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You are here: Home / Coming Soon to a Textbook Near You

Coming Soon to a Textbook Near You

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Excellent news from Texas:

The Texas Board of Education has been meeting this week to revise its social studies curriculum. During the past three days, “the board’s far-right faction wielded their power to shape lessons on the civil rights movement, the U.S. free enterprise system and hundreds of other topics”:

– To avoid exposing students to “transvestites, transsexuals and who knows what else,” the Board struck the curriculum’s reference to “sex and gender as social constructs.”

– The Board removed Thomas Jefferson from the Texas curriculum, “replacing him with religious right icon John Calvin.”

I’m sure Glenn Beck and Malkin and the NRO will come to the aid of one of our founding fathers…

Reader Interactions

106Comments

  3. 3.

    General Egali Tarian Stuck

    The Board removed Thomas Jefferson from the Texas curriculum, “replacing him with religious right icon John Calvin.”

    Good riddance, that Jefferson dude was a commie libtard deist anyways. Die hippies die.

  4. 4.

    GambitRF

    The Board removed Thomas Jefferson from the Texas curriculum, “replacing him with religious right icon John Calvin.”

    hahaha, what? Do they consider the Louisiana Purchase a precursor to reckless liberal spending or something? Or is it because he slept with black chicks?

  5. 5.

    gwangung

    This is deeply depressing, as controlling the youth means controlling the future. And this is blatant propoganda. Full stop.

    And nothing’s going to be done about it.

  7. 7.

    Midnight Marauder

    The Board removed Thomas Jefferson from the Texas curriculum, “replacing him with religious right icon John Calvin.”

    This…this cannot be real.

  8. 8.

    freelancer

    Don’t forget about the white supremacy:

    A longtime State Board of Education member accused her colleagues of “whitewashing” curriculum standards Thursday and walked out of the panel’s meeting in frustration amid heated debates about race and the inclusion of Hispanics in lesson plans.
    …
    The board had rejected an effort to include the names of two Hispanic Medal of Honor recipients and one black recipient in lessons for a world history class, but agreed to revisit the amendment for an American history class. It also approved an amendment that deletes a requirement that sociology students “explain how institutional racism is evident in American society.”
    …
    “I mean we’ve already been whitewashing all of social studies up to this point and now we’re doing it in sociology?” Democratic board member Mary Helen Berlanga said after Republican Barbara Cargill’s amendment was proposed. “You’ve got to leave some integrity in this.”
    …
    Berlanga, who has served on the board since 1982, walked out of the meeting after reviewing upcoming amendments involving the inclusion of Hispanic names in the standards.
    …
    “I’ve had it, this is it,” she said. “I’m leaving. We can just pretend this is a white America and Hispanics don’t exist.”

  9. 9.

    BW Smith

    If they remove Jefferson, how will the wingnuts survive without their tree of liberty quote?

  10. 10.

    cyntax

    @Cat Lady:

    At the very least there should be a “put up, or shut up” clause: if they don’t secede, they can’t keep going on about not messing with Texas.

  13. 13.

    Cacti

    But Jefferson was a slave owner from a Confederate state.

    That alone should make him a right wing hero.

  14. 14.

    RSA

    The Board removed Thomas Jefferson from the Texas curriculum,

    Wow. I’m imagining a Texas history book:

    The Declaration of Independence was written by Adam Smith?
    The Presidency of the U.S. remained empty from 1801 through 1809?
    The geographical size of the U.S. doubled in 1803 for unknown reasons?

  15. 15.

    gogol's wife

    That picture makes this look strangely like a pet-rescue thread.

    I had no idea John Calvin was a right-wing icon. Strange. Wasn’t he a little too educated?

  16. 16.

    Hann1bal

    I live in Georgia, and I’ve lived here all my life. And I know that Georgia isn’t, shall we say, the most enlightened corner of God’s green Earth. Still, I can take comfort in these words: “I don’t live in Texas.”*

    *Though since Texas is a major influence on the textbook market, my sibs (who aren’t in college yet) might be grooving to a Jefferson-free history course. So I can also take comfort that a) I’m not in high school anymore, and b) my professors determine the curriculum, not the morons on the Board of Education. Thank all the celestial busybodies for that.

