I can't believe that it's my home state...

I've bemoaned this action since it became a reality earlier this year. I wish I hadn't come across it this morning, of all mornings!

http://www.berkshireeagle.com/ci_15436940?source=most_emailed

Quote :

...earlier this year, religious conservative members
of the Texas Board of Education decided to push for a revision of this
history by downplaying Jefferson's influence in the founding of our
nation because the notion of the "separation of church and state" has
been traced to him. These religious rightists believe this country was
founded as a Christian nation and decided to make their point by
revising American history in their public school text books. The effect
of this kind of revision of American history would be to celebrate the
founding of this country as a religious event rather than the secular
event it is.

What makes it worse is the fact that, since Texas buys so many textbooks, the rest of the country is forced to follow along. The textbook companies can't afford to ignore them.

Ann

You know, textbooks are always behind anyway. I eagerly await the day when it's all electronic. Like Wikipedia, when a subject is not correct, a knowledgeable soul comes along and corrects it. History. like biblical accounts, is seen through the eyes of those that recorded it and passed down information. New bits and pieces are found all the time.

I have a great, great grandparent who was a hero in the Civil War - for the south. His story has been told in one historical book that documented the history of a prison, not exactly common reading. He was on the "wrong" side to be memorialized in textbooks.

I feel your concern, Ann, but I don't have a lot of faith in the information students receive in school anyway or in the people that deliver it. The best I can say for school systems is that they provide long-term public employment and a place to exercise the mind, a place to hopefully learn how to learn, and a place to learn social systems with peers.

The basics are still the most critical: the need to compute, to read and to communicate. Even those are being major altered by electronic gadgets and the internet. I feel the school system in America (K-12 anyway) needs a major revamp, but the archaic organization, entrenched professionals and uncertain funding schema make it a challenge no one dares to solve.

There's nothing new.

I went to elementary school in Virginia in the 40s and 50s. We were not taught much about Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant. We were taught a lot about Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee.

Don McLeroy and his fellow right-wing nutters have been the subject of discussion in The Chronicle and other places for quite awhile.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2010/1001.blake.html

LC wrote:

Don McLeroy and his fellow right-wing nutters have been the subject of discussion in The Chronicle and other places for quite awhile.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2010/1001.blake.html

Yep. When I was still teaching, we couldn't get through adoption time without horror stories on the Gablers' latest.

Ann

I don't really care, though. Maybe that's what it takes to counter a lot of the left-wing nuttiness that's in textbooks?

As long as colleges can make their own decisions, I especially don't care, lol. I [heart] Baylor and Lone Star College, two Texas schools that adopted my own text.

Very frustrating, Ann. It must be difficult to teach under such circumstances.

Reminds me of the Scopes monkey trial. And "Inherit the Wind" based on that episode.

When I gave my short speech when I got my award last week, I told how professors told us if we graduated with more answers than questions, they had not done their job. We studied evolution and all related subjects. In history we looked at all sides of issues. My three years of German taught me I needed to go there for a long visit.

I have no idea where the text books were published. Classes were filled with discussion and no one had to agree.

To me, that's what education should be, a combination of definite facts and discussion of the facts.

Al, Inherit the Wind was a good production. I saw it and have not forgotten.

Carol

Carol - do you have pictures from your ceremony? I almost forgot!!! Did you buy an expensive new dress and did you knock them over with your acceptance? What an exciting moment for you and your family.

Sorry for the digression..........K-12 is dependent on school boards. I was in a position as a regional director for five school districts with a grant for all administered by one. The one district was run by a school board made up of the Eagle Forum (I might not have it exactly right) - they almost didn't approve the grant to serve all four other districts too because they said it was training students for government jobs and would be requiring students to have chips behind their ears to continue the programming.......yikes! Those were the leaders of the one district. The grant provided counseling to encourage students to plan a program of study that would let them choose multiple career paths, including vocational and academic professions.

Inherit the Wind was written and performed over a half-century ago; the Scopes trial is was based on, another quarter-century before that.

We are a decade into the 21st century, and the situation still exists.

Jean Piaget taught us teachers that children were able to grow from concrete to procedural operations around the age of eleven years, but we still have half a nation of adults who insist on literalizing symbols.

Ann