Archive for April, 2010

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Getting in Touch with ‘Their Inner Children’

April 30, 2010

The political jousting between Bill White and Rick Perry over the Texas State Board of Education‘s controversial revision of social studies curriculum standards is legitimate in the electoral arena. It’s certainly preferable to dragging political agendas into our children’s classrooms, which the state board has been doing during the curriculum revision. But what the Republican Party of Texas did this week is shameful.

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Posted in Republican Party of Texas, social studies, State Board of Education | 8 Comments »

Is This about ‘Payback’ or Education?

April 28, 2010

We noted this morning that Robert Scott, the Texas education commissioner, told state legislators at a Capitol public hearing that changes the Texas State Board of Education is making to proposed social studies curriculum standards reflect a change in political control of the board in recent years. (A far-right faction took control of the state board after the 2006 elections.) Mr. Scott broadly compared the standards as they have been revised so far by the current board to those adopted by a more politically moderate board in 1997-98. Burnt Orange Report has transcribed a key part of what Scott said:

“One of the things, I think, that has been a problem in all of our deliberations regarding – whether it’s education or anything else – is that when you push out a particular group, and say we don’t care about you, when you push out, regardless of who that is, over time that creates a problem. And when the pendulum swings back, you know, there’s – whether you call it payback or a shifting in the alignment – I think that we need to be mindful as we deliberate to try to prevent the pushing out of any group, regardless of who they are. And that’s what I think this process needs to be about.”

“Payback?” That’s a remarkable admission, whether Mr. Scott realizes it or not, that the board is politicizing the standards and — by extension — our children’s public school classrooms. We repeat our concern here: this curriculum revision process shoudn’t be about politics or whatever political majority controls the board. Decisions about what public schools teach should be based on sound scholarship and should prepare our kids to succeed in college and their future careers.

Posted in social studies | 24 Comments »

Dodge and Stonewall

April 28, 2010

At the legislative hearing this morning about the Texas State Board of Education, Robert Scott, the state’s education commissioner, just told lawmakers that he’s proud of the board’s “open process” for developing curriculum standards. The Texas Education Agency and state board have received thousands of written comments about the social studies standards, he said. And many people have come before the state board to express their concerns about the standards.

But Mr. Scott is having a hard time with questions about why state board Chairwoman Gail Lowe, R-Lampasas, hasn’t come to answer questions during the hearing. Mr. Scott notes that the board is a constitutionally authorized body, suggesting that board members aren’t required to appear before legislative hearings. Of course, that might be true. But wouldn’t Ms. Lowe’s presence here be important to the “open process” of which the commissioner is so proud?

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Posted in social studies | 7 Comments »

Lege Hearing on Texas SBOE Today

April 28, 2010

Texas lawmakers today will focus on the State Board of Education‘s radical rewriting of history and social studies curriculum standards at a public hearing at the Capitol in Austin. Lawmakers from the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, Legislative Study Group, Texas Legislative Black Caucus and Senate Hispanic Caucus will hear testimony throughout the day. The hearing begins at 9 a.m. in E2.012 of the Capitol Extension. Click here to watch the hearing live over the Internet.

As we reported earlier this week, state board Chairwoman Gail Lowe, R-Lampasas, declined a request to speak at the hearing. Lawmakers are set to hear from officials from the Texas Education Agency and representatives from the Texas State Teachers Association, the Texas chapter of the American Federation of Teachers, LULAC, the Texas Freedom Network, and the Texas Council for History Education. About a dozen university professors from around the state are also scheduled to speak. TFN Insider will report on the hearing.

Posted in Gail Lowe, social studies | Leave a Comment »

Breathing Fire in Tyler

April 27, 2010

Political fire-breathing was center stage at “The Oil Palace” on Saturday in Tyler, the only Texas stop on FOX News show host Glenn Beck‘s traveling road show, his “Take America Back” tour. The event showed once again how religious-right rhetoric increasingly dominates the so-called “tea party movement.” Beck and various Texas politicians provided plenty of that rhetoric.

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Posted in Glenn Beck, Leo Berman, Rick Perry, tea party | 13 Comments »

SBOE Chair to Legislators: Drop Dead

April 26, 2010

That seems to be the message from Texas State Board of Education Chairwoman Gail Lowe, R-Lampasas, to state legislators this week. Of course, we haven’t seen the communications between Lowe and representatives of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus (MALC), which is sponsoring a public hearing on Wednesday to learn more about the state board’s revision of social studies curriculum standards. But as a press release from MALC today points out, it’s not every day that a group of legislators gets turned down on a request for information from other state officials.

