Chris Rodda, writing for Daily Kos, explains why giving David Barton any influence over a public school curriculum is a very bad idea. As you know, the Texas State Board of Education has appointed Barton to a panel of so-called “experts” guiding the revision of the state’s social studies curriculum standards. Barton founded and heads WallBuilders, a Texas-based organization that argues against separation of church and state and for basing our laws and society on fundamentalist Christian biblical principles.
Money quote from Rodda’s piece:
“(V)ery little of what I’ve been reading about the Texas BOE seems to convey just how dangerous Barton really is. His agenda for the teaching of American history is not merely a somewhat more religious ‘interpretation’ of history, as some are describing it — it’s an all out, lie packed, completely revised, Christian nationalist version of history, designed to muster support for a very clear political agenda.”
Rodda has also shown how Barton’s historical revisionism has already been influential in classrooms. Two years ago she reported that a Barton essay in a U.S. Department of Defense Junior ROTC American history curriculum offers a twisted (and bogus) account of the constitutional principle of church-state separation.
The big problem is that there are no alternative productions going around to churches and schools to explain that Barton’s stuff is a crock of manure, Why not?
This is just another of the many decisions that is destroying our education system.
Barton’s main audience are people who only want to listen to his lies. They close a blind eye and ear to the real facts in preference for his fictionalized version of history.
I’m not so sure Susan. There are pastors out there that are dumber than dirt. I am convinced that a lot of them “…know not what they do…” when they invite Barton. They have just heard about him or maybe their friend Pastor Rhea over at New Beverly Baptist just recommended him over lunch.
Then there is the magic name, and I do not say it in vain: “Jesus.” Get a good-sized rubber stamp with that name, press it on the outside of a garbage can, and 99 out of 100 people will think its contents are holy. The bad guys know their sheep are stupid and gullible, and they use Jesus’s name in just that way to further their evil schemes. In my opinion, that is a true use of the Lord’s name in vain.
Why does this guy have so much influence? At least creationists keep getting plonked by the courts….
Although he is being touted as an “expert” in social studies, Barton is also an intense creationist. Any influence he has over the education of Texas children will be malignant.