Posted on 03/15/2010 5:16:02 PM PDT by Santa Fe_Conservative
The nation’s public school curriculum may be in for a Texas-sized overhaul, if the Lone Star state’s influential recommendations for changes to social studies, economics and history textbooks are fully ratified later this spring. Last Friday, in a 10-to-5 vote split right down party lines, the Texas State Board of Education approved some controversial right-leaning alterations to what most students in the state—and by extension, in much of the rest of the country—will be studying as received historical and social-scientific wisdom. After a public comment period, the board will vote on final recommendations in May.
Don McElroy, who leads the board’s powerful seven-member social conservative bloc, explained that the measure is a way of "adding balance" in the classroom, since "academia is skewed too far to the left." And the board's critics have labeled the move an attempt by political "extremists" to "promote their ideology."
The revised standards have far-reaching implications because Texas is a huge market leader in the school-textbook industry. The enormous print run for Texas textbooks leaves most districts in other states adopting the same course materials, so that the Texas School Board effectively spells out requirements for 80 percent of the nation’s textbook market. That means, for instance, that schools in left-leaning states like Oregon and Vermont could soon be teaching from textbooks that are short on references to Ted Kennedy but long on references to conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Sounds good to me....
Good! That is exactly what America needs. A little sanity in the education system.
Doesnt matter. All it takes is for the hippie, libtard teacher to say ‘Class, enough of Reagan. Put down your textbooks and I will read to you passages from Saul Alinsky and Howard Zinn..”
“Remember the Alamo” is a good sentiment right now.
I hate to tell this reporter, who apparently just fell off of the J-school turnip truck, but Texas has been reviewing and approving textbooks since shortly after the Civil War, and, periodically, the rest of the country notices the clout it has. The last time this blew up was in the early 1990s.
The media in this country is such a joke. Look at the outrage that the truth might be taught in schools. Please, someone, anyone point me to the in-depth article on whats in the health care bill. We are being lead around like sheep. I’m sorry, but as a whole Americans are idiots and deserve what is coming their way.
I'm sure Jefferson meant "all people are created equal and are endowed by the laws of nature with certain inalienable rights..."
The above is a lie. One of the major issues was that liberals were the ones wanting history to be taught from the 1880's to the present, leaving off the founding of the nation through the Civil War.
The History class proposed by the conservatives would be long on Washington, Jefferson, and the Constitution, and short on either Kennedy or Schafly.
And that's the way it should be. There is no way to talk about a character such as Kennedy and have him in historical perspective. Any discussion would be marred by current political considerations.
Diversity of opinion and thought is kryptonite to the left.
A little conservatism in the schools would be a change, that’s for sure. We’ve seen what liberalism, or progressivism has done to the schools.
We have schools that can’t teach; we have schools that continually produce students who can’t succeed; we have schools that can’t meet minimum state standards.
The sad part of this is the schools aren’t at fault. rather, the parents who become dependent on the state for everything, who can’t even assume the responsibility for raising their own child, parents who won’t discipline their child f9or screwing up in school.
I am currently enrolled in a college level American History course. The class covers from the late 1800’s to present. There is a whole lot of liberalism in the textbook, all the way from redefining ‘liberal’ into ‘progressive’ to demonizing the Republicans at every opportunity. There would have to be a great deal of conservatism introduced into the textbook to make it balanced.
I think that is exactly what America needs!
WTG Texas!
Texas Conservatism? More like a true account of history. Texas is just trying to stop the Liberal rewrite of History.
Cry me a river.....
Best news I’ve heard in quite a while. Have been very nervous about my two granddaughters in public schools.
True.......but THIS time the Conservative Texans mopped up the floor with the Commie Libs. In fact, the last one threw up her hands and stomped out of the meeting when she saw she was not going to get her way. DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS!
Good.
What it likely means is that instead of liberal revisionism, incldg. that of Zinn, they might actually have a more historical presentation of history.
Textbooks used in schools of all ages have also been exposed as promoting a decidedly liberal bias against the nation of Israel.[29] A landmark book called The Trouble with Textbooks, by Dr. Gary A. Tobin and Dennis R. Ybarra described results of a comprehensive study they conducted of the 28 most widely used Social Studies textbooks in the United States. The researchers found that U.S. textbooks often contain “repeated misrepresentations that cross the line into bigotry.” Examples included Jesus being called a Palestinian, Islam being “treated with a devotional tone in some textbooks, less detached and analytical than it ought to be. Muslim beliefs are described in several instances as fact, without any clear qualifier such as Muslims believe...’ The Islamic empire of the Middle Ages was presented as “a time of unqualified glory without blemishes”, while various aspects of the wars of Arab states against Israel were misrepresented.
One the glossary of book, World History: Continuity and Change, the entry on the Ten Commandments skeptically describes them as “Moral laws Moses claimed to have received from the Hebrew G-d Y-hweh on Mount Sinai,” while the very same glossary states the Qu’ran is a “Holy Book of Islam containing revelations received by Muhammad from G-d.” [30]
One textbook publisher, Teachers Curriculum Institute, has agreed to rewrite its unit on the Middle East after being challenged, and consulting many scholars. The San Fransisco-based Jewish Community Relations Council found that the textbooks were so filled with inaccuracies and biased that they should not be used.[31]
Professor, Larry Schweikart notes that most textbooks tend to come from New York, Boston, Washington and Philadelphia, all liberal bastions. As concerns American history, Schweikart sees the “Reagan test” as a consistent indicator of whether a book is politically slanted. The majority of books he has examined credit former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev with ending the Cold War, while marginalizing Reagan.[32]
More at http://conservapedia.com/Education#Ideology_in_modern_education
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