In the press release, MALC’s chairman, state Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, noted that Lowe had turned down the invitation to speak to lawmakers about the growing controversy surrounding the board’s work. MALC had offered to reimburse Lowe for the cost of her travel, but that didn’t seem to make a difference, Rep. Martinez Fischer said:

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Posted in Gail Lowe, social studies | 7 Comments »

Dunbar Takes New Trip on Extremism Train

April 26, 2010

Good grief. Cynthia Dunbar has demonstrated once again the kind of religious and political extremism that currently dominates the Texas State Board of Education — and the reason academic experts and classroom teachers should be guiding the process of revising curriculum standards for public schools, not politicians with personal agendas.

Speaking last week on a far-right talk show, The American View, (read more about the show here) Dunbar — a Richmond Republican representing a state board district that stretches from west of Houston to Austin — attacked public education and even the religious faith of people who don’t agree with her. She also repeated her infamous attack on President Obama as a terrorist sympathizer. And as the state board prepares to take a final vote next month on social studies curriculum standards for public schools, Dunbar suggested that supporters of separation of church and state don’t understand the Constitution and that the drafters of the First Amendment had no concerns “whatsoever” for the nonreligious.

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Posted in Cynthia Dunbar, social studies | 52 Comments »

Pants on Fire, Ken Mercer

April 25, 2010

Maybe Texas State Board of Education member Ken Mercer, R-San Antonio, should work on controlling his temper. When you’re mad, as most of us probably heard from our mamas growing up, you often say things that, well, aren’t always completely accurate.

In an e-mail from his re-election campaign today, Mercer charges that the “major print media” is lying about the board’s revision of social studies curriculum standards.

And then Mercer defends the board by … shading the truth.

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Posted in Cynthia Dunbar, Gail Lowe, Ken Mercer | 4 Comments »

Talking Points

April 23, 2010

From today’s TFN News Clips:

“It is of no concern to me if this president, or any president, issues prayer proclamations. I can pray, or not, without government encouragement.”

– Cal Thomas, a conservative commentator, writing about a recent court ruling that it is unconstitutional for government to promote the National Day of Prayer.

Stay informed with TFN News Clips, a daily digest of news about politics and the religious right. Subscribe here.

Posted in National Day of Prayer | 14 Comments »

Social Studies or Religion?

April 23, 2010

From the Buffalo News:

Posted in social studies | 16 Comments »

California Advances Anti-Texas Textbook Bill

April 22, 2010

The national backlash against the Texas State Board of Education‘s politicization of history and social studies curriculum standards is gathering steam. Yesterday a California Senate committee approved a bill requiring that education officials report to legislators and the state’s education secretary any changes influenced by the Texas standards when they review textbook content.

California Sen. Leland Yee,  a Democrat who represents part of the San Francisco Bay Area, drafted the bill. In a press release from his office yesterday, Yee said:

“While some Texas politicians may want to set their educational standards back 50 years, California should not be subject to their backward curriculum changes. The alterations and fallacies made by these extremist conservatives are offensive to our communities and inaccurate of our nation’s diverse history. Today, California spoke with a bipartisan voice that our kids should be provided an education based on facts and that embraces our multicultural nation.”

Californians and other non-Texans are increasingly worried that textbooks written for the Texas market will make it into their states’ classrooms. That’s because publishers often write their textbooks to meet curriculum standards in Texas — which has a huge textbook market and a centralized adoption process — and then sell those textbooks to schools across the country.

At what point will Texas lawmakers finally realize that the State Board of Education is undermining the state’s reputation — politically, educationally and in the business world — across the country?

Posted in public education, State Board of Education | 10 Comments »

Will They Ever Tell the Truth?

April 21, 2010

We’ll say this for the folks at the far-right Liberty Institute in Plano: they do a very good job of lying to their own members. The latest example is an e-mail blast to LI members today about the State Board of Education and the revision of social studies curriculum standards for Texas public schools. The e-mail repeats a litany of distortions the far-right group has been pushing since last year, including that liberal curriuclum writers supposedly didn’t want students to learn about Christmas, important patriotic holidays and even astronaut Neil Armstrong.

