texas new education policy

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Think Progress flags some of the more eye-opening revisions the Texas Board of Education approved for its social studies curriculum and textbooks:

- The Board removed Thomas Jefferson from the Texas curriculum, "replacing him with religious right icon John Calvin."

- The Board refused to require that "students learn that the Constitution prevents the U.S. government from promoting one religion over all others."

The Texas Freedom Network live-blogged the debate over the changes. Read more here.

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April Castro, ASSOCIATED PRESS

AUSTIN, Texas — A far-right faction of the Texas State Board of Education succeeded Friday in injecting conservative ideals into social studies, history and economics lessons that will be taught to millions of students for the next decade.

Teachers in Texas will be required to cover the Judeo-Christian influences of the nation's Founding Fathers, but not highlight the philosophical rationale for the separation of church and state. Curriculum standards also will describe the U.S. government as a "constitutional republic," rather than "democratic," and students will be required to study the decline in value of the U.S. dollar, including the abandonment of the gold standard.
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"We have been about conservatism versus liberalism," said Democrat Mavis Knight of Dallas, explaining her vote against the standards. "We have manipulated strands to insert what we want it to be in the document, regardless as to whether or not it's appropriate."

Following three days of impassioned and acrimonious debate, the board gave preliminary approval to the new standards with a 10-5 party line vote. A final vote is expected in May, after a public comment period that could produce additional amendments and arguments.

Decisions by the board – made up of lawyers, a dentist and a weekly newspaper publisher among others – can affect textbook content nationwide because Texas is one of publishers' biggest clients.

Ultraconservatives wielded their power over hundreds of subjects this week, introducing and rejecting amendments on everything from the civil rights movement to global politics. Hostilities flared and prompted a walkout Thursday by one of the board's most prominent Democrats, Mary Helen Berlanga of Corpus Christi, who accused her colleagues of "whitewashing" curriculum standards.

By late Thursday night, three other Democrats seemed to sense their futility and left, leaving Republicans to easily push through amendments heralding "American exceptionalism" and the U.S. free enterprise system, suggesting it thrives best absent excessive government intervention.

"Some board members themselves acknowledged this morning that the process for revising curriculum standards in Texas is seriously broken, with politics and personal agendas dominating just about every decision," said Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network, which advocates for religious freedom.

Republican Terri Leo, a member of the powerful Christian conservative voting bloc, called the standards "world class" and "exceptional."

Board members argued about the classification of historic periods (still B.C. and A.D., rather than B.C.E. and C.E.); whether students should be required to explain the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its impact on global politics (they will); and whether former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir should be required learning (she will).

In addition to learning the Bill of Rights, the board specified a reference to the Second Amendment right to bear arms in a section about citizenship in a U.S. government class.

Conservatives beat back multiple attempts to include hip-hop as an example of a significant cultural movement.

Numerous attempts to add the names or references to important Hispanics throughout history also were denied, inducing one amendment that would specify that Tejanos died at the Alamo alongside Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie. Another amendment deleted a requirement that sociology students "explain how institutional racism is evident in American society."

Democrats did score a victory by deleting a portion of an amendment by Republican Don McLeroy suggesting that the civil rights movement led to "unrealistic expectations for equal outcomes."

Fort Worth Republican Pat Hardy, a longtime teacher, voted for the new standards, but said she wished the board could work with a more cooperative spirit.

"What we've done is we've taken a document that by nature is too long to begin with and then we've lengthened it some more," Hardy said, shortly after the vote. "Those long lists of names that we've put in there ... it's just too long.

"I just think we failed to keep that in mind, it's hard for teachers to get through it all."

Also, can someone please explain to me what the f**k John Calvin has to do with the founding of the United States?

John Calvin is the spiritual father of the Protestant Ethic, which all of the founders subscribed to, even if they were deists.

ruveyn

I found most of that dismaying, but have to agree with the BC and AD part. The timeline separates by the life of Christ, it came from the church, and if we don't want to recognize where it came from we should choose another dating system; just changing the names doesn't change what it is. I've honestly found the C.E. change to be .... odd. But, it would be interesting to get the opinion of an aetheist on that. Is BC and AD offensive to someone who isn't Christian?

This is an outrage!! !! !

And to think these same people frequently complain that the Liberals have an agenda over public education; hypocrites. I can only hope that these new standards are challenged in courts, because the current governor of Texas is too much of a pompous jackass to do anything about it.

The UK gave Poland a security guarantee. Poland was invaded, the UK declared war, the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp was built and operated in Poland by the invaders. So it's not quite right that Britain had nothing to do with it, though there is in my opinion an obsession with the holocaust that goes way beyond any other mass killing episodes in history.