyes, property rights).

It's nice being on the right side of history, occasionally.

sysrammer

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Nidi62]

It was about slavery. The attempt to paint it otherwise is disengenous.

No, it was about what slavery represented. Specifically, slavery (or the argument surrounding it) represented 2 distinct conflicts: different economic systems and opposing views on governance. First is economics: the South was a largely agrarian economy while North was much more industrialized. A good proxy to show this is the rail industry. Ever look at a map showing the rail lines for the North and South? It looks strikingly similar to those nighttime maps showing lights in South Korea vs North Korea. The South relied heavily on labor-intensive agriculture which required a large low-cost labor force. It is also important to note that most elected government officials in the South were wealthy, and wealthy in the South meant plantations (which meant slaves) or merchant/trader which heavily relied on the good produced by said plantations. The North was much less reliant on cheap labor mostly because industry there focused on producing finished goods rather than raw goods.

The second factor was governmental theory. In the view of the South, the primary government was that of the state, not the federal government. For lack of a better term the South took a very provincial view, seeing their home as their state and showing loyalty accordingly. This is demonstrated in the large numbers of professional soldiers (especially field grade officers) who resigned from the US Army and immediately offered their service to the Confederacy. They even demonstrate this belief in the very named they chose for their new country: confederacy. A confederacy is a group of states bound together by a weak and limited central government. The push against slavery was seen as an attack on the sovereignty of the Southern states by the federal government (as noted above, it was also seen as a threat to the wealth and power of the ruling elites in the South). But to say the Civil War was about slavery is like saying WWII was about stopping the Holocaust(apologies for the Godwin, it's time for me to go home from work and this was the most apt example I could come up with real quick).

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it's technically inaccurate. Just under 400,000 slaves were transferred, and the rest of the millions of slaves were born in the USA.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[wyHunter]

Don't forget "captured and sold by their native countrymen to Arab slave traders, and were then brought to the southern United States and other places to work on agricultural plantations." Don't forget, slavery was not outlawed throughout the British Empire until 1833. It wasn't just to the United States.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[tompaulco]

If there are actual slaves in existence (I'm guessing there are, I mean we have ISIS and we have dictators in Central and South America and Africa)

You don't have to go that far to find "actual slaves". You can find quite a few right there in the state of Texas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Wow, that article certainly is biased. Those poor, honest, people forced to work as slaves in prison camps. I guess the fact that they committed a crime and were caught and convicted means nothing. They should have more rights than the people they killed, raped and murdered did.
I also find it ironic that an article about penal slavery actually reports the wages that they are paid. Slaves don't get wages. Except when we tongue in cheek speak of our own slave wages because we think we deserve more pay.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[budgenator]

Essentially Texas has said their education is no longer about facts, which means who knows what kind of crap will creep into textbooks.

Dude this is Texas, not only is crap creeping into the textbook status quo, the craptastic textbooks they buy become the defacto textbooks all over the country. If they go with "fact checkers" the result will most likely be different crap instead of no crap.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[PopeRatzo]

Wow, that article certainly is biased. Those poor, honest, people forced to work as slaves in prison camps. I guess the fact that they committed a crime and were caught and convicted means nothing. They should have more rights than the people they killed, raped and murdered did.
I also find it ironic that an article about penal slavery actually reports the wages that they are paid. Slaves don't get wages. Except when we tongue in cheek speak of our own slave wages because we think we deserve more pay.

You have a mutable definition of slavery. The actual definition is a little more fixed. It has nothing to do with wages or crimes...It has to do with choice.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're all wrong because they brought only thousands compared to millions. There is a massive difference between those two numbers.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[desdinova 216]

I thought unpaid workers were called Interns?

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[david_thornley]

The Civil War was not primarily about slavery. It was about secession, and was set off by a Confederate attack on a Union fort. Trying to sell a war against slavery in the US at that time wasn't going to fly.

Secession was about slavery, yes.

Also, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation as soon as he could from a position of strength (i.e., a battle the Union didn't lose), since Britain and other European countries couldn't intervene on the side of slavery.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[david_thornley]

About a century and a half ago, disagreements over slavery led to Bleeding Kansas and the Civil War. It is not possible to describe the causes of the Civil War adequately without discussing slavery. If you think the Civil War was a minor event that the textbooks can brush under the rug, then you can get away without mentioning slavery, I guess.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[david_thornley]

Really? Suppose the slaveowners had immediately freed the slaves and then offered them jobs? Some people did free slaves, after all.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[volmtech]

It would simplify discussing the subject of slavery. The slave trade brought slaves to the New World to slave for their masters doing all sorts of slave. Their continued slaving interrupted only briefly by raping and beatings after which they returned to slaving. Sound OK? Sort of how Smurfs talk.

Re: Fact check or PC checking?

[Anonymous Coward]

A worker is not whipped for disobeying. A worker is not branded. A worker does not have their children taken away from them and sold. An honest, decent human being doesn't pretend that slavery is the same as employment.

Re: Fact check or PC checking?

[SethFowler]

A worker is not whipped for disobeying. A worker is not branded. A worker does not have their children taken away from them and sold. An honest, decent human being doesn't pretend that slavery is the same as employment.

Re: Fact check or PC checking?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell those hicks that referring to salves as workers is like referring to the eucharist as a light snack.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Anonymous Coward]

How is it factually incorrect to call a slave a worker?

Oh, I don't know ... because worker seems to imply they had some choice in this instead of being property. Tell you what, we could subject you to the same things as the slaves were, and you could tell us your thoughts on the difference.

This isn't about being PC, this is about pretending people who think that saying "well, it wasn't that bad" aren't morons.

"Workers" aren't chained up, brought thousands of miles, bought and sold, killed or maimed at will.

You simply can't talk about slavery and try claim you're being "PC" by referring to them as "workers" instead of what they really were. At that point you're just saying stupid shit like "well, slavery was a matter of historical perspective, and if you were a landowner these were valuable employees". This is literally whitewashing history to gloss over the details and downplay what actually happened.

