On Thursday Donna Bahorich was appointed the new chair of the Texas State Board of Education. In this Houston Chronicle story on Bahorich’s appointment, a former chair, Don McLeroy, left the following comment:
I find it ironic that it its Mr. Ratliff, and the Texas Freedom Network(By the way, thank you for not including them in your story!) are the ones out there making contentious statements; it was always that way. The media has portrayed that it was the religious conservatives that caused ’embarrassing public fights’ when it was actually the other side. Just look again at who is ‘publicly fighting’ in your story.”
No, Dr. McLeroy, TFN and the media did not create the circus at the board. We were all just there with cameras, quoting you — the ringmaster during many of these debates — accurately.
One hates to call McLeroy a liar, but in an interview early in his tenure he admitted, no, bragged that he was a young earth creationist but he would not let his religious views influence his role as chairman.
What a liar.
Not days later he was pulling out his three-ring binder of Answers in Genesis clippings expounding on Biblical creationism and it never stopped. McLeroy set back Texas education decades, and the clown car has been replaced by one incompetent driver after another. Here we are again thanks to Governor Pander.
Thanks, Doc: Could not have said it better. You are correct in emphasizing that the root of the problem is the governor’s appointments to chair TxSBOE. I suspect that it’s the same people or persons who have advised our present and former govs on these matters. I grow weary of the entire situation.
All this makes homeschooling sound like a good alternative.
If you’re inherently embarrassed by dissent (which might be the case for some strong authoritarian follower types), then both sides are at fault; the conservatives could just have easily have eliminated the embarrassment by conceding everything to the liberals as vice-versa. (Has he never read Clausewitz?)
Alternately, you might be embarrassed by the arguments fielded. Those arguments fielded by the liberal wing of the board seem no cause for embarrassment to those introducing them that I can see; and if they embarrass the conservatives by making the religious arguments look bad, or the conservatives are embarrassed by their own arguments… well, that would seem to be the fault of the conservatives and their arguments for being too weak to provide sufficient support to their policy recommendations.