Texas Board Passes Social Studies Curriculum

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Steinhauer said:
It has been a rule of thumb for me .... all politicians lie. Some lie more than others, but they ALL lie (especially liberals).

Regardless of party affiliation, politicians will lie. They will do underhanded dirty business to get votes (i.e. granting amnesty to illegals) and they will distort facts to either favor themselves or others.

Even Honest Abe.

This needs to be taught to children at a very early age.

They need to be taught (at a reasonably mature age) that racism is ugly. It is vile and wicked and there is no such thing as a superior race. They need to be taught that Africans were brought against their will to the US and exploited. They need to be taught that racism still exists today and that Abe Lincoln was a man of his time.
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You are pointing your finger at liberals so ultra nonsense.
 
jillio said:
Who is "they" and why are they attempting to change a curriculum they know nothing about?

As far as knowing what the curriculum standards are, those are easy to find. The OP lists the proposed changes to specific areas of the curriculum standards. As well as the numerous sources I linked several pages ago. It is public information. Do you know what curriculum standards are?
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"They" would be the ones opposing this bill because "conservatives" passed it.

Kind of a no brainer there.

The article had a liberal slant .... I want the straight up facts without the bias.
 
Steinhauer said:
"They" would be the ones opposing this bill because "conservatives" passed it.

Kind of a no brainer there.

The article had a liberal slant .... I want the straight up facts without the bias.
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They don't oppose it because the conservatives proposed it. And, mind you, it has not been passed, so don't count your chickens before they are hatched. It is nothing more than a proposal at this point in time. It is opposed because it is damaging to the education of children and a direct attempt to re-write history to fulfill a political agenda, and because it as close to propoganda as one can get. Not to mention intellectually dishonest and an insult to thinking Americans everywhere.

Perhaps if you used a brain, rather that skimming and believing that it is a "no-brainer" you would be capable of seeing the implications, the accurrate portrayal, and of pulling related links.

The article you posted had a "liberal slant"? Really?
 
jillio said:
They don't oppose it because the conservatives proposed it. And, mind you, it has not been passed, so don't count your chickens before they are hatched. It is nothing more than a proposal at this point in time. It is opposed because it is damaging to the education of children and a direct attempt to re-write history to fulfill a political agenda, and because it as close to propoganda as one can get. Not to mention intellectually dishonest and an insult to thinking Americans everywhere.

Perhaps if you used a brain, rather that skimming and believing that it is a "no-brainer" you would be capable of seeing the implications, the accurrate portrayal, and of pulling related links.
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tell that to this author .... :cool2:


must be a conspiracy :hmm:


Texas textbook controversy: outdated or back on track from politically correct derailment?

One of the changes that has caused a stir is that during a high school government class the students were asked to compare and contrast the judicial language of the separation of church and state with the wording in the First Amendment. An Associated Press writer chose to use the wording "watered down the rationale". (Clearly a left slant)


Don McLeroy, a former board chairman, claims that the Texas curriculum had been "unfairly skewed to the left" and that he wants to bring it back into balance. Arne Duncan, the Secretary of Education, said school officials "should keep politics out" of curriculum debates stating, "We do a disservice to children when we shield them from the truth, just because some people think it is painful or doesn't fit with their particular views."
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duuuuude .... what I have been pointing out all along .... :roll:


Author and scholar Diane Ravitch has already said that textbook and test publishers have been censoring the content of educational materials to screen out topics and ideas that might be considered traditional or controversial or offensive. Children have been being taught a filtered form of history instead of the truth.
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with all the ranting and raving about ADD (which is off topic) it apparently seems I never strayed from the topic .... what everyone has witnessed was a desperate attempt to politically derail the topic.
 
mmmm.

More proof to me that our "educational system" is more of an indoctrination center than an institution of learning.

In an educational system taught by thinking people for thinking people the matter would be up for class learning and consideration. "Is the U.S.A more of a capitalist country (Not really, I'd lean more toward 'corporate America myself) or a free enterprise system." However what is taught is not thinking but doctrine and you better give the answer written in the back of the book.