That's not PC. That's fully intellectually dishonest, and re-casting slavery to pretend it wasn't that bad. This is fully revisionist history and dishonesty so a bunch of white folks can pretend like it was all a big misunderstanding ... and I say this as a pasty white guy.

Essentially Texas has said their education is no longer about facts, which means who knows what kind of crap will creep into textbooks.

But the thing is...slaves ARE workers. They are not paid, but they are workers. They don't have any choice, but they are workers. They weren't brought over from Africa to be slaves...they were brought over to be workers. Slavery is just how they did it.

And the thing is, have you even seen the graphic from the book in question? It doesn't omit the reference of slavery. It blatently says something like: "the atlantic slave trade brought millions of workers". How about using some reading comprehension...if it says the SLAVE trade brought them, then what sort of workers do you think they are [hint: the answer is SLAVE workers]? And this was merely a label on a graphic. It's not like this was the only exposure the kids had to the topic of slavery. I'm sure the graphic didn't just mention the atlantic salve trades without the students already having had an in depth lesson on what the atlantic slave trade actually was.

Oxford English dictionary:
worker - A person who does a specified type of work or who works in a specified way
slave - A person who works very hard without proper remuneration or appreciation:

A slave does work, and is therefore a worker. It is all correct terminology. And it isn't even trying to hide or whitewash anything. It calls it the "slave trade". The "slave trade", by definition, traded slaves.

So there is no technical or factual inaccuracy in it. The only thing incorrect about it is that it is politically incorrect. So if you are claiming that it is not about political correctness, then please tell me in what way it is incorrect, if not technically, factually, or politically?

And I have no idea WTF are you talking about? Nobody was saying "well, it wasn't that bad [to be a slave]" or that slavery is a matter of perspective.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[dave420]

So it wasn't about slavery but about succession (which was about slavery). Gotcha..!?

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy crap....you are right.

http://www.theroot.com/article...

In all this BS discussion over the political correctness of the wording, the real story that was completely missed was the factual incorrectness of the numbers, not the wording.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[david_thornley]

Essentially, yes. Causes of wars can get really complicated. Secession didn't start war immediately; that came after the South fired on Fort Sumter, for reasons that were not directly linked to slavery.

Right. Because of that...

[demon driver]

..., and because public internet exists for two decades now, there are no stupid or even wrong text books left in the world. Oh wait.

Failed

[dcw3]

They obviously failed their spelling class in "Texa".

Re:Failed

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that's how the spelling book wrote it.

"a group of state university professors"

[Nutria]

Who's to say they won't be uber-feminists who think that some slightly pushy arm touching by drunken college boys is first-degree rape?

Re:"a group of state university professors"

[Ksevio]

1. Rape is legally defined and arm touching does not constitute "first degree rape"
2. They would be asking professors relevant to their fields of study and multiple professors would be reviewing the textbooks, so it's unlikely a particular ideology (such as "uber-feminism") would control the narrative.
3. The point about drunk college boys seems unlikely to come up in a high school textbook.
4. The same thing could happen now since it's controlled by the textbook makers

Re:"a group of state university professors"

[Nutria]

1. Rape is legally defined and arm touching does not constitute "first degree rape"

Not according to University feminists. According to them, anything that the female doesn't want, even The Day After, is rape.

3. The point about drunk college boys seems unlikely to come up in a high school textbook.

Nowhere did I imply that they would write about drunken college boys.
It's the philosophical attitude that counts.

4. The same thing could happen now since it's controlled by the textbook makers

Look at any textbook. They're all written by University professors. So whether it's this set of professors, or that set of professors or set, you're just as likely to get some bias. If you don't believe me, read any Howard Zinn textbook.

Scewed by the reviewer.

[freak0fnature]

The 'facts' are not always truth, and the reviewers have their own bias. Here is a great example, the War of 1812. In the US they teach how England was the belligerent and that it was a war between the US and England, defending the US from England. In Canada, they teach that the US was the aggressor. In other parts of the world they teach that the US sided with Napoleon and include the war as part of the Napoleonic wars. Which is truth?

Re:Scewed by the reviewer.

[Fire_Wraith]

"Well, what I told you was true, from a certain point of view." - Obi-wan Kenobi

They're all partly true, and partly incorrect, as each only tells part of a larger story.

-The USA cited British impressment of sailors, interference in trade, and other such provocations by Britain, as part of its declaration of war. To a degree, this is true from the American viewpoint at the time (the British didn't see it that way of course), as many Americans felt that way.

-One of the other goals stated by pro-war American politicians at the time was the annexation of Canada (they thought the Canadians would, to borrow a more recent phrase, "greet them as liberators"). During the course of the war, the USA tried to invade Canada on several occasions, only to meet with failure. Thus, it's certainly reasonable for Canadians to have seen things that way.

-The war took place during the final years of the Napoleonic Wars, in which Britain was the leader of the anti-Napoleon coalition (having been the only one to remain at war the entire time). Several of the major reasons cited for the war arose from British actions against France, such as blocking trade, impressment of sailors, and so forth, so it's certainly fair to view the war as part of the Napoleonic Wars. That said, the USA did not ally with France, nor was its conclusion tied to that of the war against Napoleon, and the USA and France did not assist or cooperate with each other in any military ventures during the conflict.

Re:Scewed by the reviewer.

[sociocapitalist]

The 'facts' are not always truth, and the reviewers have their own bias. Here is a great example, the War of 1812. In the US they teach how England was the belligerent and that it was a war between the US and England, defending the US from England. In Canada, they teach that the US was the aggressor. In other parts of the world they teach that the US sided with Napoleon and include the war as part of the Napoleonic wars. Which is truth?

All of the above?

Re:Scewed by the reviewer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither the US view point nor the Canadian view point is fact. In fact the only fact you mentioned here is that the War of 1812 happened in 1812. On the other hand, the fact that the world have existed for billions of years and biological evolution are both fact. The purpose of those politicians rejected fact check is obviously not to avoid bias, but to keep Texans ignorant and fell slightly better about themselves.

Re:Scewed by the reviewer.

[Anonymous Coward]

The truth is, " The winner gets to determine what gets written into the History books. "

Re:Scewed by the reviewer.

