As David Barton helps guide the revision of social studies curriculum standards for Texas public schools, it’s important to keep his agenda in mind. In fact, that agenda will be the focus of a conference for right-wing legislators Barton’s organization, WallBuilders, is hosting Nov. 5-8 in Dallas. WallBuilders hopes to draw lawmakers from states around the country to […]
Textbook Censorship
The Texas State Board of Education decides what every student in Texas public schools will learn from kindergarten through high school. The board does so by adopting curriculum standards and textbooks for public schools in the state.
For decades, far-right politicians on the State Board of Education and their extremist allies have taken advantage of this flawed system to dismiss the advice of experts and scholars. They have instead worked to inject their personal views into textbooks on everything from evolution and climate change to the history of slavery, civil rights, and separation of church and state.
Resources
- Report Reveals Serious Flaws in Social Studies Textbooks
- The State Board of Education: Dragging Texas Schools into the Culture Wars (2008 report)
- Evolution, Creationism & Public Schools: Surveying Texas Scientists (2008 report)
- Culture Wars and the Classroom (2010 report)
- Senate Bill 6: Changes in the Textbook Adoption Process (2011 report)
- Texas Science Curriculum Standards: Challenges (2012 report)
- Science Textbook Review (2013 report)
- Social Studies Textbook Review (2014 report)
Why Is Gail Lowe Attacking Teachers?
Sometimes politicians find it easier to point fingers at everybody else for the problems they helped create themselves. That certainly seems true for Gail Lowe, the Republican from Lampasas who chairs the Texas State Board of Education. The state board has been bombarded with thousands of e-mails and letters from people concerned about the ongoing […]
Grading the Social Studies Experts: ‘Fail’
They call these guys social studies “experts”? Please. If the Texas State Board of Education were to fine David Barton and Peter Marshall for each of the factual errors in their reviews of proposed (first drafts) social studies curriculum standards — as the board fines publishers for errors in textbooks — it would add up […]
‘God Unleashed His People’
That’s what happened earlier this spring at the Texas State Board of Education during the vote on new science curriculum standards for public schools, according to Kelly Shackelford of Texas’ Focus on the Family affiliate, Free Market Foundation. When it looked like the board was about to pass science standards that did not include creationist-inspired […]
Please Get David Barton a Real History Book
How did we miss this gem? Buried on page 62 of phony history “expert” David Barton’s 87-page review of the social studies draft curriculum standards is a short section calling for the following revision to the eighth-grade American History requirements: (C) analyze reasons for and the impact of selected examples of civil disobedience in U.S. history […]
