Stop us if you’ve heard this one before. An extremist pastor walks into a library to destroy public property and when the stunt royally backfires on him, he recruits a member of his congregation to craft an unconstitutional city ordinance that essentially made his church members the morality police and the arbiters of what you […]
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)
Gov. Perry’s History Lesson FAIL
Sounds like Texas Gov. Rick Perry might be taking history lessons from the State Board of Education — you know, the panel that adopted heavily politicized and distorted social studies curriculum standards two years ago. During a post-debate gathering at a Dartmouth frat party (seriously) last night, someone asked Gov. Perry about states’ rights. His […]
SBOE Candidate: Barbara Cargill
Because of redistricting, all 15 seats on the Texas State Board of Education will be up for grabs in the November 2012 elections. The results of those elections will determine whether the religious right’s corrosive influence over public education will weaken or grow as the board considers what the next generation of public school students […]
Banned Books Week
A few weeks ago we told you about the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer’s claim that the Bible is the only book banned in the country’s public schools. Fischer has obviously not been to Texas where a course on the Bible is offered as an elective. Wait. He actually has been to Texas. Fischer was […]
Creationist Materials Found Where?!
What’s wrong with this picture? According to the Dallas Observer, this PowerPoint slide was found on the central curriculum website (accessible only by teachers) for the Dallas Independent School District, the 12th-largest public school system in the country. The slide was apparently part of a presentation titled “The Cell Theory.” The Observer notes most of […]