[Anonymous Coward]

The War of 1812 did not "happen" in 1812, it started in 1812. It happened over the course of 1812-1814.

Fer sure

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Whah, hail no!!! We don' want none o' them smarty pants egghead perfessers and braniacs messing' with our beloved holy sacred bullshit stories, or where will it end?

Purty soon lil' Johnny and Janey won't be believin' that this here Earth is flat an' was given to us personally by Jebus Christ hisself!!

And the so-called "slaves", they wuzn't slaves, they wuz "involuntary happy helpers" who got free food and shelter!

Not only that, but mah ancestors hunted dinosaurs with a flintlock way back when, it sez so in mah Holy Book, Not that OTHER filthy dirty lyin' FAKE "holy book" that those differnt' lookin' peeple read from, 'cuz they's all goin' ta' HAIL when they die, yes siree, mah pappy done tol' me so.

Re:Fer sure

[wyHunter]

Your prejudice is showing. Rather like the stereotypes you are repeating.

Re:Fer sure

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Your prejudice is showing. Rather like the stereotypes you are repeating.

Stereotypes exist for a reason; they don't spring fully-formed from out of the blue.

Re:Fer sure

[Anonymous Coward]

This is funny and sad at the same time. Mainly because most of it is true.

And in other similar news. Not narrowly

[Anonymous Coward]

Gay males widely prefer anus.

Surely You're Joking

[Rob Lister]

In his subjectively honest autobiography "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!", Richard Feynman devotes a chapter (Judging Books by Their Covers) to this and related issues in textbooks. The truth of the matter is the books go mostly un-reviewed. Sure, they hire teams of committees to review them, but more likely than not, nobody on any committee so much as opens them up, much less fact-checks them. They are however lavished with free dinners, vacations, and other graf. The book deals are worth millions, after all.

He recounts when he was on such a committee and was unable to get a criticism in edgewise.

Now, add some religion, politics and general bureaucratic incompetence to that and what you end up with is an all but worthless textbook and a keen hope for a teacher that can teach around it.

Meh. My kids are grown and gone. I wish them luck.

Re:Surely You're Joking

[jdavidb]

Meh. My kids are grown and gone. I wish them luck.

My kids are not grown. We homeschool them.

Re:Surely You're Joking

[Anonymous Coward]

This is how that nonsense explanation of airfoils 'everyone knows' gets passed on for several generations, even in college textbooks (outside of actual aerospace engineering textbooks).

even aerospace focused schools like embry riddle fall into this trap (personal experience), with their physics text giving the BS ''equal transit/bernouli' explanation, then two rooms over in the actual engineering course being told 'ya, forget that, this is how it really works'.

Re:Surely You're Joking

[sconeu]

Isn't that in "What do you care what other people think?" ?

Re:Surely You're Joking

[N22YF]

Meanwhile, in another anecdote, a history professor I know was on a review committee for a junior high-level history textbook used in Texas (among other states, I believe); they did fully review the textbook, only to have a significant portion of their suggested corrections ignored. Also, I don't believe he was lavished much in the way of free dinners, vacations, etc. (maybe they save that for the physicists).

Re:Surely You're Joking

[onkelonkel]

My grade 8 science teacher laid Bernoulli on us. The 4 vectors, lift, weight, thrust drag all balanced. I asked her how an airplane can fly upside down. She had no clue.

Re:Surely You're Joking

[Anonymous Coward]

It's all about the angle of attack. Anyone sticking their hand out the car window into the wind knows how aerodynamics work. Making the math work is where it gets tricky.

Re:Surely You're Joking

[Rob Lister]

Ditto that, AC. The teacher should have replied, "very inefficiently"

Re:Surely You're Joking

[Chris Mattern]

Unless it was stunt plane designed for upside-down work. Such planes have a symmetrical airfoil and depend entirely on the angle of attack rather than the Bernoulli principle acting on an asymmetric airfoil, making them relatively efficient when flying upside down.

Re:Surely You're Joking

[Anonymous Coward]

In some cases it's up to the teachers on whether to accept the books. I recall a story I heard:

Teacher: "I don't think we can use this book. They don't even have capital cities of US States correct."
Rep: "That can't be, we fact-checked the whole book."
Teacher: "The capital of New Mexico isn't Albuquerque."

Re:Surely You're Joking

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, flying upside down is not really the sort of thing that an 8th grade science teacher needs to know that well.

Re:Surely You're Joking

[Anonymous Coward]

My favorite passage in his recounting the review of books was the book that was rated, but not delivered to the reviewers.

The book was "late to the publishers" and so it didn't make the submission date for distribution to the reviewers. Yet, based on the high praise of the people "assisting the reading" the book actually received higher marks for suitability than the two others in it's series which actually were delivered.

If that wasn't proof positive that the entire review system was a sham, then what is?

Re:Surely You're Joking

[AthanasiusKircher]

Meanwhile, in another anecdote, a history professor I know was on a review committee for a junior high-level history textbook used in Texas (among other states, I believe); they did fully review the textbook, only to have a significant portion of their suggested corrections ignored.

Are you talking about an academic review (usually made up of university faculty, often done before publication while revision is still going on) or a political "Board of Education" -- or state committee or whatever -- review (usually involving random people elected or appointed to decide textbooks, including non-academics, often when they are near their final form)?

State committees don't often submit many "corrections," as much as "requests" to include more material aligned to official state curriculum guidelines (or sometimes more material about the history or industry of that state or whatever).

TFA here is actually about this difference. The Texas Board of Education (political committee) was proposing setting up its own academic review panel (bunch of professors), which obviously publishers don't want -- they already find it a pain to deal with the academic reviewers they ask themselves.

Also, I don't believe he was lavished much in the way of free dinners, vacations, etc. (maybe they save that for the physicists).

Academic reviewers rarely get much in the way of perks. They're the annoying bunch who hold up publication because they find errors and such.

The people who get the perks are the ones who actually have the political power to ADOPT the textbook, which will bring in money to publishers. And the perks will vary depending on the market -- if you can guarantee the publisher to sell a few thousand copies, you might be able to squeeze out a free lunch. If you're adopting for a big state like Texas and can sell millions of copies, you might be wined and dined and who knows what else....