  17. 17.

    I have issues with Baltimore

    Whoa. Where can I get a framed copy of that picture? In fact, are there any places on the web that act as clearinghouses for Jesus/Dino art? If not, there should be.

  18. 18.

    Bullsmith

    Hey, John Calvin is an American hero! What’s next with you lefties, are you going to make Jesus a foreigner? Probably and Israeli, right? I knew it. You can’t even satirize the left these days.

  19. 19.

    iasa

    not to defend the lunatics of my state, but as near as i can tell, Jefferson has been removed from the World History curriculum,not the entire Social Studies curriculum.

  20. 20.

    Cacti

    @RSA:

    The Declaration of Independence was written by Adam Smith?
    The Presidency of the U.S. remained empty from 1801 through 1809?
    The geographical size of the U.S. doubled in 1803 for unknown reasons?

    The Declaration of Independence was written by: Jesus

    The 3rd President of the United States was: Jesus H. Christ

    The Louisiana Purchase was negotiated with France in 1803 by: President Jesus

  21. 21.

    Hann1bal

    @Dreggas: I wish I could believe that, but that would be, as Samuel Johnson once said, “the triumph of hope over experience”. I guarantee you, it can get wingier.

  22. 22.

    Mike in NC

    At the very least there should be a “put up, or shut up” clause: if they don’t secede, they can’t keep going on about not messing with Texas.

    Been to Texas. It’s a mess.

  23. 23.

    Mark S.

    The reasoning behind the change:

    Board member Cynthia Dunbar wants to change a standard having students study the impact of Enlightenment ideas on political revolutions from 1750 to the present. She wants to drop the reference to Enlightenment ideas (replacing with “the writings of”) and to Thomas Jefferson. She adds Thomas Aquinas and others. Jefferson’s ideas, she argues, were based on other political philosophers listed in the standards.

    I would have paid anything for someone to have asked this idiotic woman which political philosophers Jefferson’s ideas were based on.

  24. 24.

    stevie314159

    I wish that the Ivy League would announce a policy of no longer accepting history class credits from any high school that uses those textbooks and summarily rejecting any applicants from Texas.

  26. 26.

    freelancer

    These people are fucked:

    12:28 – Board member Mavis Knight offers the following amendment: “examine the reasons the Founding Fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion over all others.” Knight points out that students should understand that the Founders believed religious freedom was so important that they insisted on separation of church and state.
    …
    12:32 – Board member Cynthia Dunbar argues that the Founders didn’t intend for separation of church and state in America. And she’s off on a long lecture about why the Founders intended to promote religion. She calls this amendment “not historically accurate.”
    …
    12:35 – Knight’s amendment fails on a straight party-line vote, 5-10. Republicans vote no, Democrats vote yes.
    …
    12:38 – Let the word go out here: The Texas State Board of Education today refused to require that students learn that the Constitution prevents the U.S. government from promoting one religion over all others. They voted to lie to students by omission.

  27. 27.

    JGabriel

    To avoid exposing students to “transvestites, transsexuals and who knows what else,” the Board struck the curriculum’s reference to “sex and gender as social constructs.”

    B-b-b-but, Jesus wears a dress!

    And what does he wear under that robe anyway – swaddling, pants, or does he just go commando? I’m betting on commando, ’cause, if you were the son of god, wouldn’t you?

    .

  28. 28.

    c u n d gulag

    Jefferson’s “Declaration of Independence” is gone. Rush’s ‘Declaration of Oxy Dependence’ is in.

    PLEASE Texas, save the Union, and ‘secede.’ You can’t ‘succeed’ with THIS curricullum.

    Oh yeah, and NO more abortions! Every child is the result of a virgin birth!

  30. 30.

    Dee Loralei

    The way I understand it he was removed from the section on The Enlightenment and how the thoughts of Locke, Rousseau and Voltaire influenced Jefferson and his writing of the Constitution. I know I’m probably misremembering what I read about it this morning, but it’s just a billion different kinds of wrong to leave him out of the Enlightenment.

    Those bumperstickers “The Age of Enlightenment- fun while it lasted” are effing prescient .

