A butterfly can flap its wings and conjure up storms a thousand miles away? Apparently the same is true of dentists.
A conservative Texan dentist has taken control over what schools across the country will teach your kids about history, social studies, and civil rights. Here’s how it happened.
- Texas is the biggest single buyer of textbooks in America.
- Textbook publishers nationwide adjust their content to Texas requirements.
- Texas’ requirements are determined by the Texas Board of Education.
- The Texas Board of Education is dominated by conservatives.
- The conservatives are led by dentist Don McLeroy.
Here it is as a diagram:
But surely McLeroy is smart enough to know a dentist is not an education expert. Right. From the New York Times:
Since January, Republicans on the board have passed more than 100 amendments to the 120-page curriculum standards affecting history, sociology and economics courses from elementary to high school. The standards were proposed by a panel of teachers.
“We are adding balance,” said Dr. Don McLeroy, the leader of the conservative faction on the board, after the vote. “History has already been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left.”
Actually, to be fair, McLeroy is a teacher. A fourth-grade Sunday school teacher.
Jon Stewart shows the Board in action:
By the way, here’s a funny little fact. Phyllis Schlafly has written a column praising the Texas Board and detailing many of their decisions — but not all of them. For instance, Phyllis Schlafly doesn’t mention that the new standards add the study of Phyllis Schlafly to curriculum. You know how reporters and publishers add a “Full disclosure” note to their articles when they have a personal connection to the story? No full disclosure from Phyl. But isn’t that the theme of this whole issue? Conservatives these days want you to know only what they want you to know
Yea I read about this in the paper last Sunday. They don’t want Hip-Hop taught as part of the culture movement in this country, but country music will continue to be taught. They will remove the word ‘democratic’ for the description of our government and instead want to call it a constitutional ‘republic’. Intereetingly, the main leading conservative was defeated in the republican primary by a moderate GOP lobbyist and another as well. Two other conservatives, a republican and a democrat decided not to run for re-election. Texas politics. Gotta love it….pfffft.
Don’t forget these are the same idiots who a few months ago banned the children’s book “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you See?” from inclusion in the curriculum for third graders. Why did they ban this book? Because one of the idiots on the Board googled the author’s name, Bill Martin. Turns out Bill Martin wrote a book titled, “Ethical Marxism”. So, they decided that Bill Martin must be some capitalism hatin’ psycho and would definitely pose a danger to third graders. Trouble is – it wasn’t the same Bill Martin. Apparently, the most political thing Bill Martin, Jr. (the author of “Brown Bear”) ever wrote was a book that taught kids the Pledge of Allegiance. Google really is a dangerous tool in the hands of an idiot who, unfortunately, holds political office.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/DN-books_25tex.ART.State.Edition1.4ba2046.html
Religious conservatives are patently dishonest. I have such low esteem for them, that I now refer to their gods as death gods.
In an interview in October 2009 he explained his approach to public school history textbook evaluation: “. . . .we are a Christian nation founded on Christian principles. The way I evaluate history textbooks is first I see how they cover Christianity and Israel. Then I see how they treat Ronald Reagan—he needs to get credit for saving the world from communism and for the good economy over the last twenty years because he lowered taxes.”