Re:Surely You're Joking

[david_thornley]

He also mentions that at least one publisher sent in blank books, as in having an appropriate number of blank pages bound into the cover, and other members of the committee rated them like they knew what would be in the book when written. Clearly, people weren't bothering to open and flip through the books.

Re:Surely You're Joking

[someoneOtherThanMe]

If it's designed for upside-down then why doesn't it have a normal wing just turned upside down? Maybe even mount the pilot upside down to make it even easier. Oh wait...

Re:Surely You're Joking

[Rob Lister]

... depend entirely on the angle of attack rather than the Bernoulli principle acting on an asymmetric airfoil ...

Not to quibble but it is still relying on the Bernoulli principle. That it is instantiated in an inefficient way (AoA rather than wing camber) for the purpose of achieving some non-traditional flight characteristic (stunt flying) doesn't change that.

Okay, that was to quibble. :)

Re:Surely You're Joking

[Rob Lister]

Probably. It all runs together in my wee mind.

Re:Surely You're Joking

[ToddInSF]

When one considers how hobbled teachers are it's a wonder there are any good teachers int he public education system at all.

I'd have to say in all honestly, when I went to HS back in the 80's, public education was a farce, and all but maybe 3 or 4 of my teachers were grossly incompetent and useless. And THAT public HS was one of the top rated ones in the country. It really wasn't until University that I encountered educators that were actually capable of doing their job.

Pretty obvious error

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone knows that africans don't work.

Re:Pretty obvious error

[Anonymous Coward]

This reached Score: 1 how?

Re:Pretty obvious error

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone with mod points saw it before a couple humorless SJWs did?

#Texas

[harshath.jr]

'nuff said.

You actually did

[rsilvergun]

or at least I did. My economics course in High School was a propaganda platform for capitalism. There was no discussion of other competing systems, even in a bad light. Nor was there any criticism of capitalism whatsoever. Looking back it's more than a little disturbing. I was very clearly being indoctrinated into a certain way of thinking. We can argue whether it was the right or wrong way to think, but it's still indoctrination, and I was still being encouraged to accept something on 100% faith in what was supposed to be a place of learning...

Re:You actually did

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you honestly think you'll get a less biased version from modern academia? Academics these days are so radically left-wing that your economics textbook will just swing from "capitalism is perfect" to "capitalism is responsible for all evil in the world and, also, all white heterosexual men are rapist oppressors."

Re:You actually did

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me guess, you feel the Bern, right, tovarishch?

Re:You actually did

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

My economics course in High School was a propaganda platform for capitalism. There was no discussion of other competing systems,

And your physics course was a propaganda platform for the Laws of Thermodynamics, with no discussion of perpetual motion machines. Reality and science sometimes are just no fun.

Re:You actually did

[Anonymous Coward]

Your comparison is shit, you know?

Re:You actually did

[dcw3]

And which "competing systems" would you have them teach? Economics isn't a course on various forms of government, they were teaching you how the system you lived under actually operates.

Re:You actually did

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you know how I know you're a liar. The entire study of economics is a comparison to other systems.

Re:You actually did

[Anonymous Coward]

Consider demanding a refund, as my physics classes did not hesitate to discuss competing systems. "Theories".

> no discussion of perpetual motion machines
Zero? You were done a disservice. Yes, consider a refund.

Re:You actually did

[edtice1559]

Because you can't really find any economist who disagree on the general principle of free markets. They debate quite vigorously things like how much the free market should be regulated, but you can't find an economist to support a centrally planned economy. Even in China, they've given up that ship. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to minimize some of the negative effects that completely unregulated markets bring. Look at the terrible toll those experiments with planned economies took on the people of eastern Europe.

Re:You actually did

[tinkerghost]

And which "competing systems" would you have them teach? Economics isn't a course on various forms of government, they were teaching you how the system you lived under actually operates.

We don't actually live in a purely capitalist society. Patents & copyrights are embedded into our constitution and are anti capitalist in that they create a monopoly based on the force of law rather than a free market.

Utility monopolies in areas - ie cable, telephone, power ... again quasi socialist concepts - the state own a monopoly on the right of way and sells it. The populous has little to no input and the leases are essentially as long as the company exists.

Emergency medicine is absolutely not a free market item - nobody does research and decides which hospital to go to for their heart attack based on cost/benefit ratios.

Even back to the 1700 & 1800s, there have been consumer protection laws in effect that curtail the ability of businesses to market and sell products - thankfully we no longer have lollipops flavored with horse piss.

Re:You actually did

[dcw3]

We don't actually live in a purely capitalist society.

Who said we did? I didn't even imply that our system is good or bad, only that the GP's complaint is irrational.

Re:You actually did

[dave420]

You did, when you said that the reason they only taught capitalism was because that was the system they lived under. It was then pointed out that they lived not only under capitalism, and then you seemed to have lost the plot.

Re:You actually did

[dcw3]

You made the leap to "purely capitalist society". The only implication in my comment is that they were teaching the existing system, which clearly is a form of capitalism, just not the plot you twisted the discussion into.

Re:You actually did

[tehcyder]

My economics course in High School was a propaganda platform for capitalism. There was no discussion of other competing systems,

And your physics course was a propaganda platform for the Laws of Thermodynamics, with no discussion of perpetual motion machines. Reality and science sometimes are just no fun.

Funny how right wingers are prepared to treat economics as a science as long as it supports laissez faire capitalism unthinkingly, whereas otherwise it's a liberal-hippy pseudo-science like sociology.

Re:You actually did

[tehcyder]

Because you can't really find any economist who disagree on the general principle of free markets. They debate quite vigorously things like how much the free market should be regulated, but you can't find an economist to support a centrally planned economy. Even in China, they've given up that ship. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to minimize some of the negative effects that completely unregulated markets bring. Look at the terrible toll those experiments with planned economies took on the people of eastern Europe.

But this just exemplifies the point that economics and politics are intertwined.

