Spongebob: Hey Patrick, guess what I am!
Patrick: Um, stupid?
Spongebob: No, I'm Texas!
Patrick: What's the difference?
Posted on 04/19/2010 8:29:51 AM PDT by MNDude
The Texas Curriculum Massacre What a conservative rewriting of history tells us about how Texans view the world, which is, for them, Texas.
Texas Stands Alone 165 years after it joined the U.S., Texas remains forever ruggedly individualistic
By Evan Smith | NEWSWEEK Published Apr 16, 2010 From the magazine issue dated Apr 26, 2010
Given the redness of my home state of Texas at the moment—more crimson than rosé—you'd be forgiven for dismissing the recent headline-making flap over revisions to our high-school social-studies curriculum as pure politics. A near majority of the duly elected 15 members of the State Board of Education (SBOE) is locked in a hyperconservative embrace, aligned as a bloc to promote a social-issues-centric view of the world. Other contemporary controversies involving the SBOE have centered on neutering the sex-education component of the science curriculum, taking anything even vaguely PG-rated out of health textbooks (say, a line drawing of a woman's bare breast in a section on self-exam), and questioning the appropriateness of teaching the "theory" of evolution without also teaching creationism. But if those fights were largely relegated to the undercard, the social-studies controversy is a top-draw heavyweight brawl, with the jeering eyes of the nation upon us.
One way to view the attempt to revise the social-studies curriculum, then, is as a bunch of Texas patriots drawing an Alamo-like line in the sand against an invading horde of elites.
Don't tell us who is and who isn't an important historical figure. Don't tell us to view history through glasses tinted by political correctness. Don't deny us our God-given right to question the validity of evolution or the separation of church and state. We know better. Don't mess with us. Don't mess with Texas … exceptionalism.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...
Except for Houston.
How DARE you peons talk back to your betters! Don't you serfs know your place!
No, Austin.
Austin is the San Francisco of Texas.
.
The leftys sure hate Texas.
You must be doing something right down there.
Zackly.
There's nothing like hearing the squeel of a stuck pig (aka liberal).
I love our state motto. The only problem we have is that too many people are moving here. Most of them are like-minded good folks, but a few liberal screwballs keep sneaking in!
Damn right!
Suck on it you elitist bastards. You've been shoving your agenda down the throats of children for 50 years. "We know better" has been your mantra for 50 years. Don't whine now that the system you set up is no longer friendly to you in one state.
Spongebob: Hey Patrick, guess what I am!
Patrick: Um, stupid?
Spongebob: No, I'm Texas!
Patrick: What's the difference?
Zinn had this take on history: "Objectivity is impossible and it is also undesirable. That is, if it were possible it would be undesirable, because if you have any kind of a social aim, if you think history should serve society in some way; should serve the progress of the human race; should serve justice in some way, then it requires that you make your selection on the basis of what you think will advance causes of humanity."
"I wanted my writing of history and my teaching of history to be a part of social struggle," said Zinn. "I wanted to be a part of history and not just a recorder and teacher of history. So that kind of attitude toward history, history itself as a political act, has always informed my writing and my teaching."
This is the predominate history text for our colleges.
Newsweak, Times, the alphabet networks just don't "get it." They should take a tour and quit talking only to each other.
vaudine
Seriously. Bunches of California nuts creeping in, and they’re usually complaining about Texas. I always let them know we’d all be far happier if they went back to their point of origin.
All government schools do only ONE thing well: Inflaming animosity between groups of citizens who wage political war to get the government to establish their anointed religious, cultural, and political worldview.
Why is this eternal conflict between groups of citizens inevitable. Why?
***It is inevitable because it is IMPOSSIBLE to have a religiously, culturally, or politically neutral K-12 education. It is axiomatic. ***
The government through its schools will establish the religious, cultural, and political worldview of the biggest political bully, and the rest get to eat dirt! It’s that simple.
ALL government K-12 schools in this nation are a First Amendment and freedom of conscience abomination. ALL OF THEM! And...This is a fundamental and structural flaw that can NOT be reformed.
Newspeak left the realm of journalism a long time ago. It shouldn't even be allowed in schools as a credible source. If schools discount Wikipedia for it's lack of accuracy and poor controls, then Newspeak should have been removed from school shelves a long time ago. Fortunately for them, there are still some that give them a shred of journalistic credibility, even though you'll find more in depth and first source reporting in a Playboy magazine.
The media in this country is one step from worthless. Ignorant, non subject matter experts, non- logical, shallow, ever greater shock appeal, mindless selection of topics and themes (important stuff goes unreported, the unimportant becomes a huge story), poor analysis and investigative work that lacks any sort of research in reality, lazy, opinionated, biased, editorialized they vomit their stuff out to a public that doesn't even react to them.
Even when they scream fire as they did with "failure, quagmire, and bogged down" in Iraq the public doesn't react anymnore. Long gone is the time where a Croncite can cause a stirr with his BS. The MSM has largely lost the trust of the public and is becoming ever less important as the source of information for the public. Good, because all they do is dumb down the the "masses."
Great reply! Journalists were better when they were MEN who operated on cigarettes and whiskey!;)
What’s really tweaking the LIBs about all this, is that the textbook choices made in Texas have a huge impact on the textbooks that other states will use in their curriculum. If this only affected Texas, you wouldn’t see all the hand-wringing. And let’s be honest LIBs, if you controlled the committee instead of the repubs, you’d be doing everything in your power to make those textbooks as liberal as possible.
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