UPDATE: Don’t just stew in frustration. Do something about it. – As we have battled anti-evolution extremists on the Texas State Board of Education over the past year, we knew that a legislative assault on science was inevitable. On Friday, the last day for filing legislation at the Texas Capitol, a far-right lawmaker from East Texas […]
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)
Putting Party Politics Ahead of Texas Kids
This is the clearest case yet of anti-evolution extremists putting political partisanship ahead of giving Texas kids a sound science education. Now the State Republican Executive Committee (SREC) is pressuring Republicans on the Texas State Board of Education to require that public school students learn phony “weaknesses” of evolution in their science classrooms. The committee passed a […]
Using the Law to Undermine Science
Creationists are taking their efforts to undermine science education to the Texas Capitol. In April of last year, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board rejected an application from the Dallas-based Institute for Creation Research to offer master’s degrees in science education in Texas. Members of the coordinating board clearly recognized the ICR’s program as simply […]
Don McLeroy, Faith, and Science
The Austin American-Statesman has a long profile of Texas State Board of Education chairman Don McLeroy today. The College Station dentist explains his opposition to evolution and his insistence that students learn there are “weaknesses” to this core scientific concept. On the other side of the debate are prominent scientists, such as David Hillis of […]
Texas Needs YOU
If you’re a regular visitor to TFN Insider, you know that sound science is under siege in Texas. We have one of the highest teen birthrates in the country, but extremists demand that public schools teach abstinence-only in sexuality education classes. Creationists on the State Board of Education are trying to dumb down the public […]