The problem with the USSR was that its centralised economic policy followed from its centralised political policy, and its politics did not grow from a background of democracy.

And it is perfectly possible to have planned, centralised institutions provided you have democratic control of some sort. For instance, the civil service and armed forces function without (necessarily) creating tyranny in the western world.

Re:You actually did

[edtice1559]

The problem with central planning is that there can be only two outcome. Either the central planner gets it exactly right in which case the quantity of production is exactly the same as a free market. Or, the central planner gets it wrong and then the economy as a whole suffers. There are lots of problems in market economies but they always balance supply and demand. And you can't have a centralized economic policy without a centralized political policy. If the central planners tell me to produce ten jars of apple sauce and two apple pies, but my customers prefer apple pie, I will go out and make ten apple pies and two jars of apple sauce. I'm happier selling more and my customer gets what they want. So how do you force people to follow the central planning? The only way I *won't* do this is if you threaten me with excessive punishment. For that you need centralized political power. China has shown you can (to some extent) have centralized political power and a free market. But even that is tenuous. Businesses are making bad decisions all the time because the government is suppressing information needed to make accurate choices. We don't teach young earth creationism in science class and we don't teach centrally planned economies in economics class. It's really the same argument.

Re:You actually did

[Anonymous Coward]

or at least I did. My economics course in High School was a propaganda platform for capitalism. There was no discussion of other competing systems, even in a bad light. Nor was there any criticism of capitalism whatsoever. Looking back it's more than a little disturbing. I was very clearly being indoctrinated into a certain way of thinking. We can argue whether it was the right or wrong way to think, but it's still indoctrination, and I was still being encouraged to accept something on 100% faith in what was supposed to be a place of learning...

Public schools also equate Socialism, as practiced places like the UK, with Stalinist Communism and old school Marxism.

Re:You actually did

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

Funny how right wingers are prepared to treat economics as a science as long as it supports laissez faire capitalism unthinkingly, whereas otherwise it's a liberal-hippy pseudo-science like sociology.

Well, that's because some parts of economics are sound and well-supported by data, and others are not. You know, like any other science as well.

Re: You actually did

[BeaverCleaver]

Damn Big Government, infringing my *right* to eat horse-piss flavoured lollipops!

Feynmann

[necro81]

Having no personal experience in choosing textbooks (just buying many of the assigned texts in college - not much choice there), my view on the process is heavily influenced by Richard Feynmann's recounting the time he served on the California Curriculum Commission in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynmann. For those who haven't read it before, here's his chapter on Judging Books by Their Covers.

Re:Feynmann

[sconeu]

Feynman tells the story of a book nearly being approved even though every page was blank.

A small sticker

[Anonymous Coward]

a world geography book used by her son's ninth grade class referred to African slaves as 'workers.'

Solved. Send out sheets of stickers with ' nigg' on them.

Nice troll

[rsilvergun]

Academia isn't terribly left wing except for a few examples the right wing press likes to trot out for people like you. That said, you know we _can_ just give both sides equal representation. Maybe not 100%, but we can do a lot better job than we're doing now.

Re:Nice troll

[Anonymous Coward]

oh bullshit. I'm in the most right-wing school west of the Mississippi, the Air Force Academy, and the PC police own this place. We're teaching future combat leaders, and I got formally reprimanded for discussing blowing people up because it might "trigger unpleasant memories." Seriously? These young men and women are going to go DO EXACTLY THAT!. Many are going to become pilots, and a significant fraction of them are going to drop bombs on people.

Re:Nice troll

[Anonymous Coward]

A couple things, a single formal reprimand equals "the PC police own this place"? That sounds like a bit if a stretch. Of course the instructors don't want students to think about it in terms of blowing people up, dehumanizing the enemy is a key part of any military training, I'd imagine it's usually not that hard for pilots who typically don't see the individuals when dropping bombs, but their commanding officers absolutely don't want pilots second guessing their orders when they are told to drop the bombs.

I am curious what "discussing blowing people up" entails, just a guess but I think it's something that is going to make you sound like a massive asshole, I certainly could be wrong though.

Just curious whats the split on civilian vs military vs retired military for the instructors at the Air Force Academy?

Re:Nice troll

[supercrisp]

FWIW "In April [2005], the Washington-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a religious watchdog group, claimed that there have been numerous incidents of religious bias and official promotion of fundamentalist Christianity at the Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs, Col." http://www.monitor.net/monitor... "A 2010 survey found 41 percent of non-Christian cadets faced unwanted proselytizing, even as the religious majority felt that their freedom of speech was being infringed upon." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... "I am on staff at USAFA and will talk about Jesus Christ my Lord and savior to everyone that I work with.” http://www.jta.org/2013/11/21/...

Re:Nice troll

[supercrisp]

Holy Jesus Weebles! Slashdot ate my paragraph breaks again! Sorry about that.

Re:Nice troll

[wyHunter]

Really? REALLY? You actually claim this? Amazing.

Who chose the word "worker"?

[RogueWarrior65]

I'd be interested to know who actually chose to use the word "worker." Was it the author or the editor and what is their ideological proclivity?

Re:Who chose the word "worker"?

[drinkypoo]

I'd be interested to know who actually chose to use the word "worker." Was it the author or the editor and what is their ideological proclivity?

I'd be interested in knowing if they referred to them only as workers, or if they were first referred to as slaves, because slaves are workers and it's only disingenuous to use that word someplace in your copy if you don't first point out that they are in slavery. Sometimes a job is done by both slaves and employed workers, and both of those classes of people are workers. Of course, this being Texas, it was probably wholly inappropriate, but I'd still like to see the offending copy.

Re:Who chose the word "worker"?

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

I'd be interested to know who actually chose to use the word "worker." Was it the author or the editor and what is their ideological proclivity?

Probably someone who wanted to make a point about slavery and the issue of labor supply and demand in the colonies, something that is important and relevant in US history. It's not like they were trying to hide that these were slaves, since they were actually clear in the same sentence that these "workers" were brought in by the "Slave Trade".

