If you were wondering who would carry the anti-science banner on the State Board of Education after the departure of Don McLeroy, ladies and gentlemen, meet Representative Carlos “Charlie” Garza, R-El Paso: Last year my son came to me and started talking about global warming… and I showed him research that said that there is […]
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 the Foundation for Thought and Ethics
Yesterday, TFN broke the news that a creationist organization had formally notified the State Board of Education of its intention to submit materials for the upcoming science adoption. And not just any creationist organization — the Foundation for Thought and Ethics (FTE) is the publisher of the infamous textbook Of Pandas and People that landed […]
Of Pandas and Texas
Breaking news from today’s State Board of Education meeting. The long and short of it — the war on science is officially back on in Texas. See TFN’s press statement for the basics. And watch TFN Insider for more in the days to come. CREATIONIST GROUP PUSHES ANTI-EVOLUTION MATERIALS IN TEXAS SCIENCE CLASSES Texas SBOE […]
Backlash Against the Right in Speaker Fight?
The fight among Texas Republicans over who should be speaker of the state House of Representatives is getting hotter. We suggested on Tuesday that over-the-top efforts by far-right pressure groups and their extremist supporters to replace Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, may well alienate other Republicans. That point was made clearer in a letter from […]
How Fox News Helped Hijack TX Curriculum
The Austin American-Statesman has published a list of PolitiFact Texas articles that drew the most reader interest in 2010. Number Five on the list is a piece early in the year about Fox News co-anchor Gretchen Carlson telling viewers that the Texas State Board of Education was considering the removal of Christmas and the Constitution […]
