Last night the far-right Family Research Council hosted a 90-minute “prayercast” against health insurance reform efforts in Congress. Never mind the abuse of faith to kill efforts to make health care accessible and affordable for all Americans, rich or poor, healthy or sick. That’s become fairly common rhetoric from the right in recent months. But the […]
social studies
What Are They Afraid Of?
Today far-right members of the Texas State Board of Education made it clear that they no longer want input from teachers, academic experts and other community members who have been helping revise the state’s social studies curriculum standards. Republicans Pat Hardy of Fort Worth and Bob Craig of Lubbock (neither of whom are liberals) as well as Democrat […]
Talking Points
From today’s TFN News Clips: “If what we were doing in the classrooms was that liberal, the state of Texas would be a liberal state because we’ve all been teaching for many, many years. I don’t see any evidence that Texas is a liberal state.” — Deborah Pennington, social studies coordinator for the Conroe Independent […]
Rehabilitating Joseph McCarthy?
To the abundant evidence showing that ideologues and non-historians shouldn’t be deciding what students learn in their history classrooms, add another exhibit: far-right efforts to use our kids’ classrooms to rehabilitate the image of Joseph McCarthy and turn him into an American hero. Sadly, that’s what some members of the Texas State Board of Education and […]
The War on Neil Armstrong
Once again, the Texas affiliate of the far-right group Focus on the Family is having trouble getting its facts straight. This week the group is criticizing “the media and Austin liberals” for “distorting” the debate over the State Board of Education’s revision of social studies curriculum standards for public schools. The group is urging that […]
