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SAN FRANCISCO – California school textbooks would highlight the role gays have played in the history of the nation's most populous state if a new proposal that has angered conservatives passes the state Legislature. History books record contributions by gays but their sexual orientation is often ignored, a situation gay activists say is inexcusable in California, home to a large gay population in San Francisco, a city that briefly made history in 2004 by issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The proposed bill would require school textbooks to include lessons on how gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender persons have helped...

Georgia is about to become the first state to approve the use of the Bible as a textbook in public schools. On Monday, the state Senate passed a bill providing money to high schools that offer elective classes in the Bible and setting specific guidelines for those classes. The bill was approved by Georgia's state House of Representatives last week. Gov. Sonny Perdue is expected to sign the law. The bill creates two courses - History and Literature of the Old Testament Era and History and Literature of the New Testament Era - that can be offered as electives. It...

......snip....... The Georgia legislature seems poised to endorse just such a course. Though students in many states enroll in classes related to the Bible, Georgia would become the first to require its Department of Education to put in place a curriculum to teach the history and literature of the Bible. Schools would use the book itself as the classroom textbook. Specifically the bill would establish electives on both the New and Old Testaments. It has overwhelmingly passed both chambers, but needs a final vote on a minor House change. The vote is expected as early as Monday. If it passes,...

(AgapePress) - A Christian evangelist known as "Dr. Dino" advocates a three-pronged approach to countering public school textbooks that use faulty evidence for Darwinian evolution. Dr. Kent Hovind says instead of trying to get intelligent design or creationism taught in public schools, the main objective of critics of evolution should be requiring accuracy in science textbooks. Hovind, the founder of Florida-based Creation Science Evangelism, notes many states already have laws requiring textbooks to be accurate -- and if they do not, he says, teachers should have the right to correct any inaccuracies in those books. "Jesus lived in the Roman...

A traditional-values organization in California is warning the state's residents that a bill pending in the Legislature, if approved, could remove all references to gender in public schools – threatening even references to "mom" or "dad" in textbooks. If the bill, SB 1437, were to become law, warns the Capitol Resource Institute, "it could potentially require gender-neutral bathrooms in our schools and all references to 'husband' and 'wife' or 'mom and dad' removed from school textbooks as the norm." Sponsored by Democratic Sen. Sheila Kuehl – a lesbian actress best known for playing Zelda in "The Many Loves of Dobie...

A traditional-values organization in California is warning the state's residents that a bill pending in the Legislature, if approved, could remove all references to gender in public schools – threatening even references to "mom" or "dad" in textbooks. If the bill, SB 1437, were to become law, warns the Capitol Resource Institute, "it could potentially require gender-neutral bathrooms in our schools and all references to 'husband' and 'wife' or 'mom and dad' removed from school textbooks as the norm." Sponsored by Democratic Sen. Sheila Kuehl – a lesbian actress best known for playing Zelda in "The Many Loves of Dobie...

A TEXTBOOK widely used in Victorian high schools describes the Crusaders who fought in the Holy Land in the Middle Ages as terrorists, akin to those responsible for the September 11 attacks. The Year 8 textbook Humanities Alive 2 says that the Crusaders, like Muslim terrorists, "believed they were giving their lives for a religious cause". "Like the Crusaders ... they were told they would go straight to heaven when they died," the book says. "Those who destroyed the World Trade Center (sic) are regarded as terrorists. Might it be fair to say that Crusaders who attacked the Muslim inhabitants...

Dubai: The UAE government has confiscated over 100 copies of a social studies text book from an upscale American school in Abu Dhabi for allegedly portraying Islam in a negative light, as controversy over the Prophet Mohammad cartoons continued to rage across the Muslim world. Copies of the book 'World Cultures', taught to sixth grade students at the school was confiscated by the Ministry of Education' yesterday for allegedly containing in certain chapters "a deluge of derogatory remarks against Islam and the Muslim world, for example dubbing Middle East as one of the most dangerous explosive areas in the world...

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia is working to uproot militant Islamic ideas but officials and moderate clerics say they face a long struggle, while also coping with setbacks such as anger over cartoons that lampooned the Prophet Mohammad. In November, Indonesian police discovered videos showing three young suicide bombers using Islam to justify attacks on restaurants in Bali that killed 20 people the previous month. Vice President Jusuf Kalla said the videos showed radical ideas had penetrated deep into Indonesia's Muslim community. He ordered Muslim clerics who had been reluctant to criticize militancy to speak up. Three months later, a team...

