Texas Sen. Ted Cruz had an interesting answer to a question from Dallas Morning News writer Todd Gillman last week: Q. Is [former Sen. Joseph] McCarthy someone you admire? A. I’m not going to engage in the back and forth and the attacks. Several Democrats have demonstrated a willingness to attack me by name. I’m […]
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)
Rick Perry Talks CSCOPE with Glenn Beck
You couldn’t be blamed if up to now you looked at this CSCOPE hubbub and dismissed it as mostly just a case of a few fringe loons with Internet connections talking to each other. In fact, the most prominent individual — at least as far as electeds go — up to this point to engage […]
Are Texas Christian Schools Indoctrinating Students… into Islam?
Just how silly is the claim that CSCOPE — the curriculum management system that far-right activists are determined to destroy — is a tool for indoctrinating Texas students into radical Islam? We figure it’s very silly for most folks — unless they also think Christian parochial schools are in on the conspiracy. TFN Insider has […]
Talking Points
From today’s TFN News Clips: “Do you think the Catholic Diocese of Austin promotes a Muslim agenda?” — Texas State Board of Education member Thomas Ralitff, R-Mount Pleasant, noting that CSCOPE, a curriculum program criticized by far-right activists as supposedly anti-Christian and pro-Mulsim, is used in hundreds of public school districts as well as schools […]
These People Sound Like Nuts
So why is it hard to take right-wing critics of the CSCOPE curriculum system in Texas seriously? Check out this recent newspaper advertisement published by a Tea Party group near Austin: “The schools have declared war on our children in the form of C-SCOPE curriculum — COMMUNIST, MARXIST, PROGRESSIVE, LEFTIST DOGMA, PROPAGANDA, AND INDOCTRINATION at […]
