Fifty years ago today, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That landmark legislation bars discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Its enactment came after decades of struggle by civil rights advocates in the face of virulent opposition — opposition that often resorted to brutality and even murder. President Johnson didn’t sweep away […]
Education
Texas has an increasingly diverse public education system with a public school enrollment of more than 5 million. Unfortunately, that public education system is also the target of right-wing extremists seeking to privatize our neighborhood public schools and push a culture-war agenda in the classroom.
To that end, Texas Freedom Network tirelessly fights for Texas public school students at the Capitol — opposing private school voucher legislation, sticking up for students’ freedoms, advocating for truthful, censorship-free lessons and textbooks, and more. We’ve also conducted groundbreaking research into what is taught in classrooms on subjects like sex education and religion.
Resources
- Teach the Truth: Texans United Against Censorship in Education
- Can This Class Be Saved? The ‘Hobby Lobby’ Public School Bible Curriculum (2014 report)
- Reading, Writing & Religion II (2013 report)
- Sex Education in Public Schools: Progress in the Lone Star State (2011 report)
- Just Say Don’t Know: Sex Education in Texas Public Schools (2009 report)
- The State Board of Education: Dragging Texas Schools into the Culture Wars (2008 report)
- Reading Writing & Religion: Teaching the Bible in Texas Public Schools (2006 report)
- Broken Promises II (2001 report)
- Broken Promises: Charter Schools in Texas (2000 report)
Review of New Book: ‘Teachers Versus the Public’
Our friend Edd Doerr, president of Americans for Religious Liberty, has graciously granted permission for us to publish his review of Teachers versus the Public: What Americans Think about Schools and How to Fix Them, a new publication from Brookings Institute Press. The publication, authored by Paul E. Peterson, Michael Henderson and Martin R. West, purportedly […]
Can This Class Be Saved? In All Aspects of Life, the Bible 'Has Been Good,' Steve Green Says
In an earlier Can This Class Be Saved? post we discussed a speech by Steve Green from April 2013 in which the president of Hobby Lobby discusses his Museum of the Bible public school Bible curriculum that has been approved for a trial run in Mustang, Oklahoma, and what Green’s comments say about his intentions in […]
Can This Class Be Saved? Bible Course Teaches That Adam and Eve Were Actual Historical People
How inappropriate for public schools is the new Bible course curriculum from Museum of the Bible, a nonprofit created by Hobby Lobby President Steve Green? As Mark Chancey, a biblical scholar at Southern Methodist University, points out in his review of The Book: The Bible’s History, Narrative and Impact, the curriculum echoes Green’s belief in the Bible’s complete literal […]
Can This Class Be Saved? Bible Course Says Einstein's Theory of Relativity Backs Up Genesis Creation Story
Christian Creationists believe the Bible’s Genesis story of creation — that God created life, Earth and the rest of the universe in six days — is literally true. That certainly is not the belief of all or even most Christians (or Jews). Even so, SMU biblical scholar Mark Chancey points out that the new Bible curriculum from Museum of the […]