The same is true about whether we are a democracy, a constitutional republic, or something else entirely.

And in an intelligent society it might be discussed what the students think we should be or should become.

Makes me proud to be an uneducated man.
 
jillio said:
You do understand that the red you have noted is talking about the proposed changes to the curriculum, do you not? And, if you do understand that, then you must also understand that you have defeated your entire argument with this singular post.
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Like the old saying .... you can lead a liberal to water but you can't make them think ....


Texas Conservatives Win Vote on Textbook Standards - NYTimes.com


Texas Conservatives Win Curriculum Change
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
Published: March 12, 2010
hmmmm ... why is that date important??

AUSTIN, Tex. — After three days of turbulent meetings, the Texas Board of Education on Friday approved a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light.


Mary Helen Berlanga accused fellow members of the Board of Education of “rewriting history.”

The vote was 10 to 5 along party lines, with all the Republicans on the board voting for it.

The board, whose members are elected, has influence beyond Texas because the state is one of the largest buyers of textbooks. In the digital age, however, that influence has diminished as technological advances have made it possible for publishers to tailor books to individual states.

In recent years, board members have been locked in an ideological battle between a bloc of conservatives who question Darwin’s theory of evolution and believe the Founding Fathers were guided by Christian principles, and a handful of Democrats and moderate Republicans who have fought to preserve the teaching of Darwinism and the separation of church and state.

Since January, Republicans on the board have passed more than 100 amendments to the 120-page curriculum standards affecting history, sociology and economics courses from elementary to high school. The standards were proposed by a panel of teachers.

“We are adding balance,” said Dr. Don McLeroy, the leader of the conservative faction on the board, after the vote. “History has already been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left.”

Battles over what to put in science and history books have taken place for years in the 20 states where state boards must adopt textbooks, most notably in California and Texas. But rarely in recent history has a group of conservative board members left such a mark on a social studies curriculum.

Efforts by Hispanic board members to include more Latino figures as role models for the state’s large Hispanic population were consistently defeated, prompting one member, Mary Helen Berlanga, to storm out of a meeting late Thursday night, saying, “They can just pretend this is a white America and Hispanics don’t exist.”

“They are going overboard, they are not experts, they are not historians,” she said. “They are rewriting history, not only of Texas but of the United States and the world.”

The curriculum standards will now be published in a state register, opening them up for 30 days of public comment. A final vote will be taken in May, but given the Republican dominance of the board, it is unlikely that many changes will be made.

The standards, reviewed every decade, serve as a template for textbook publishers, who must come before the board next year with drafts of their books. The board’s makeup will have changed by then because Dr. McLeroy lost in a primary this month to a more moderate Republican, and two others — one Democrat and one conservative Republican — announced they were not seeking re-election.

There are seven members of the conservative bloc on the board, but they are often joined by one of the other three Republicans on crucial votes. There were no historians, sociologists or economists consulted at the meetings, though some members of the conservative bloc held themselves out as experts on certain topics. (hint - liberal slant - they were all teachers)

The conservative members maintain that they are trying to correct what they see as a liberal bias among the teachers who proposed the curriculum. To that end, they made dozens of minor changes aimed at calling into question, among other things, concepts like the separation of church and state and the secular nature of the American Revolution.

“I reject the notion by the left of a constitutional separation of church and state,” said David Bradley, a conservative from Beaumont who works in real estate. “I have $1,000 for the charity of your choice if you can find it in the Constitution.”

They also included a plank to ensure that students learn about “the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association.”

Dr. McLeroy, a dentist by training, pushed through a change to the teaching of the civil rights movement to ensure that students study the violent philosophy of the Black Panthers in addition to the nonviolent approach of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He also made sure that textbooks would mention the votes in Congress on civil rights legislation, which Republicans supported.

