It appears that the Texas State Board of Education‘s social conservatives and their supporters have embarked on a new campaign of blanket smears against almost everyone involved in the revision of social studies curriculum standards. And the attacks increasingly sound almost like unhinged rants. This week state board member Ken Mercer, R-San Antonio, and Bill […]
Ken Mercer
Ken Mercer Attacks Teachers (Again)
Need more evidence of the contempt right-wing members of the Texas State Board of Education have for classroom teachers? Check out a column from San Antonio board member Ken Mercer this week on the conservative Web site Texas Insider. Mercer uses the piece to criticize his opponent — Tim Tuggey — in the March 2010 […]
Quotas for Conservatives in Social Studies?
The San Antonio Express-News has this story up online today: Texas high school students would learn about such significant individuals and milestones of conservative politics as Newt Gingrich and the rise of the Moral Majority — but nothing about liberals — under the first draft of new standards for public school history textbooks. And the […]
Playing the Victim
Texas State Board of Education Chairwoman Gail Lowe’s peculiar ideas about “citizenship” weren’t the only things that bothered us in the Associated Press article we noted yesterday. Ms. Lowe also suggested that she and fellow members of the board’s religious-right faction were somehow being victimized because of their faith: “Most members of our board are […]
About That ‘Dog-Cat’ Thing Again…
During the recent debate over science curriculum standards in Texas, State Board of Education member Ken Mercer argued that science hadn’t found transitional fossils that would back up the science of evolution. He demanded to know why scientists couldn’t show him a “dog-cat” or a “cat-rat,” for example. It made no difference that some of […]