  32. 32.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    @gogol’s wife:

    I had no idea John Calvin was a right-wing icon.

    You can’t play Calvinball without John Calvin and his cuddly buddy Thomas Hobbes. The only problem is that the game tends to be nasty, brutish and short.

  33. 33.

    JGabriel

    @ajr22:

    I don’t know who John Calvin is.

    Calvin is to Presbyterians (Calvinists) as Luther is to Lutherans.

    .

  34. 34.

    MikeJ

    The Louisiana Purchase was negotiated with France in 1803 by: President Jesus

    Purchase? From France? Hah! President Jesus *takes* what he wants!

  35. 35.

    Alex S.

    The deal with John Calvin:

    Calvinism is founded upon predetermination. Poor people were always destined to be poor because they aren’t worth being wealthy. The wealthy were born to be wealthy because they “have got what it takes” since birth. Calvinism is hard-core conservatism. Calvin would reject a progressive tax system or any kind of subsidies or medicare/medicaid or any kind of public health-care system. God would determine the fate of everyone and noone would be able to change his destiny, because anything that happens has already been written. Basically, the wealthy and powerful of today are not to be questioned or doubted or limited. To do so would be to question god’s authority.
    I think that the republican machine of Texas is preparing to circumvent the results of the next census by shutting out the hispanics and blacks from the political process, possibly via religious argumentation.

  36. 36.

    Josie

    This whole mess simply proves the idiocy of using textbooks instead of primary source material in a history class and of letting politicians get anywhere near education. I am a retired educator from Texas, and I am appalled at what I am reading about these meetings. Hopefully, someone with some authority will take charge at some point and throw these ridiculous decision in the trash can where they belong. If I were teaching history at this point, I would simply choose to ignore the directives. Textbook are not necessary, indeed they are superfluous, to the teaching of history.

  37. 37.

    jwb

    The Board of Education is an embarrassment even to many of the Goopers in Texas. Apparently, there is a plan afoot to move to delivering more curricular content via the web rather than by textbook. Turns out that web content is not under the jurisdiction of the Board of Education, so it’s a way of making an end run around the Board.

  38. 38.

    Warren Terra

    Let the word go out here: The Texas State Board of Education today refused to require that students learn that the Constitution prevents the U.S. government from promoting one religion over all others.

    Couple this with removing Thomas Jefferson from the curriculum to make room for John Calvin, a man who, let us not forget, literally used state power to have someone (Michael Servetus, a great man and a DFH by contemporary standards) burned at the stake for heresy, and you’ve got a real sense of movement towards a goal …

  39. 39.

    Jordan G.

    We are talking about John Calvin, the French Theologian correct? Meaning, they are replacing an American President with an historical French religious winger? Amazing.

    French religious crazy is now > avowed religious skeptic Founding Father.

  40. 40.

    MikeJ

    I don’t know who John Calvin is.

    Hobbes is the one who said life is nasty, brutish, and short. Calvin was nasty, brutish, and short.

    It was predestined that somebody would make that joke.

  41. 41.

    JGabriel

    @BW Smith:

    If they remove Jefferson, how will the wingnuts survive without their tree of liberty quote?

    They’ll re-attribute it to Jesus. Or maybe Revelations.

    .

  44. 44.

    eemom

    In other news I just heard Eric Fuckwad Camtor, the only Jewish republican in Comgress, say that he “stands with the Bishops” on the abortion language in the Senate bill. Sweeeeet.

  47. 47.

    Josie

    @josie
    “ridiculous decisions”
    I cannot fix it in the original post since I am told I do not have permission to edit.

  49. 49.

    WereBear

    How is it that, in my own lifetime, this country has gone backwards?

    This is especially awful because jobs for ill-educated high school graduates are pretty thin on the ground already.

  50. 50.

    jonas

    I’m not surprised to see Calvin heroized in the new right-wing textbooks. In some respects, Calvin is a wet dream for these folks: he oversaw a strict Protestant regime in Geneva, Switzerland in the sixteenth century which made church attendance compulsory and punished all manner of “unchristian” behavior, large and small, from swearing to dice-playing, in public courts. He had one of his harshest critics burned at the stake. What good Texas wingnut wouldn’t love that shit? On the other hand, Geneva under Calvin had what could be called Europe’s first state-run health care system at the time and a renowned system of public welfare for the poor and indigent. Uh oh. Sounds like “social justice” to me.

