If it were only Texas. Textbooks all over the country end up with Texas curriculum. We all need to watch the choices made by our local school boards now - even more than before.

Even if it were only Texas, this is terrible. That's a lot of students being indoctrinated and they won't all be living in Texas when they grow up.

I foresee a suit based on church and state regarding Calvin.

Perhaps the Feds have the ability to withhold funding to states who want to mess with the facts.

P.S.

I know it cannot come soon enough, but Texas will be a blue state in the near future.

The American Taliban. Brilliant. Mind if I steal that one?

Seems to me we need to stop using textbooks. Isn't there a better way to teach kids than forcing them to lug around 20 or 30 lbs of textbooks that are out of date almost the moment they're printed? Can't we find a better use for our education dollars than investing in all these useless textbooks?

Jumpin' Judas on a unicycle. The board majority's explanations for this madness are simply mind-boggling (follow some of the links from the Think Progress piece if you think I exaggerate).

I'd say more, but it's hard to type when you're banging your head against a wall.

How long will it be before they start teaching that blacks were brought here to offer them a better way of life?

How are they gonna explain nickels & the Louisiana Purchase & Lewis and Clark? And does this mean that Calvin wrote the Declaration and was the 3rd president?
How does "removing Thomas Jefferson" work?

My guess? Conditioned massive denial.

After all, when was the last time you saw anyone pay attention to what politician was on what piece of currency? Other than 'Benjamins', of course.

Bob, 20 years ago the right started targeting Texas's School Board because the textbook market is dominated by the standards of two states: Texas and California. The industry will write its textbooks to meet the standards of the largest textbook markets, making this a national problem and not just one "state of ignorance."

The American Taliban means to install idiocracy. The question is whether progressives will ever realize that the right has invested in hate radio and activist school board elections for these very ends, and we must oppose them. I'd like to see progressives in other states fight to keep Texas's standards from infringing on their own states.

Bob, I apologize. This is off-topic (sorta-kinda related, though, on some meta-level), but you did have a post on the story yesterday:

A hotel owner has offered to bus the students from Itawamba Agricultural High School—the school that cancelled its prom because a lesbian couple wanted to attend—to New Orleans and host a free prom there. Applause, applause.

http://www.ksnt.com/news/national/story/Hotel-owner-offers-prom-for-Mississippi-students/AMhgU-R5RkWdBhE92M2ZDA.cspx

I posted this comment on mediaite to irritate the wingnuts over there.

"More non-award winning journalism from fox courtesy of media matters:

‘Special Report says “social conservatives” were “successful at reshaping textbook standards” in Texas”

And by reshaping they mean, REMOVED THOMAS JEFFERSON from textbooks and replaced him with John Calvin, a religious icon. I suspect that it was Jefferson’s jungle fever that got him removed. He liked the brown sugar! I wonder who’ll be next? Perhaps Mr. Lincoln who freed my people?"

You can always tell when you've pissed them off. They didn't respond at all. I love clearing a room. Mission Accomplished!

I hope you're right Eve!

Still here!

I have been lurking for a couple weeks but I am still trying to stay updated on the American Taliban.

However, as the United States economy dies 8500 miles away their economy is growing. South Korea is booming. They are builing everything from roads, bridges, apartments, trains, etc. There vehicles are so efficient. They run off of LPG, liquid propane gas. One of the most shocking things is that there is no interstate system. Light rail is the interstate system.

However, there is serious poverty mixed into the wonderfulness. There are many things that Americans do better. We build bigger shit. Yup, we have bigger cars, bigger/fatter people, bigger roads, bigger buildings, more fast food restaurants, bigger factory farms.

It is refreshing to see a country devoted to maximizing energy. America and more importantly the American Taliban could never adapt to this lifestyle. Shit, the police don't even have guns.

Here is one for you. I got my lower back checked out at a GOVERNMENT RUN HEALTHCARE CLINIC and was referred to a Korean hospital. I will keep you updated on Korean medicine.

Bob, thank you again for this blog and don't stop fighting to make our home a better place.

Kam sa ham ni da - THANK YOU!

There must be something that can be done to stop this idiocy from being taught in public schools.

I mean in addition to voting these fools off the State Board of Education. That will take awhile.

Texas is the asshole of the nation.

I could spend hours explaining why, but I'll leave it at that.

And I agree that textbooks are bunk.

Sad to say, but this is not new nor is it surprising. Midway through the Bush years I realized that the religious right was the real threat to the American way of life, but they can never do it by themselves, now you have the teabaggers.
I'm writing this while watching a program on the History channel on the KKK, specifically the IKA, American terrorist organization.
These are fascist groups that are growing, I do not believe they will ever be able to take power (not through force), but things like this are just small parts of the whole.

GItheJOE! Welcome back!

In high school, we had to suffer through an American history textbook that said, in one short ignorant line, that Sherman burned Savannah when he reached the sea. Being in Savannah, and having spend our youth downtown amongst antebellum ("pre-burning") homes, we couldn't take the book seriously after that. That's one of the many worries about the Texas Taliban decision. Not only are they getting the "facts" they want included wrong, they probably aren't checking the ones they aren't concerned with.

Those were pre-intertube days. While this worries me a lot, people have access to better information than what can be found in textbooks. I think that particular learning model is on it's way out the door. A book can only be so up to date.

And students will know. They'll know what's going on and the smart ones will seek out knowledge. If anything, I think Texas will inadvertently create just as many progressives as it indoctrinates regressives.

These fucking Taliban teabaggers want to start the next dark ages.
Pricks, all of them.
A pox on their houses and rectal cancer too.

The problem with these right wingers is that they think every child in this nation is stupid and that anything on that list we will never learn about. Now, I'm in my third year of college, but before I graduated high school, the textbooks we had still had Bill Clinton as President and it was just before the Republican turnover of congress. The year after I graduated, they received the new textbooks,with President Bush. The problem with that book, is that by that time, the 2007-2008 school year, the Republicans were turned out of Congress and Saddam Hussein was dead. Either way, those books were not up to date.All my social science and literature teachers improvised with outside sources, and we ended up learning more than what was required by those curriculum's set up by those on the far right.I recall that we hardly ever used them in class and when we did use them, we would jump around in them, going to specific paragraphs.

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

Well, of course - otherwise the kids would learn that what their school is doing is illegal.

These are the same people who tried to put Christian creation myths in science class, and got their asses handed to them in court. Reading about that case here:
http://ncse.com/creationism/legal/intelligent-design-trial-kitzmiller-v-dover
will hopefully inspire some good ideas about how to attack this latest religious takeover of schools.