The firestorm over Texas State Board of Education member Cynthia Dunbar’s vicious Internet rant against President-elect Barack Obama is growing. Blogs ranging from Daily Kos to the Texas Observer and points in between are calling out Dunbar’s venomous charge (among others) that Obama is a traitor who “truly sympathizes” with enemies out to destroy America. Dunbar […]
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)
More Extremism from Cynthia Dunbar
Texas State Board of Education member Cynthia Dunbar’s online essay last weekend accusing (now) President-elect Barack Obama of sympathizing with terrorists apparently wasn’t her first trip down the extremism highway. Fort Worth Star-Telegram columnist Linda Campbell today noted that another online essay by the Richmond Republican in September was even more extreme. In her earlier essay, […]
Texas State Board of Education: Extremism on Stage
If anyone still doubts the extremism of the faction that controls the Texas State Board of Education, then read this from board member Cynthia Dunbar, R-Richmond. It’s one thing when the occasional fringe lunatic barfs up mindless smears and drivel. It’s quite another thing when a duly elected official of the State Board of Education accuses a […]
Using Bigotry to Win an Election
It appears that Texas State Board of Education member David Bradley, R-BeaumontBuna, is hoping religious bigotry will help him win re-election. The 12-year incumbent is circulating a flier that suggests his Democratic opponent, Laura Ewing of Friendswood, wants to — pass the smelling salts, please — teach social studies students about Islam. The flier explains that Ewing joined other […]
Is David Bradley the SBOE’s Big Bad Bully?
This year the far-right faction that controls the Texas State Board of Education has been even more contemptuous of teachers and the law than in the past. Now it appears that in addition to bullying teachers, David Bradley, R-Beaumont Buna, may have a history of threatening at least one fellow board member. Some of the […]