  51. 51.

    Warren Terra

    @Josie:

    If I were teaching history at this point, I would simply choose to ignore the directives. Textbook are not necessary, indeed they are superfluous, to the teaching of history.

    None of these concerns are about the really good and great teachers who go above and beyond and around the requirements. They’re about the poor teachers, and the mediocre teachers, the overworked teachers, the teachers drafted into teaching the wrong subject, and the classrooms with no assigned teacher, getting by on substitutes.

    Teaching is hard work, and we don’t help by giving teachers little respect and starting them with just epically lousy pay, nor do we help as a society by acting upset and surprised that teachers want to end their career at a decent salary and with a decent pension to show for thirty years of shaping our children. Your comment to the contrary, if this is the textbook, it’s what most of the kids in History classes will be studying, and it’s what a preponderance of their teachers will be working from – and because the large Texas market strongly influences the textbooks that get published, not just for Texas.

  52. 52.

    PanAmerican

    I like to think of Jesus like with giant eagles wings, and singin’ lead vocals for Lynyrd Skynyrd with like an angel band and I’m in the front row and I’m hammered drunk!

  53. 53.

    Daveboy

    The only good silver lining to this dark cloud is that other states might take a huge shit on this idea and refuse to purchase any textbooks that cater to Texas “standards”. Because of digital technology, this is actually pretty feasible. Then in 10 years the Texas educational is looked at as a joke, and their students can’t get into colleges, and in the end conservatives ruin people’s lives for their dumb idealogy (as usual).

  55. 55.

    Cat Lady

    @Daveboy:

    There are always unintended consequences, and I can easily imagine public school applicants to colleges will automatically be disqualified if they’re from Texas. I wonder what the UT admissions policy will be if this really goes wide. UT would have to have a retard track for their own citizens.

  56. 56.

    Josie

    Warren Terra – I am well aware of the hard work, low pay and lower pensions that are inflicted on teachers. I live it. My point is that, in this day of limitless access to information, textbooks are out of date even before they are published. Hopefully, this whole mess will encourage all educators to throw them out the window and actually teach. As Daveboy says, other states, if they care to, can break the stranglehold that the Texas board of education has on the textbook world.

  57. 57.

    Midnight Marauder

    @iasa:

    not to defend the lunatics of my state, but as near as i can tell, Jefferson has been removed from the World History curriculum,not the entire Social Studies curriculum.

    Don’t worry. That’s not much of a defense anyway.

  58. 58.

    calipygian

    This makes me giggle:

    5:31 – A testifier wants students to learn that LBJ and the CIA had President Kennedy assassinated in 1963. The train has officially pulled into Crazy Town.

    This too:

    The board removed the word “capitalism” from the standards, mandating that the term for that economic system be called “free enterprise” throughout the standards. Board members such as Terri Leo and Ken Mercer charged that “capitalism” is a negative term used by “liberal professors in academia.”

    And this proves that its all about tribalism and pissing off the liebruls:

    Board members added Friedrich von Hayek to a standard in the high school economics course even though some board members acknowledged that they had no idea who the influential Austrian-born economist even was.

    I wonder if they knew that Hayek wrote this in Road to Serfdom:

    “Nor is there any reason why the state should not assist the individuals in providing for those common hazards of life against which, because of their uncertainty, few individuals can make adequate provision. Where, as in the case of sickness and accident, neither the desire to avoid such calamities nor the efforts to overcome their consequences are as a rule weakened by the provision of assistance – where, in short, we deal with genuinely insurable risks – the case for the state’s helping to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance is very strong… Wherever communal action can mitigate disasters against which the individual can neither attempt to guard himself nor make the provision for the consequences, such communal action should undoubtedly be taken,” – The Road To Serfdom (Chapter 9).

    I, for one, welcome our future Chinese overlords…

  59. 59.

    Gwangung

    Heh. They’re gonna say they interned Germans and Italians. As well as Japanese in WWII so it COULDN’T have been racist. Hmmm. Nearly all JAs vs a fraction of the others. Total of 110,000 plus vs a magnitude less of the others combined? Ethnicity of Japanese meant they INHERENTLY couldn’t determine loyalty?

