Earlier today, the Texas Freedom Network relaunched its Stand Up for Science campaign, the latest installment in our ongoing efforts to ensure Texas schoolchildren receive only mainstream science, and not creationist arguments, in their public school science classes and textbooks. So why now? Because there are some big decisions coming over the next four months […]
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)
Creationist Tells Parents: Science Textbooks Must Acknowledge God's Word
The Texas Home School Coalition (THSC), run by religious-right activist Tim Lambert, is promoting arch-creationist Ken Ham‘s speech at the group’s convention in The Woodlands near Houston next month. An email to the group’s supporters today includes a link to a revealing essay on Ham’s Answers in Genesis website: “Should Homeschoolers Let Children Decide on […]
'The Revisionaries' Documentary about the Texas State Board of Education, TFN Wins Audience Award for PBS Program
We asked you last week to help The Revisionaries documentary win the Audience Award from the PBS series Independent Lens — and you came through! On Monday the folks at PBS announced that The Revisionaries, which had been trailing by hundreds of votes early last Friday, captured the award at the end of the day. […]
VOTE TODAY: Documentary Featuring TFN’s Work at the Texas SBOE Is Up for Audience Award
***Click here to vote for The Revisionaries as the Independent Lens Audience Award winner for 2013.*** Over the past year, the award-winning documentary The Revisionaries has shined a bright light on the politics that surround the bruising textbook battles at the Texas State Board of Education. Starting at the prestigious Tribeca Film festival in New […]
Want to Know Why Texas Is STILL Arguing about Evolution?
Many have been mystified that, even in the 21st century, Texas remains embroiled in a heated debate over evolution. In 2008 and 2009, for example, creationists on and off the State Board of Education insisted that new science curriculum standards for Texas public schools include requirements that would open classroom doors to anti-evolution junk science. […]