A bigger question is what the author's "ideological proclivity" by misstating the numbers and locations so badly. The African Slave Trade did not, in fact, bring "millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations", it brought "hundreds of thousands of workers from Africa to the British colonies to work on British plantations". That is compared to the millions that were brought to other Spanish, Portuguese, French, and British colonies elsewhere.

Re:Who chose the word "worker"?

[tompaulco]

I'd be interested to know who actually chose to use the word "worker." Was it the author or the editor and what is their ideological proclivity?

Hard to say, but given that the word 'slaves' was already used previously in the sentence, best practice in English writing is not to use the word again, but to use another similar word.

Re:Who chose the word "worker"?

[operagost]

There were slaves imported up to 1808, when it was finally outlawed (the Constitution required that it not be done until 1808). That being said, I really doubt there were even hundreds of thousands between independence (whether traditionally 1776, de facto 1781, or de jure 1783).

Re:Who chose the word "worker"?

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

There were slaves imported up to 1808, when it was finally outlawed (the Constitution required that it not be done until 1808).

Did I say otherwise? Note that this fact really largely relieves the US of responsibility: getting the British colonies to declare independence required this political compromise prior to the creation of the USA, and as soon as slave trade could be outlawed by the new country, it was outlawed.

That being said, I really doubt there were even hundreds of thousands [before] independence (whether traditionally 1776, de facto 1781, or de jure 1783).

Probably about half the slaves were brought to the current territory of the US under British rule, the other half under US rule; but all of those under US rule were either brought in under the legacy compromise that enabled the US to be founded in the first place, or were simply brought in illegally.

Note, however, that my statement was slightly different anyway; I said what it should say is that "hundreds of thousands of workers from Africa to the British colonies to work on British plantations". Those plantations weren't just in the modern territory of the US; there is no justification for discounting British guilt by looking at just the number of people they brought to the present day territory of the US.

Re:Who chose the word "worker"?

[tehcyder]

I'd be interested to know who actually chose to use the word "worker." Was it the author or the editor and what is their ideological proclivity?

Hard to say, but given that the word 'slaves' was already used previously in the sentence, best practice in English writing is not to use the word again, but to use another similar word.

The words "worker" and "slave" have widely different meanings and are certainly not interchangeable.

Not just money

[rsilvergun]

unless it's a _lot_ of money. Most private schools keep their grade point average up by expelling low performing students. All the Charter schools do this. Had a dirt poor neighbor who managed to get her kids into one of the nicer charter schools. It was brutal. If their GPA dropped below a B they were kicked to the curve. The Public Schools don't have that luxury. In most places these days they can't even suspend students. They're just being set up to fail so that rich assclowns can privatize the school system and skim 10-20% off the top.

Re:Not just money

[Jason Levine]

And with the Charter schools it becomes a vicious cycle.

1. Charter school takes public school money.
2. Charter school only takes in "good" students (e.g. not kids with low grades or with difficulties that would require extra assistance).
3. Students with "difficulties" are left in the public schools who have less money to help them.
4. Charter schools get better test scores than public schools. (Since they get to pick and choose not only what students they take but what test results they publish.)
5. Businesses that run charter schools profit and donate money to politicians.
6. Politicians call for more charter schools and to close public schools.
7. Repeat 1 - 6.

Unfortunately, we're seeing this in action in NY and it's not pretty.

Re:Not just money

[Anonymous Coward]

"2. Charter school only takes in "good" students (e.g. not kids with low grades or with difficulties that would require extra assistance)."

Not in my area. There's a lottery.

"3. Students with "difficulties" are left in the public schools who have less money to help them."

The problem with the public schools is they don't remove the "difficult" students any more and put them in a separate location where focus can be put on them while the "non difficult" students can be taught more successfully and cheaper.

"4. Charter schools get better test scores than public schools. (Since they get to pick and choose not only what students they take but what test results they publish.)"

See my response to 2. Also, most parents to opt to put their children in charter schools is because they are actively involved with their children's scholastic achievements and actively involved in helping their child succeed. The problem is that THEIR children suffer because of parents who treat public schools as "day care" that gives them 2 or sometimes 3 meals a day -- even when school is closed over summer in some locations. I think they have higher scores more because of the parents than "picking and choosing".

How about we allow public schools to kick out problem kids and force them in to a few schools set aside for the trouble makers? For the amount of money we've dropped in to public schools in the last 30 years we could go to 50-60 kids per class in the regular schools and probably 1-on-1 at the schools for "bad kids".

Re:Not just money

[erapert]

Please explain why doing well in school can and should be attributed to the student.
Then please explain how "difficulties" in school is anyone else's fault or responsibility but the student's.

If the student has little or no responsibility, indeed, isn't even involved in their scores, then why send children to school?

Re:Not just money

[Jason Levine]

I meant things like learning disabilities, dyslexia, autism, and other issues that would require an IEP (Individualized Education Plan). These children require extra resources per student than for students who don't need assistance for day to day activities. This doesn't mean they can't excel, just that they need help overcoming various challenges. Charter schools (at least the ones in my area) frequently deny kids like this access because they are focused on bringing money in per student, not spending money helping the students. Students who require more resources/money aren't as profitable and are offloaded to the public schools.

Re: Not just money

[Anonymous Coward]

Kick out all the kids in special education classrooms. Is this the problem kids you are describing? Where will they go? Why do they not deserve an education?

Re:Not just money

[Anonymous Coward]

So long as "education" retains the form of prison, undermines or destroys morality and absolutes, and displaces any meaningful responsibility, it doesn't matter what the size of the budget is - All that system will ever produce is failure. Throwing money at it just makes it more expensive.

Doesn't matter

[quietwalker]

You have to realize how politicized and religiously bent the texas government is. Any vetting group would be made up of specifically hand-picked individuals who would meet certain religious and political views. It would be about as academic as the Westboro Baptist Church.

That's because you took Economics not PolySci

[trout007]

That's because if you follow the logical laws of economics you get capitalism. The other things you are thinking about are political constructs.

Re:That's because you took Economics not PolySci

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually capitalism comes out really badly in many sectors when looked at from an economics point of view. Particularly natural monopolies (eg: utilities), or where there is no real competition (eg: emergency heath services).