    Not racist, my ass!

  60. 60.

    Tax Analyst

    @BW Smith:

    If they remove Jefferson, how will the wingnuts survive without their tree of liberty quote?

    Oh, that’s easy – attribute it to John Calvin.

    See? No problem.

    Shorter Texas School Board – When facts are messy we re-arrange them to suit our preferences.

  61. 61.

    Gwangung

    I wonder if they knew that Hayek wrote this in Road to Serfdom

    They’d have to be able to read, first.

  63. 63.

    demo woman

    @Hann1bal: Hmmm!… GA public colleges including GA Tech have to spend time explaining that Earth Science is just a theory. They have to have lectures explaining other theories.

  64. 64.

    Donald G

    @GambitRF:

    hahaha, what? Do they consider the Louisiana Purchase a precursor to reckless liberal spending or something? Or is it because he slept with black chicks?

    Why is Jefferson evil to a Talibangelical?

    1.) He co-wrote with James Madison (the author of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights) the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions on Religious Freedom which were the first steps to establishing the separation of church and state.

    2.) Jefferson was a Deist who did not believe in the concept of the Holy Trinity. He found Trinitarianism to be utterly silly and was openly scornful of the concept in his personal letters to people like Dr. Franklin and John Adams.

    3.) Jefferson created his own version of the Bible, that consisted only of the Four Gospels (the Books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John), passages displayed side by side, but only those passages that agreed with each other. Everything else, he discarded.

    4.) For actions like those above, Jefferson was often denounced in his own time as an atheist.

    For real heresy, though, the right wing (and Glenn Beck) should read Thomas Paine’s “The Age of Reason”. After the blood finished shooting from Beck’s eyes, he’d have to add Paine to his list of evil, along with Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight D Eisenhower, and Woody Guthrie. This would be highly ironic, since Beck portrays himself as the second coming of Thomas Paine.

  66. 66.

    Martin

    The only answer that makes sense with the Calvin introduction is that Jefferson was yanked because he dismissed all of the Christian voodoo and left only the moral teachings. Texas doesn’t want kids to even brush by the notion that God won’t smite them blind with a thunderbolt should they masturbate.

  67. 67.

    Dannie22

    I was watching France24 this morning. They did a piece on the Creation Museum in Kentucky and Liberty University in Virginia. Some paleontology professor was saying that the dinosaur bones are 4,000 years old. I didn’t watch the whole piece but all I could think of was Americas ignorance on display for the whole world to see.

  69. 69.

    kay

    @Donald G:

    I had never heard Jefferson created his own Bible. I’m just in awe of that. It’s ballsy and great, in a way. “He discarded the rest”.

    Ruthless editing, of the Bible.

    Wouldn’t you think more people would have tried that, over the years?

  70. 70.

    Jake

    @eemom:

    He needs to go to Temple tonight and have his rabbi smack him around…He is an embarrassement to his jewish roots. Then he needs to visit a jewish home for the aged and see how medicare has given these elderly people a chance to survive and play with their grandchildren.

    God help any jews in Texas…The next chapter in the textbook will tell little Texas kids how Jews killed Jesus and therefore almost destroyed the birth of a nation.

  71. 71.

    Snarky Pickles

    @RSA:

    Wow. I’m imagining a Texas history book. . . .

    The morons board removed Jefferson as one of the great thinkers of the Enlightenment. He remains in other areas.
    I realize that’s not much help, but (unlike the board itself) we should be accurate.

  72. 72.

    Dreggas

    @kay:

    the ones who compiled what we call “the bible” did just that. Using books that they agreed with and axing those they did not.

  74. 74.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    @kay:

    Wouldn’t you think more people would have tried that, over the years?

    Imagine if Obama were to try that today.

    More recently, Teddy Roosevelt tried to simplify and rationalize the spelling of common words in English along phonetic lines,and gave directions to the Government Printing Office that the new and improved spellings were to be used on govt. documents starting in 1906. Imagine the reaction to that in today’s political environment.

  76. 76.

