Texas to revise history textbooks: liberals out, Limbaugh and Gingrich in.

The Texas State Board of Education review committee is preparing to vote on a draft of proposed standards for history textbooks. Noting that the draft has “nothing about liberals,” the Houston Chronicle reported:

The first draft for proposed standards in United States History Studies Since Reconstruction says students should be expected “to identify significant conservative advocacy organizations and individuals, such as Newt Gingrich, Phyllis Schlafly and the Moral Majority.” [...] Others have proposed adding talk show host Rush Limbaugh and the National Rifle Association.

The 15-member committee, stacked with 10 Republicans, is expected to vote along party lines. Earlier this year, a panel of right-wing “experts” produced a report urging the committee to remove biographies of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Stephen F. Austin, César Chávez, and instead add history about the “motivational role the Bible and the Christian faith played in the settling of the original colonies.”

Jesus Jump-Frogging Christ.

More and more I'm starting to think that we have to treat the wacko ultra-right-wing Conservatives as more of a cult than a political fringe.

Like Scientology, but without the tax breaks.

Dammit, Texas. I think I had a pretty good public school education. Don't fuck it up.

Texas teaching the bible in public schools this year: [link]

Texas textbook changes impact way more than just Texas. In some states, each individual school district or school picks which textbooks it uses. In other states, the state board of education picks which books are used for all the schools in the state. Texas and California are both statewide-textbook-choice states, and so publishers will do just about anything to get Texas and California to pick their books, including editing them to fit whatever standards those school boards want. And then those textbooks, made to fit the Texas and California standards, are the same ones being offered for sale to schools all over the country.

Earlier this year, a panel of right-wing “experts” produced a report urging the committee to remove biographies of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Stephen F. Austin, César Chávez, and instead add history about the “motivational role the Bible and the Christian faith played in the settling of the original colonies.”

George Washington? Really? And Abraham Lincoln the first Republican president? Weird.

Hil just answered my question as to how Texas has so much power over textbooks. I mean, surely they don't have more schoolkids than the rest of the country. I'd say Utah might have an edge on schoolaged people, but I don't want Utah deciding proper curricula either.

Part of my job is editing educational video modules for textbook publishers, and I can't even tell you the number of times we've been asked to change something "because it needs to sell in Texas."

I think the weirdest textbook change I've heard of was a short story that a teenage girl wrote that won a contest from YM magazine. This story was really good, and a publisher wanted to put it in their English textbook for seventh or eighth grade. One scene in the story had the characters sitting by a pool eating ice cream. California had recently put in rules that their schools should teach healthy eating habits, and the textbook committee asked the publisher to change it so that the characters were eating strawberries. I can't remember whether they actually changed that one or not.

Texas teaching the bible in public schools this year.

I can see how teaching the Bible as literature could be a good thing. The odds of the class not getting used to proselytize? I don't know.