I... can't even.

[ciroccoj]

Revisionaries: How a group of Texas conservatives is rewriting your kids’ textbooks.

• "The secular humanists may argue that we are a secular nation,” McLeroy said, jabbing his finger in the air for emphasis. “But we are a Christian nation founded on Christian principles. The way I evaluate history textbooks is first I see how they cover Christianity and Israel. Then I see how they treat Ronald Reagan—he needs to get credit for saving the world from communism and for the good economy over the last twenty years because he lowered taxes.”
  
  
• By the 1980s, the board was demanding that publishers make hundreds of the Gablers’ changes each cycle ... such as pulling the New Deal from a timeline of significant historical events (the Gablers thought it smacked of socialism) and describing the Reagan administration’s 1983 military intervention in Grenada as a “rescue” rather than an “invasion.”
  
  
• Barton and Peter Marshall initially tried to purge the standards of key figures of the civil rights era, such as César Chávez and Thurgood Marshall ... They have since resorted to a more subtle tack; while they concede that people like Martin Luther King Jr. deserve a place in history, they argue that they shouldn’t be given credit for advancing the rights of minorities. As Barton put it, “Only majorities can expand political rights in America’s constitutional society.”
  
  
• ...and I don't have the heart to include the science textbook demands to teach "both sides" of the evolution/creationism and climate change/God's just huggin' us closer "debates."

By far the most depressing part of the article concerns the argument that Texas, as the second-largest market for textbooks in the States, is becoming instrumental in deciding what textbooks are offered to the rest of the country. Because it only makes sense for textbook companies to make sure their books are acceptable to the second-largest market out there. So even if school boards in Vermont and Massachussetts have no problem with history books giving Martin Luther King Jr. some credit for civil rights advances, and science books treating evolution as an accepted theory... who's going to publish books like that, if Texas won't take 'em?


The flister who posted this originally included a lot more profanity in her post. I don't even have the heart for that, to be honest :(

Comments

[fearciuil.livejournal.com]

Whut.

That's ... friggin' scary, actually.

O_O

[naatz.livejournal.com]

Can I link to this, later on?

|Meduza|

[ciroccoj.livejournal.com]

Sure, feel free!

[stephantom.livejournal.com]

Yikes.

[sterling-sky.livejournal.com]

... I'll just be in my corner over there, rocking back and forth and weeping quietly.

I hate that people like these have become the "model" for Christianity in the world. Hate it, hate it, hate it. MLK was a PREACHER, for god's sake. Augh.

[amoulixes.livejournal.com]

I don't even want to talk about any sort of primary education in America, but I did want to ask: Isn't it disappointing that La Vita Nuova isn't an entire opera? I wanted to cry.