    Donald G

    @WereBear:

    How is it that, in my own lifetime, this country has gone backwards?

    Certain social and economic forces brought about by the rapid social and political changes of the sixties and early seventies creating a backlash that brought to prominence people like James Watt, Ed Meese, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Ralph Reed, Gary Bauer, Robert Bork, Antonin Scalia, Bob Dornan, Pat Buchanan, Morton Downey, Jr., Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey, Phil Gramm, Rick Santorum, and Chuck Grassley and gave them roles in shaping our discourse, our politics, and our lives.

    Double digit inflation and unemployment combined with American impotence over the Iranian Hostage Crisis and the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan set the stage for the election of Ronald Reagan and his military buildup leading to the return of an American swagger on the world stage that we had lost after the debacle of Vietnam. Our easy and painless victory in Gulf War I following the test runs of Granada and Panama kicked the ass of “the Vietnam Syndrome” and led to increasing confidence in using the military in future.

    Clinton Derangement Syndrome and tension over social changes such as the increasing visibility of GLBT people again led to a backlash and brought the Gingrich Revolution and Oklahoma City.

    The Supreme Court Coup of 2000, followed by 9-11, the Afghan War, the 2002 midterms, the Iraq War, and the 2004 Election further polarized the country.

    The last straw for the Right was the Inauguration of Barack Obama, The Right’s retrograde forces have spent the last thirty years burrowing into the system during their ascendency and “long march through the institutions”. But time and demographics are not on their side. If they are to retard progress, they have to destroy the institutions of our society – health care, the financial system, public education, the legal system – NOW.

    Remember, an isolated, fearful, poor, sick, ignorant, superstitious populace is one that is easy to bamboozle and control.

  77. 77.

    General Egali Tarian Stuck

    @DBrown: I don’t actually care what the dimwitted motherfuckers in Texas do. We have our hands full over here in NM keeping them off our lawns and shitting all over our forests and making a general nuisance of themselves. I say let the dumbasses secede. Wouldn’t make me no never mind. They could replace Jefferson with Big Top PeeWee for all I care.

  78. 78.

    LuciaMia

    Well, shit, I guess they’ll have to take out any photo’s of Mount Rushmore. Or maybe they’ll simply Photoshop over Thom’s face with St. Ronnie.

  79. 79.

    Donald G

    @kay:

    I had never heard Jefferson created his own Bible. I’m just in awe of that. It’s ballsy and great, in a way. “He discarded the rest”.

    During two periods of my life, when my wife was in grad school, I spent weeks in university libraries (at William and Mary and Texas Christian University) reading every scholarly work on Jefferson I could find, including collections of his letters. I once compiled a notebook of Jefferson quotes on religion and freedom of thought that I would like to have used to piss off fundamentalists who liked to maintain that the US was founded as a Christian nation. Over the last 15-20 years and three cross-country moves, I’ve since lost that notebook.

  80. 80.

    John

    @iasa:

    not to defend the lunatics of my state, but as near as i can tell, Jefferson has been removed from the World History curriculum,not the entire Social Studies curriculum.

    It seems reasonable that John Calvin should be in a world history curriculum and Thomas Jefferson should not. So not so crazy, I guess.

  81. 81.

    John

    @Alex S.:

    I assume this is the wingnuts’ gloss on Calvin, but I don’t think those of us who are not wingnuts should accept such nonsense.

  82. 82.

    Donald G

    @John:

    It seems reasonable that John Calvin should be in a world history curriculum and Thomas Jefferson should not. So not so crazy, I guess.

    Well, Calvin and Jefferson were both part of my world history curriculum ca. 1980. Then again, I was by grace of Divine Providence born a Virginian and not a Texan.

  83. 83.

    Chris

    @Donald G:
    I’m printing out this concise distillation of their strategy and posting it nearby to remind me what these fuckers are up to. I know all this..but I don’t very often string it all together. Its the long version of what I tell my boys at the Mcdonalds drive thru..”this motherfucker that owns this place wants you to stay ignorant so you can spend your career here..so HIS children can attend an ivy league school”

  84. 84.