“Republicans need a little credit for that,” he said. “I think it’s going to surprise some students.” (oh, surprise surprise ... liberal slant)

Mr. Bradley won approval for an amendment saying students should study “the unintended consequences” of the Great Society legislation, affirmative action and Title IX legislation. He also won approval for an amendment stressing that Germans and Italians as well as Japanese were interned in the United States during World War II, to counter the idea that the internment of Japanese was motivated by racism.

Other changes seem aimed at tamping down criticism of the right. Conservatives passed one amendment, for instance, requiring that the history of McCarthyism include “how the later release of the Venona papers confirmed suspicions of communist infiltration in U.S. government.” The Venona papers were transcripts of some 3,000 communications between the Soviet Union and its agents in the United States.

Mavis B. Knight, a Democrat from Dallas, introduced an amendment requiring that students study the reasons “the founding fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring the government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion above all others.”

It was defeated on a party-line vote.

After the vote, Ms. Knight said, “The social conservatives have perverted accurate history to fulfill their own agenda.”

In economics, the revisions add Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek, two champions of free-market economic theory, among the usual list of economists to be studied, like Adam Smith, Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes. They also replaced the word “capitalism” throughout their texts with the “free-enterprise system.”

“Let’s face it, capitalism does have a negative connotation,” said one conservative member, Terri Leo. “You know, ‘capitalist pig!’ ”

In the field of sociology, another conservative member, Barbara Cargill, won passage of an amendment requiring the teaching of “the importance of personal responsibility for life choices” in a section on teenage suicide, dating violence, sexuality, drug use and eating disorders.

“The topic of sociology tends to blame society for everything,” Ms. Cargill said. (nah, just blame it on conservatives)

Even the course on world history did not escape the board’s scalpel.

Cynthia Dunbar, a lawyer from Richmond who is a strict constitutionalist and thinks the nation was founded on Christian beliefs, managed to cut Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century, replacing him with St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone. (Jefferson is not well liked among conservatives on the board because he coined the term “separation between church and state.”)

“The Enlightenment was not the only philosophy on which these revolutions were based,” Ms. Dunbar said.
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Another conservative, conservative, yet another conservative , conservative ... blah blah blah ...
 
Berry said:
mmmm.

More proof to me that our "educational system" is more of an indoctrination center than an institution of learning.

In an educational system taught by thinking people for thinking people the matter would be up for class learning and consideration. "Is the U.S.A more of a capitalist country (Not really, I'd lean more toward 'corporate America myself) or a free enterprise system." However what is taught is not thinking but doctrine and you better give the answer written in the back of the book.

The same is true about whether we are a democracy, a constitutional republic, or something else entirely.

And in an intelligent society it might be discussed what the students think we should be or should become.

Makes me proud to be an uneducated man.
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"So don't think you can fool me with your political tricks. Political left; political right, you can keep your politics. Government is government and all government is force."

Sad. I am "educated," but I never questioned what I was taught until the last couple years of formal education. :\

I am ashamed to be "educated."
 
souggy said:
"So don't think you can fool me with your political tricks. Political left; political right, you can keep your politics. Government is government and all government is force."

Sad. I am "educated," but I never questioned what I was taught until the last couple years of formal education. :\

I am ashamed to be "educated."
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well ... a stepping stone to neutral ground ... yes, sadly, education is more like indoctrination.

Anyone here ever go to a Montessori School? Are they different?
 
Sometimes I think the whole purpose of education is to educate critical thinking skills out of our lives and to make sure we don't question anything.

I never thought about how politics can affect what is taught in our schools. If the powers that be decide certain aspects of history are uncomfortable, they can try to remove it. Unfortunately, sometimes they suceed.
 
She said that the origins of the country were "a Christian land governed by Christian principles."

Oh brother. :roll:
 
Reba said:
Yes, they should, at least part of the summer, in their field of specialty. However, it seems that even summer workshops for teachers are more about new ways to use the white board or how to boost student self esteem.
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How about doing away with NCLB? That law is making us teach to test.
 