Re:That's because you took Economics not PolySci

[Captain Splendid]

LOL. All of capitalism, from Adam Smith's original formula, to the craptastic pro-corporate tumour we have today, has tons of political constructs embedded in it.

Nice fanboy wank, though.

Re:That's because you took Economics not PolySci

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually capitalism comes out really badly ....where there is no real competition (eg: emergency heath services).

Maybe there's only zero or one emergency room in small towns, but I'm looking out my window at five hospitals, each of which has an emergency room.
How is there no competition?

Re:That's because you took Economics not PolySci

[tehcyder]

That's because if you follow the logical laws of economics you get capitalism. The other things you are thinking about are political constructs.

Yup, the brainwashing certainly worked on you.

If there's one thing that's true abouit economics it's that it's not logical once you get beyond massively simplified supply and demand curves.

And anything involving more than one person is a social and hence political construct.

Re:That's because you took Economics not PolySci

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't price shop. You are generally brought to the nearest emergency room, and you have to accept whatever treatment/charges they are offering. For more information read the Wikipedia article "Perfect Competition".

Re:That's because you took Economics not PolySci

[trout007]

Maybe because hospitals are a government monopoly. You can't just open a hospital if you want, you need to prove your area needs another hospital. Of course the other hospitals sit on the board that makes the decision.

It's just a high school class

[Anonymous Coward]

Cripes, it's just a high school class. I hope they don't try to teach any economic system different from the current one in the US, like socialism, communism, or social democracy. High school has no admissions requirements, the students are teenagers, and it is free. Of course, there should be low expectations.

Re:It's just a high school class

[smaddox]

Or you could have high expectations, and do your best to help the students meet them. Those who don't would receive a lower grade, with average students receiving an intermediate grade. These grades could then help future colleges and employers judge the students' ability and drive.

Am I Insane

[Anonymous Coward]

Reading this make me feel a little bit insane. To me, a "worker" is "one who works". It implies nothing about the nature of that work, whether it is the choice of the one working, or any other qualification. Since I find that my views are generally aligned with the Slashdot crowd, I am surprised to find that on this one issue, it seems that everybody here feels strongly that the wording is totally unacceptable and irresponsible. Why?

Even if you want to make the argument that "worker" necessarily implies a choice of whether or not to work, surely this is a sufficiently hair-splitting distinction that in the context of the surrounding text, which clearly indicates we are discussing slavely, the specific qualifications that apply to the worker are clear.

This just seems so incredibly trivial. It's not trivial because I haven't been a slave and don't understand what it was like and this and that. All that is true, but getting ultra-PC about a word that is strictly speaking correct and only in the farthest reaches offensive is what I'm on about. What on earth don't I get here?

Re:Am I Insane

[Anonymous Coward]

100% agree with you, this is insane. I mean people in the comments are actually saying that slave is mutually exclusive with worker, WTF? Slave and employee are mutually exclusive, but both are workers.

State of Education

[DaMattster]

This is just one more indication of the sorry state of education in our country. Why should we present accurate, fair, and objective material to our students? It seems to me that this is an effort to protect the teaching of creationism, something that has no scientific grounding and is pure religious mythology.

Re:State of Education

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just one more indication of the sorry state of education in our country. Why should we present accurate, fair, and objective material to our students? It seems to me that this is an effort to protect the teaching of creationism, something that has no scientific grounding and is pure religious mythology.

It's an effort to protect something, otherwise why would they not have it reviewed? It's terrible when the people who write the propaganda that your children digest in school have things to hide.

History is Written By The Victors

[Anonymous Coward]

and so it goes ...

A waste of money...

[bennebw]

I'm sure California already has a government branch dedicated to scrutinizing text books. Texas should just send someone over to L.A. and see what books the kids are walking out of class with, then mandate everybody use those pre-vetted texts.

Re:A waste of money...

[PPH]

California

So, we'd go from hopelessly biased in one direction to hopelessly biased in the other.

Re:A waste of money...

[ChrisMaple]

Most states just take the Texas decisions on textbooks as good enough, and base their curricula on that. California, although more populous, was widely and correctly regarded as being too loony to be accepted as a standard for most states.

Remember that teachers' organizations and education boards generally have a leftist and pro-government bias, using educators from Texas tends to compensate for that. The result is not far from neutral.

Re:A waste of money...

[RespekMyAthorati]

Only if you equate "science-based" with "hopelessly biased".

Re:A waste of money...

[RespekMyAthorati]

Yeah, those damn Californie types and their loony "science stuff"!

Workers

[Liquidhail]

I believe they ment to describe the slaves workers as "permanently unpaid interns"

No they didn't.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what your parents said.

My parents are saying "What the fuck is happening to this World?!" They were born during WWII.

Re:No they didn't.

[ChrisMaple]

The people who are called "The Greatest Generation" are the people who screwed up the education of those currently in power. It's difficult to identify the source of the rot, but a lot of people point to John Dewey.

Re:No they didn't.

[wyHunter]

No. It was the sovietizing of the school system. Kruschev told the US the USSR would never engage in war with us as they couldn't win in an all out confrontation. Instead they would 'change us from within.' We've now had more than sixty years of rot in schools. "It doesn't matter what two plus two is. How do you FEEL about the answer?"

Re:No they didn't.

[david_thornley]

No, really, you just didn't perceive the issues back when you were kids, and they've become more obvious to you now. I do remember some of the crap I read in school, back in the 1960s. I doubt this is any worse.

yeah, they do need fact checking

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

“The Atlantic Slave Trade between the 1500s and 1800s brought millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations."

There are indeed two massive errors in that sentence. First, the total number of slaves brought to the entire US from Africa was about 388000, and less than half a million if you count other points of origin, like the Carribean, not "millions". Second, most of those slaves weren't brought to the "southern United States" because they didn't exist yet, they were brought to British colonies that happen to be where the southern United States is located today.

It was European colonialism that forced more than 10 million Africans into slavery, and only a few percent of those slaves ended up in the territory of the US, most of them before the US even existed.