    Donald G

    @Chris:

    I’m printing out this concise distillation of their strategy and posting it nearby to remind me what these fuckers are up to. I know all this..but I don’t very often string it all together. Its the long version of what I tell my boys at the Mcdonalds drive thru..”this motherfucker that owns this place wants you to stay ignorant so you can spend your career here..so HIS children can attend an ivy league school”

    I always get nervous when I type something like that up that it sounds like one of those “manifestoes” kooks write just before they do something nasty that ends up on the news.

    Either that, or I’ve turned into the liberal version of BoB.

  85. 85.

    annamissed

    I believe it was the Calvinists, who were the first Christian denomination to remove the traditional taboo of usury. Calvinism is nothing short of the ideal, if not the official religion, of capitalism. Everything about it justifies and praises elite power as the supreme authority. It’s no surprise that such an ideological view of religion was born when feudalism was all the rage.

  87. 87.

    Bostondreams

    @Donald G:

    Too bad that apparently, Thomas Paine has been completely erased from the Texas standards. A member objected to his anti-Christian rants and his political and economic beliefs.
    Really.

  88. 88.

    Bostondreams

    @Zam:

    You are dang lucky. A friend of mine in Florida almost lost his job for using Zinn in the classroom.

  90. 90.

    Bostondreams

    @John:

    But considering that the original standard encouraged students to explore Enlightenment thinkers, which Calvin and Aquinas most certainly were not and Jefferson was, it is a stupid move. Thomas Jefferson IS important in WORLD history standards as one of the most important figures of the Enlightenment whose writings heavily influenced the French Revolution and the Central and South American revolutions, among others.

  91. 91.

    Donald G

    @Bostondreams:

    Too bad that apparently, Thomas Paine has been completely erased from the Texas standards. A member objected to his anti-Christian rants and his political and economic beliefs. Really.

    Heaven forfend that our schoolchildren know the history and philosophies and thoughts of significant figures of the age.

    Especially since the textual evidence of their writings subverts the mythological narrative the so-called religious right wants to promulgate.

    Again, the prospect of an educated populace threatens their power and control, just as the Catholic Church was threatened by humanists translating the Bible into the vernacular and by the Protestant reformation.

  92. 92.

    Chris

    @Donald G:
    Nah…doesnt read like a manifesto at all. It reads like a recipe. A recipe for social turmoil no doubt but a recipe nonetheless. I seriously doubt many of the wingers would even dispute your reading of history.
    edit–Well they may have a slight disagreement with the coup thing back in 2000..LOL

  93. 93.

    Beej

    Here’s the real irony. If you live in Houston, Dallas, or San Antonio and attend a public school, the chances are you are Hispanic, African American, or some other racial or cultural minority. A large percentage of the white students in these cities are attending private schools. Ultimately, then, the students to whom these so-called “standards” will be applied are those who either a) know better, or b) will find this version of history laughable and/or insulting. Nice going wingnuts! You’ve succeeded in proving that you’re just as idiotic and nasty as most of Texas’ minority communities always thought you were.

  94. 94.

    Lidane

    @Zam:

    Howard Zinn should be required reading for every high school student. Richard Dawkins too.

    I’ve been apoplectic all day about this idiocy. These SBOE assholes are an embarrassment to my state and I wish they’d all leave.

  95. 95.

    DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)

    Texans like to proudly say ‘don’t mess with Texas’. Why? Because they are busy messing it up all on their own and don’t want any out of state help.

    ‘White’washing indeed. Wingnut Texans believe in freedom! They want to be free to tell you what your kids get to learn. You are free to accept it or leave the state. I have no doubt that this is their idea. Make minorities invisible and everything will magically get ‘better’.

    This is what happens when Wingnut Texans proudly embrace freedumb.

  96. 96.

    flukebucket

    @demkat620:

    Why Jefferson? Well, this quote has been attributed to him

    And the day will come, when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as His Father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva, in the brain of Jupiter.

    I don’t think Calvin would have approved.

  97. 97.

    Anne Laurie

    @Josie:

    This whole mess simply proves the idiocy of using textbooks instead of primary source material in a history class and of letting politicians get anywhere near education… If I were teaching history at this point, I would simply choose to ignore the directives. Textbook are not necessary, indeed they are superfluous, to the teaching of history.