Never mind, of course, that the manufactured “controversy” about Christmas was little more than a fundraising gimmick for far-right groups like LI, the Texas affiliate of Focus on the Family. Moreover, it was Peter Marshall — one of the absurdly unqualified evangelical conservatives far-right state board members put on an “expert” panel for the curriculum revision — who insisted that Neil Armstrong be removed from a key curriculum standard. We could go on, but you get the point.

But the LI e-mail trumps even that nonsense in a sneering rejection of the common-sense notion that the state board stop dismissing the concerns of academic experts who — unlike board members themselves — actually know what they’re talking about when it comes to history, government, economics and other social studies classes:

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Posted in Liberty Institute, social studies | 15 Comments »

Public School Students: Headed to HELL?

April 20, 2010

Did you know public schools “promote a culture of immorality and death”? That public school students are more likely “to engage in sex and perversions,” “get an STD” and “commit suicide”? Or more to the point, did you realize that putting your children in public schools means they are “more likely to go to HELL”?

That’s what we learned today from an e-mail screed sent out by the Christian Newswire from the people at www.asleepknowmore.com, a religious-right website that attacks public education and abortion and promotes gun rights under the Second Amendment. (Yeah, we know. Weird mix, but it’s common for the increasingly violence-obsessed religious right.) But as we researched that website, we came up with another question: why does David Barton of WallBuilders in Texas associate with the extremists who run it?

There’s more on the Barton connection below. But today’s e-mail, written by Dr. Gregory Thompsom, is titled: “Are You Going to HELL and Taking Someone with You?” An excerpt:

“The government schools are anti-Christian, atheistic and pagan, and they are against God, family, and country. Do not call yourself ‘Christian’ saying you love the children, yet have children in a government school, k-12 through college. Christian priests, pastors, and bishops hate their congregations if they do not warn their people to get out of the government schools. Pastor, you must help the parents with this issue of education. Jesus said ‘love your neighbor as yourself’. If you do not tell your neighbors to get their children out of the government schools, you hate them instead of love them. To know this truth, and not do anything about it in your area of influence is sin. James 4:17 – ‘Therefore to him that knows to do good and does it not, to him it is sin.’ If Church or Government leaders say otherwise, it is a lie from hell.”

That’s followed by a list of “facts” about why public education apparently is a threat to America and our children. (A full version of the e-mail is after the jump.) But who is Thompson? Hard to say. The website isn’t clear on who he is or what he does. We did, however, find an interesting photo of Thompson (right) with Barton (left) on the site:

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Posted in David Barton | 21 Comments »

David Barton’s Contempt for Teachers

April 19, 2010

It’s not a secret that pseudo-historian David Barton has no use for the academy. Barton clearly prefers to play like he’s a historian and self-publish his amateur (and heavily politicized) opinions in tract form rather than bother with the whole peer-review process typical in real scholarship. But Barton’s scorn is not limited to college professors — occasionally he slips up and lets his contempt for classroom teachers show.

On Wallbuilders’ Live Internet radio show last Tuesday (April 13), Barton closed his program with a vicious attack on the teachers who participated on the teams that developed draft revisions of social studies curriculum standards for Texas public schools. The Texas State Board of Education essentially shredded those drafts in January and March, making scores of changes without input from classroom teachers or even scholars in the social sciences. You can listen to the full clip here, but here’s a taste of what Barton had to say:

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Posted in David Barton, Ken Mercer, social studies | 16 Comments »

History Profs to SBOE: Please, Just Stop

April 15, 2010

Warning that the “integrity of the curriuclum revision process has been compromised,” university historians are are circulating an open letter calling on the Texas State Board of Education to postpone final adoption of the new social studies curriculum standards.

The letter asks the state board to allow curriculum teams and academic experts to review hundreds of changes board members made to the standards in January and March and prepare a new standards draft that is “fair, accurate and balanced.” It then calls on the board not to make any revisions to the new draft without “public consultation with classroom teachers and scholars who are experts in the appropriate fields of study.”

The board currently is set to adopt the standards in a final vote on May 21 in Austin. The group of historians at the University of Texas at Austin and University of Texas at El Paso behind the project has invited colleagues at colleges and universities from Texas and across the country to sign on to their letter. (Click here.)

The education of Texas schoolchildren should be based on “mainstream scholarship, not on ideological agendas,” the professors write:

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Posted in social studies, State Board of Education | 5 Comments »

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