Bill Nye the Science Guy has gone viral with a new web video that simply must be shared with TFN Insider readers. In the vid, Nye makes an appeal to the grownups: And I say to the grownups, if you want to deny evolution and live in your world, in your world that’s completely inconsistent […]
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)
David Barton’s Very Bad Week in Review
The decision by Thomas Nelson Publishers to drop David Barton’s book, The Jefferson Lies, was, as we said, commendable. What it wasn’t is something that came out of nowhere. No, the tide against Barton had been building for some time as even those in Barton’s core audience began to sound the alarm. The backlash culminated […]
Hypocrite Alert: Texas Ed Board Member Ken Mercer Blames ‘the Left’ for Curriculum Changes HE Passed
Members of the creationist bloc on the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) have mistated the truth so often that they can’t even keep their own distortions straight. Case in point: Speaking on Saturday at the “Texas Freedom Rally at the Alamo” in San Antonio, SBOE member Ken Mercer told Tea Party activists some real […]
Texas State Board of Education Creationists Reject Expertise (Again)
The commitment to mediocrity continues to thrive at the Texas State Board of Education. Last week the board’s creationist bloc once again stopped board reformers — both Republicans and Democrats — from changing the outrageously politicized process for revising curriculum standards for Texas public schools. Observers who watched the state board revise curriculum standards for […]
Is David Bradley Betraying Anti-Muslim Extremists in Texas?
Will we soon be hearing cries of betrayal from religious-righters who have been warning that Muslims are using charter schools to indoctrinate Texas kids? Campaign finance reports filed with the Texas Ethics Commission show that David Bradley, a leader of the creationist faction on the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE), received three late contributions […]