The would-be textbook editors insist the deity of Islam not be identified as “Allah,” but rather “God.” One proposed CIE edit reads: In describing the beliefs, the authors’ insistence on leaving the word Allah un-translated in some instances creates the impression that Allah is the distinct god of the Arabs, rather than the One God worshipped by Jews, Christians, Muslims and others. [CIEAP – 3; ML – 80-138, 350-354, 498-499] In effect, this would have the State of California certify that the Muslim deity is the true God. At the same time, if this proposed edit is accepted, not only...

Texas education officials are ready to hear pros and cons of English immersion AUSTIN - The State Board of Education will consider the controversial topic of English-immersion instruction as an alternative to the state's bilingual programs at its meeting next week. The board has invited a California school superintendent and a representative of a conservative East Coast think tank to speak Feb. 9, opening a debate that could extend to the Legislature. In traditional bilingual classes, students are taught in their native languages while they are learning English. In immersion programs, the students receive all or most of their instruction...

It has always been my belief that Jesus Christ is God in the flesh and that he created the entire universe (uni=single, verse=spoken sentence) and everything in it. I have been studying creation science for quite some time. Through reading of books not easily found in our public library and physical observations they have taught me that the earth is less than 10,000 years old and that the theory of evolution is a religion. This religion of evolution is written in school text books and is funded by your tax dollars. As you delve deeper into evolution it takes such...

How Should Textbooks Treat the Clinton Scandal? by Larry Schweikart, University of Dayton Almost any student who has ever sat through a history class in high school or college will nod with familiarity when I discuss how many teachers cover the last 20 years of history: “well, of course, you know what happened next.” For me, the history that inevitably was left out was the late 1950s or the Kennedy/Nixon years. As I entered the history profession, I found most students had never “gotten up to” the Vietnam War. If the past is any guide, the likelihood of survey classes...

The Associated Press's Ben Feller has written an article entitled "School Textbooks Tackle the Clinton Impeachment." For people who think of tackling as the kind of head-on tackling seen at football games, tackling is the wrong word. Mr. Feller's article indicates that the school textbooks are obfuscating (making obscure or confusing) instead of "tackling." The kind of contribution to the Hillary in 2008 campaign that will not be officially reported, because it is not money or property, but will be appreciated by the Clintons, each of whom indisputably misled the American people. One more scandal involving the Clintons. (If Hillary...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The impeachment of former President Bill Clinton is in a gray area of history, too long ago to be a current event, too recent to be judged in perspective. Yet history is already judging Clinton in the place where millions of students get their information about him - textbooks. Seven years after he was impeached in a scandal of sex, perjury and bitter politics, Clinton has become a fixture in major high school texts. The impeachment is portrayed in the context of his two-term tenure, a milestone event, but not one that overshadows how Clinton handled the...

Looks like I'll be on with Bridget Quinn and John Scott "debating" Alan Lichtman over the place of the Clinton impeachment in textbooks. Among other things, I'll demand fairness, that as the second impeached president he gets every bit as much attention as the first---Andrew Johnson. I'll also insist that he was acquitted only because the Senate refused to do its job. And it was not about sex.

WASHINGTON — The impeachment of former President Clinton is in a gray area of history, too long ago to be a current event, too recent to be judged in perspective. Yet history is already judging Clinton in the place where millions of students get their information about him — textbooks. Seven years after he was impeached in a scandal of sex, perjury and bitter politics, Clinton has become a fixture in major high school texts.

State's Rejection of 'Left-Leaning' Textbook Not Censorship, Says Attorney By Jim Brown December 27, 2005 (AgapePress) - A constitutional attorney is hailing a recent decision by the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to dismiss a lawsuit filed by a Texas high school student and the author of a science textbook that some conservatives says is riddled with errors. The suit alleged that the Texas Board of Education had violated the free-speech clause of the First Amendment when it refused to approve an environmental science textbook for state funding. But the Fifth Circuit held that there was not First Amendment...

Clinton Scandals are High School Textbook Fixtures The impeachment of former President Clinton is in a gray area of history, too long ago to be a current event, too recent to be judged in perspective. Yet history is already judging Clinton in the place where millions of students get their information about him - textbooks. Seven years after he was impeached in a scandal of sex, perjury and bitter politics, Clinton has become a fixture in major high school texts. The impeachment is portrayed in the context of his two-term tenure, a milestone event, but not one that overshadows how...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The impeachment of former President Clinton is in a gray area of history, too long ago to be a current event, too recent to be judged in perspective. Yet history is already judging Clinton in the place where millions of students get their information about him - textbooks. Seven years after he was impeached in a scandal of sex, perjury and bitter politics, Clinton has become a fixture in major high school texts. The impeachment is portrayed in the context of his two-term tenure, a milestone event, but not one that overshadows how Clinton handled the economy,...