Cynthia Dunbar sounds just as extreme as she was when she left the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) at the end of 2010. Dunbar spoke Sunday night in Dallas as part of a panel discussion after a screening of the new documentary film “The Revisionaries.” The film, which premiered on Friday at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, chronicles efforts by Dunbar and other religious-right SBOE members to hijack the revision of the science and social studies curriculum standards for Texas public schools from 2008 to 2010. Bud Kennedy of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports that Dunbar on Sunday claimed opposition to including creationist’s anti-evolution arguments in science classrooms is “viewpoint discrimination.” From Kennedy’s piece:
Dunbar is one of several board members featured in the documentary, which “stars” former board Chairman Don McLeroy and his “young-Earth” view of creation, including his belief that dinosaurs were alongside other animals aboard Noah’s Ark.
The documentary revisits the board’ 2010 debate over teaching evolution.
Dunbar said even though “experts” oppose discussing other views as science, “that’s what they talked about in pre-Holocaust Germany as well.” She added that “making us a homogenous society that has [only] one ideology that’s acceptable is not what this society was based upon.”
While she was a member of the State Board of Education, Dunbar authored a book in which she describes public schools as unconstitutional, “tyrannical” and a “subtly deceptive tool of perversion.” In 2010 she led successful opposition on the SBOE against requiring that students in social studies classrooms learn how the Constitution “protected religious freedom by barring government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion over all others.” Dunbar supported a substitute requirement (which the SBOE passed) that questions whether separation of church and state is a key principle of the Constitution. Dunbar chose not to run for re-election in 2010.
You can read Kennedy’s full article about what Dunbar said at “The Revisionaries” panel discussion here.
