Fifty years ago today, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That landmark legislation bars discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Its enactment came after decades of struggle by civil rights advocates in the face of virulent opposition — opposition that often resorted to brutality and even murder. President Johnson didn’t sweep away […]
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)
Absurd: Creation Museum Says New Dinosaur Skeleton Proves Bible History Is Literally True
The Creation Museum in Kentucky is unveiling a new exhibit: an Allosaurus skeleton that it says proves that the biblical story of creation is true. From Talking Points Memo: “While evolutionists use dinosaurs more than anything to promote their worldview, especially to young students, our museum uses dinosaurs to help tell the account of history according to […]
Texas Ed Board Candidate Worries Schools Are Teaching Communism
It’s sometimes hard to know whether candidates for the State Board of Education (SBOE) in Texas really believe the crazy things they say. Today, for example, the Texas Tribune quotes Eric Mahroum of Fort Worth explaining one of the reasons why he’s running for the District 11 seat on the SBOE: “You have CSCOPE teaching our children that communism […]
Why Does the Right Have Such a Problem with History?
What is it with right-wingers who seem to have so much trouble with American history? See this tweet today from Peggy Venable, Texas policy director for the Koch-funded, anti-government Americans for Prosperity: “Peace is that brief glorious moment in history, when everybody stands around reloading” — Thomas Jefferson Except that there’s no evidence Jefferson ever said that. The Monticello […]
Far-right Org Wants Textbooks to Portray Southern Whites as Victims after the U.S. Civil War
A right-wing organization long involved in the Texas textbook wars wants new history textbooks to portray the treatment of former Confederate states and white southerners after the U.S. Civil War as similar to the British treatment of its colonies in the years leading up the American Revolution. “Radical Reconstruction (1867-1877) featured numerous serious constitutional problems, many of which reprised […]
