History is a slippery thing. Yet I had, and continue to have, much faith in historians and educators who put their personal biases and agendas aside and try to ascertain as best and honestly as possible the truth and importance of historical figures and events and economic principles and trends. They certainly could be wrong, and the kids being educated by the textbooks they'll be reading in school deserve no less than rigorous and repeated scrutiny of the facts they're being taught.
But what the Texas Board Of "Education" has done is something completely different. They have screwed with history to make people believe the way they believe. These people don't give a shit about facts or the truth. They're not educators. They're brainwashers.
I ... I have no choice but to respond to the story piece by piece.
“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.”
Bullshit. Facts aren't left or right; you just want to say they're left so you can bend history to your own warped point-of-view. What are you a doctor of, bullshittery?
But rarely in recent history has a group of conservative board members left such a mark on a social studies curriculum.
Why is that? Are they experts in history, sociology or economics? If not, why don't they stay the fuck away from the textbook business and let really grown-ups figure it out??
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.”
Anyone thinking this is a sincere attempt at revisiting the material in our children's textbooks should stop thinking that because of this. These right wingnuts get to put what they want in these books but people who don't suck your dick don't?!?!?! All this is is a bumrush on the collective history of America and the world. And they want to wipe out anybody who isn't white from the pages of history.
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.
What the fuck? Seriously, what the fuck???
“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.”
So if it's not in the Constitution it doesn't exist? That's the only historical document to look at to see if something's American or not? OK, I don't remember seeing the unificiation of church and state in the Constitution, so you lose too, Bradley, you asshole slumlord.
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.”
I don't remember learning about any liberal resurgence in history, so where the fuck is the goddamn balance now?? And the kids now have to learn about the gun nuts, a conservative list of laws that Republicans themselves have ignored, a concept that no one knows about, a right-wingnut think tank that no one knows about, and some bitch no one in their right mind gives two shits about? Really???
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.”
I don't know what this teeth doctor's talking about. I did learn about the Black Panthers, and I do know that many Republicans voted for civil rights measures. All this proves is that they want credit for integration when most of their kind wanted segregation to continue. And they want to discredit the black civil rights movement at the same time? This is racial appropriation, pure and simple.
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.
Unintended consequences, or imaginary? And this thing about crowding Germans and Italians in internment camps -- when they all were Axis powers, so I don't know why these conservatives are wasting their time defending the enemy -- means they're trying to turn whites into victims when the vast majority of those interned, and the main reason behind its creation, was to jail Japanese. Persecution of white people complex?
Man, I am so pissed off and I'm still not done.
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.
What the hell are the Venona papers? From what little I know about it -- and I wouldn't listen to the Texas Board of "Education" to educate myself -- this intelligence-gathering project remains thoroughly questioned when it comes to its veracity. If this was a smoking gun about the levels of infiltration by Communist sympathizers in American government in the 40's and 50's, I would have heard of these Venona papers by now. At the very least, these declassified documents don't "confirm" anything. It's just another way to beat a dead horse, Communism, for teabagger purposes.
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.
Because unlike her teabagger counterparts on the Board, Ms. Knight actually has evidence of her viewpoint -- namely the Constitution, where, in Article 6, Section 3, it states, "No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." Under Bradley's logic, then, there is a separation of church and state in the nation's blueprint. Huh. America wasn't founded on Christian principles. Where in the Constitution does it say it was? Why are they making this shit up?
They want to talk about balance because they want to play the victim card. But as in all things in life, there is a winner and there is a loser. What decides that? The facts. And the facts are that the U.S. was never intended to be a Christian nation. In fact, it was a secular nation whose sole purpose is to protect the people. Moreover, the Founding Fathers believed that religious freedom superceded the pragmatic affairs of government -- indeed, that religious freedom was above the deletrious effects of government. Keep it away from religion, is what the Founding Fathers said. And this fucking Texas Board Of "Education" wants to be Founding Fathers instead. Fuck these people.
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.
I didn't study economics all that deeply, but I thought I did learn about von Hayek, or at least Friedman. The thing I notice about these two conservative additions is that both men died within this generation. For some reason the TXBO"E" felt it important to codify these economists, however influential, without the objectivity aided by the passage of time. For these people, if someone was dead before they were born, they couldn't have been that important. Their myopia and their disdain for true history is nauseating.
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!’ ”
Huh?? Capitalists say capitalism all the time. Stupid 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.
No it doesn't, you jackass. Society thinks sociology blames society for everything. Sociology is a science, backed by empirical data. It is up to us to come to conclusions. And it's not up to us to codify those conclusions, however right or wrong they may be, in a textbook. The "importance of personal responsibility for life choices" is a vital thing ... to be taught in a health class, not sociology. Couldn't Cargill's concerns be addressed in a different way without fucking with truth-seeking?
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.
Oh, because you were there? Thomas Jefferson was the third goddamn president of this country, and Texas schoolchildren won't learn about him anymore? And he's been erased from Texas history because he (listen up Bradley, you douche), said there should be a separation of church and state. So now these fucking people are hiding the truth and getting rid of anybody who stands in their way to brainwash their kids. They really aren't "adding balance." Tough shit for y'all, but Jefferson kind of has more of a say about the origins and the aim of the United States than you people, and if he thinks government has no business in meddling with the way people pray, well, you're just gonna have to deal, don't you?
Well, apparently not, because they were elected to the Board and what they ratified in March will become law. Further evidence this country's going to hell on the religious intolerance and crazy talk of the right-wingnut teabaggers.
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