This article made my BS meter ding off the charts, so I checked out the curriculum itself. Turns out my BS meter was right on.

WaPo version:
The new standards say that the McCarthyism of the 1950s was later vindicated
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Actual curriculum:
describe how McCarthyism, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), the arms race, and the space race increased Cold War tensions and how the later release of the Venona Papers confirmed suspicions of communist infiltration in U.S. government;
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Nowhere does it say to teach that McCarthyism is vindicated. One can and should teach about McCarthyism and communist infiltration of the US government. It does not follow that the latter vindicates the evils of the former. Moving on:

WaPo version:
...draw an equivalency between Jefferson Davis's and Abraham Lincoln's inaugural addresses...
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Actual curriculum:
analyze the ideas contained in Jefferson Davis' inaugural address and Abraham Lincoln's ideas about liberty, equality, union, and government as contained in his first and second inaugural addresses and the Gettysburg Address.
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There's a difference between analyzing two things and making equivalences. I can analyze capitalism and socialism without making an equivalence between the two. Again, nowhere does the curriculum state an equivalence has to be made.

WaPo version:
...international institutions such as the United Nations imperil American sovereignty...
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Actual curriculum:
analyze the human and physical factors that influence the power to control territory, create conflict/war, and impact international political relations such as the United Nations (UN), the European Union (EU), or the control of resources.
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Huh? I don't see anything even remotely controversial about that one.

WaPo Version:
...include a long list of Confederate officials about whom students must learn
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Actual curriculum:
explain the roles played by significant individuals and heroes during the Civil War, including Jefferson Davis, Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, Abraham Lincoln, and congressional Medal of Honor recipients William Carney and Philip Bazaar;
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So that super long list of Confederate officials the students now have to learn about: Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee. That is all. Controversy!

Good work, WaPo!

The curriculum can be found here at the bottom of the page. Proposed State Board of Education Rules
 
I teach history and science at home during the summer. My kid loves it and is learning to think.

My kid took the state tests for the first time this year (3rd grade). The teachers taught to the test and drilled the kids. What a complete waste of time! It's enough to suck all of the joy out of learning and make elementary school burn outs.
 
darkdog said:
This article made my BS meter ding off the charts, so I checked out the curriculum itself. Turns out my BS meter was right on.

WaPo version:


Actual curriculum:


Nowhere does it say to teach that McCarthyism is vindicated. One can and should teach about McCarthyism and communist infiltration of the US government. It does not follow that the latter vindicates the evils of the former. Moving on:

WaPo version:


Actual curriculum:


There's a difference between analyzing two things and making equivalences. I can analyze capitalism and socialism without making an equivalence between the two. Again, nowhere does the curriculum state an equivalence has to be made.

WaPo version:


Actual curriculum:


Huh? I don't see anything even remotely controversial about that one.

WaPo Version:


Actual curriculum:


So that super long list of Confederate officials the students now have to learn about: Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee. That is all. Controversy!

Good work, WaPo!

The curriculum can be found here at the bottom of the page. Proposed State Board of Education Rules
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Of course it is BS. I can't believe anyone would take that article seriously. Just like they were screaming about taking Thomas Jefferson out of TX schools a few months ago.:roll: They removed him from World History.....that's it.
 
I hope that teachers will be stubborn and still to teach about anything instead of new TX standard education.
 
sallylou said:
I teach history and science at home during the summer. My kid loves it and is learning to think.

My kid took the state tests for the first time this year (3rd grade). The teachers taught to the test and drilled the kids. What a complete waste of time! It's enough to suck all of the joy out of learning and make elementary school burn outs.
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Hey! we agree on something.

The tests haven't worked out and have taken the fun out of school. I don't claim to know the solution on this one but the tests are FAIL.

The biggest gaps I find are in Geography.....I spent alot of time with my daughter teaching (and learning) geography.

Vouchers would help. At least then concerned parents could be sure their kids were in a school that met their needs. My daughter never attended public school.....she now says college is easier than high school. :shrug:
 
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