    I suspect the impulse to scrub that commie perv Jefferson from the records began when some earnest wingnut went to the primary sources and found out about Thom’s “Deist Bible”. (Probably after those same devilish ‘primary sources’ revealed that “America’s first native genius” really did father Sally Hemmings’ children; in Wingnut-World, it’s perfectly okay to hump the help but it’s a grave faux pas to get caught at it.) “Primary sources” are a threat to social unity, and should therefore be kept away from young children and those otherwise susceptible to deviation from the True Path.

    Ironically, I can remember when Protestants took great pride in reading their original “primary source”, i.e. the Bible, for themselves, rather than depending on a religious hierarchy to interpret it for the illiterates. I knew John Paul George Ringo’s jumping into bed with the salvation-by-faith-alone crew was going to destroy the last shreds of Catholic intellectual respectability, but I didn’t know it heralded the deathknell for Protestant self-respect as well!

  98. 98.

    Bostondreams

    I love the fact that they removed Delores Huerta from the standards because one of the members felt that her socialism kept her from being a good role model for children. And then suggested Helen Keller as the kind of role model they needed.
    The same Helen Keller that this idiot apparently never knew was a hardcore socialist until the end of her days.

  99. 99.

    DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)

    @Bostondreams:

    Well I can kinda understand why Helen Keller would be a choice of theirs. Helen was deaf and blind to everything around her, which is the ideal child as far as a wingnut is concerned. They want their children to be just like that, at the mercy of their educators, blind and deaf to the reality that surrounds them.

    Just like their parents.

  100. 100.

    BruinKid

    From the New York Times piece on this:

    “I reject the notion by the left of a constitutional separation of church and state,” said David Bradley, a conservative from Beaumont who works in real estate. “I have $1,000 for the charity of your choice if you can find it in the Constitution.”

    It’s an extension of the Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. Now pay up, you idiot.

    Oh, and even if the specific words are not in the Constitution, is Bradley willing to say Thomas Jefferson was WRONG in his letter to the Danbury Baptists? What about the Treaty of Tripoli in 1797 that specifically says, “the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion”? Why didn’t George Washington complain about that language?

    Idiots. These people are idiots. But they’re not content with just being idiots, they want the rest of us to be as stupid as them.

  101. 101.

    WereBear

    @Donald G: An excellent summing up, and it’s not a rant; sadly, it’s just a good overview.

    This Texas textbook move gives up a look at both the chicken and the egg; does ignorance lead to the inability to make logical decisions, or is it the other way around?

    As it happens, I spent seventh grade in a Christian school, and I do not remember learning anything there; not one science concept, line of poetry, or bit of history. As I can, with other schools.

    What I do remember is our principal’s graphic descriptions of hell, (chapel twice a week) the really awful cafeteria food, getting our dress hems measured with a yardstick (pants were forbidden,) and my Amishly dressed friend Drusilla, who has either left the religion or is now suffering a truly crushing depression.

    Because it offered no hope for life.

  102. 102.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I miss Molly Ivins. I really, really miss her. What she would have to say about these shenanegans . . . .

  103. 103.

    BruceFromOhio

    @Donald G:

    Remember, an isolated, fearful, poor, sick, ignorant, superstitious populace is one that is easy to bamboozle and control.

    The most dangerous citizen is one who believes there is nothing left to lose.

  104. 104.

    fmbJo

    I’m waiting for them to mandate using Conservapedia instead of Wikipedia. Also waiting breathlessly for that gang at Conservapedia to finish editing the Bible to make it more conservative. They get more creative in their death spiral.

  106. 106.

    Phoebe

    @Josie: Yeah. This whole Texas-controls-us-all fact of life tilts the scales even further against the entire idea of the McDonald’s/Ford-style assembly line standardization of education at all.

    Not only does it fail on several levels education-wise, but it’s vulnerable to the very thing people think it’ll prevent: actual wrongnesses being taught. People freak out over home-schooled kids being taught creationism, and I certainly sympathize, but at least home-schooled kids know they’re going against the grain of majority scientific consensus. Public school kids think they’re part of the giant truth machine, and are much much less likely to question what they’ve been told, or ever consult a primary source.

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