Re:yeah, they do need fact checking

[Attila Dimedici]

The number error is significant, but the distinction between the British colonies and the southern U.S. which they became is minor (although it would probably be worth adding a parenthesis mentioning the fact that most were brought before Independence).

Re:yeah, they do need fact checking

[Anonymous Coward]

but your 'states' didnt abolish it though when they were founded did they. So you Americans are just as guilty.

Re:yeah, they do need fact checking

[Anonymous Coward]

And it was the Barbary slave trade that forced millions of European Whites into slavery. But, I'm not aware of a single history textbook, high school or college level, that makes even a peep about the Barbary trade.

Re:yeah, they do need fact checking

[wyHunter]

Of course not, because it isn't politically correct to mention that. You know, these lovers of truth and free speech want anything but those things.

Re:yeah, they do need fact checking

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

but the distinction between the British colonies and the southern U.S. which they became is minor

I don't think it is "minor" at all: it identifies the political and legal system and the ruling class responsible for slavery, and that was British, not American.

Re:yeah, they do need fact checking

[RespekMyAthorati]

Oh, really?
So the Barbary slave trade brought millions of enslaved whites to the southern U.S.?
Because that is what is being discussed here.
Shithead.

Great...

[Anonymous Coward]

Now our history books will be filled with "politically correct" bullshit instead of actually telling the right history.

Re:Great...

[dave420]

Heh. "Right history" he says, without a shred of irony.

Sell Texas to Mexico

[oh_my_080980980]

Keep the oil fields and sell the rest to Mexico. Should solve a lot of problems.

Re:Sell Texas to Mexico

[Anonymous Coward]

I would be easier if we grant independece to texas but keep the oil fields then texas buy the rest of mexico.

Textbook of Texas

[Foundling]

Texas, the most northern state in the U.S., is was founded by David "Knife" Bowie and director John Huston. Texas is strategically important because it controls all shipping between the Mediterranean Sea and Australia. Popular activities in Texas include downhill skiing, curling and polar bear hunting. Famous people born in Texas include Eleanor of Aquataine, Albert Einstein, Amerigo Vespucci, John the Baptist and King David of the Kingdom of Israel.

DHI doing our part to waste your time..

[Anonymous Coward]

wow do u guys even spell check the crap that falls outta ur mouths??

Remember the Alamo...

[mschaffer]

Remember the Alamo. All other history can be revised.

Easy solution: end public schooling

[Anonymous Coward]

To start I'm all for learning, higher education (where it makes sense for a particular student), etc. I'm also against school voucher programs though to be clear. I'm not suggesting we send 'public' (stolen IMHO) money to private for-profit institutions. There may be a good argument for ensuring all persons are enabled to get an education. The problem as it is right now is that we ultimately take away responsibility from those who aught to be paying for it (ie the people who made the decision to have the kids!). Yes- I'm a parent. I was sent to public school, etc. If the government was *not* stealing my money or that of my parents money when I was in public school they would not have had a financial problem sending me and my brothers to a private school.

Now there will always be some people making really stupid life decisions- and/or being in a situation one really can't control (ie having a child with a disability, etc)- however it's one thing to cover those kids education and a completely other matter to cover everybody else when the majority of the people could afford to cover there children's education if not for the absurdly high taxes.

I think there probably are good arguments to restricting tax dollars toward going to non-profit entities. If your going to force me to pay for something (like say health care) that system shouldn't be a means of profit for anybody. Funnelling that money into private hands should be criminal.

Um, my physics course discussed perp motion

[rsilvergun]

and pointed out why it doesn't work. Stuff like the laws of conservation of energy & inertia. You're just trolling, and not doing a very good job of it either...

Re:Um, my physics course discussed perp motion

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

and pointed out why it doesn't work

Yes, just like economics classes point out why "competing systems" like socialism and fascism don't work and aren't actually "competing".

Your problem is that you don't listen to science and reason, and instead think that it's all a grand conspiracy. Kind of like a nutcase who thinks that ideas for perpetual motion machines are being suppressed by the evil oil companies.

I used to work for McGraw-Hill

[Anonymous Coward]

I can tell you for certain that they are not the ones responsible for this. There were constant complaints about the fact that they had to release a significantly different version of their books for Texas, but it was the only way they could sell to them. This is not a mistake by the publisher, it's the religious nutjobs in Texas getting exactly what they ordered.

Don't see the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

The point of a textbook should be to objectively present facts. This particular sentence is entirely clear. It begins by referring to the slave trade, and continue to give the reason that the slaves were brought over, which was to be workers. There is nothing factually wrong with this sentence, it is entirely clear about the fact that the people were brought over as slaves.

Some people sure look hard for ways to be offended. Here's another example: Someone is occupying two seats on overly crowded public transport, one for themselves, one for their bag. They aren't paying attention, and they have headphones on. Another passenger wants to sit down, but can't get their attention. So he picks up their bag and sets it on their lap. Now, maybe that's rude, but so is blocking a seat with your bag. What it isn't, however, is racist. But because the oblivious person was black, that's the first word out of their mouth.

This gets tiresome. More, it's counterproductive, because it means that people must treat blacks differently. Would you willingly hire a black to work at your company, knowing that they will cry racism every time something doesn't go their way? More, you will never be able to fire then, even if you have cause, because you know you will have an EEO suit on your hands. So the only possible answer is to avoid hiring blacks in the first place.

Brawndo! It's got what plants crave!

[r-diddly]

Electrolytes!

Dishonest title

[ChrisMaple]

Texas Narrowly Rejects Allowing Academics To Fact-Check Public School Textbooks

Really? Academics are going to be prohibited from looking at these textbooks?

Regardless of the merits of spending more state money to doublecheck the quality of chosen books, a sensationalized and disingenuous title does not benefit slashdot.

About slavery

[onthemightofprinces]

You know what the worst thing about being a slave is? They make you work all day but they don't pay you or let you go.

Correct Spelling

[Anonymous Coward]

Tejas. We build the wall on the east/north/west side of it, and give it back.

workers

[Anonymous Coward]

Those of us who have played the old multiplayer empire game know that the correct term is "uncompensated workers" or uw for short.