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 […]
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)
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 […]
And Now Terri Leo Chimes in on Science
Texas State Board of Education member Terri Leo, R-Spring, isn’t happy about an op-ed in the Houston Chronicle charging that board creationists (like Ms. Leo) are promoting a “narrow theological debate about the validity of evolution.” State Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, and state Rep. Patrick Rose, D-Dripping Springs, authored the op-ed, in which they warned […]
Whack!
January’s evolution show trial put on by the Texas State Board of Education gave the anti-evolution Discovery Institute a warm fuzzy because one of its co-founders got to share the stage with real scientists. (If you missed it, check out our live blogging that started here.) Because they can’t provide a shred of real scientific evidence […]
Party Poopers
Not everyone was in a festive mood for Evolution Weekend this year. While more than a thousand religious congregations from a wide variety of faith traditions gathered last weekend to celebrate a more positive relationship between religion and science, the Dallas-based Institute for Creation Research (ICR) wanted no part of it. In fact, the ICR used the occasion […]
