Another sign that the social studies textbook adoption in Texas this year is going to be messy: A political activist who helped write new curriculum standards for the state’s public schools in 2009 is insisting that new textbooks under consideration this year should promote his revisionist views on issues such as slavery and the Civil […]
Bill Ames
Why Letting Extremists Develop Curriculum Standards for Schools Is a Bad Idea
For reasons unknown, the conservative website Texas Insider insists on publishing the rants of a race-obsessed, right-wing activist. The newest rant from Bill Ames, who has criticized what he sees as an “overrepresentation of minorities” in social studies curriculum standards, once again claims that “leftists” hate America. And it’s predictably filled with ridiculous mistruths. In […]
Race and the Texas Social Studies Standards
A screed published Friday on a San Antonio Express-News blog provides a good example of why it’s a bad idea to turn over to political activists decisions about what our kids learn in their public schools. In his post, Bill Ames lashes out at critics of the heavily politicized new social studies curriculum standards the […]
Bill Ames on Abortion and the SBOE
Bill Ames, appointed by Texas State Board of Education member Don McLeroy to a social studies curriculum writing team, has commented on our post about the relevance of abortion politics to the state board. We are reposting Mr. Ames’ comment here in its entirety: I will explain exactly what abortion politics have to do with […]
The Battle over History and Education
We have seen a series of stories in the last few days about the coming debate at the State Board of Education this week on proposed new social studies curriculum standards in Texas public schools. The Austin American-Statesman yesterday looked at efforts by conservative evangelicals to require that students learn that the United States was […]
