Once again creationists are trying to undermine science education in Texas. On Wednesday the Texas House Higher Education Committee will consider legislation that would bar the state’s colleges and universities from discriminating against or penalizing “in any manner” faculty members or students who engage in research on “intelligent design” — the name creationists have given […]
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 on Those CSCOPE Lessons
Educator Ed Darrell has been digging into the far right’s anti-CSCOPE witch hunt on his illuminating and wonderfully named blog, Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub. He has some good information on the lessons right-wingers have been distorting in their absurd attempts to smear the folks behind that curriculum management system, which is used in hundreds of Texas […]
TFN's Kathy Miller: Politics Trump Common Sense in the Far Right's Manufactured CSCOPE 'Controversy'
Today the Austin American-Statesman published a column from Texas Freedom Network President Kathy Miller about the far right’s hyperbolic attacks on the curriculum management system called CSCOPE. We wanted to post it here for TFN Insider readers. When Politics Trump Common Sense Too often politics get in the way of common sense. That’s the case […]
Dear Religious Right: It's Not About You
If you happened to be on Twitter or on your favorite conservative website on Sunday, you may have noticed the latest faux outrage on the right. Search engine Google, on its homepage, transformed its famous doodle into a version featuring the late labor leader Cesar Chavez. The Google Doodle has become a bit of an […]
Is the Right's CSCOPE Witch Hunt Now Spiraling Way Out of Control?
The right-wing assault on CSCOPE in Texas has intensified with Senate Education Committee Chairman Dan Patrick, R-Houston, posting on his Facebook page a statement from state Attorney General Greg Abbott. Abbott’s statement echoes critics of the curriculum system, which is used in hundreds of Texas public and private schools: “The Attorney General’s Office has been […]
