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 […]
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)
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 […]
Creationist Poll FAIL
The Louisiana Family Forum is upset that its state Board of Elementary and Secondary Schools voted overwhelmingly last week to approve new biology textbooks that don’t include creationist arguments against evolution. So the LFF posted a poll question on its website: Do you support BESE’s decision today to approve a list of Biology textbooks with […]
The Right Lies Again in the TX Speaker Battle
TFN Insider has already reported about the religious campaign the far right has been waging against Texas House Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio. Now PolitiFact offers a clear example of how the religious right is also spreading distortions and falsehoods in the effort to replace Straus with another speaker far more likely to obey their […]
Sound Science Education Wins in Louisiana
The Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Schools voted 8-2 today to approve new biology textbooks that creationists relentlessly attacked because of their coverage of evolutionary science. Today’s vote represents a huge setback for religious-right pressure groups like the Louisiana Family Forum, which demanded that the textbooks include creationist ideology based on junk science. The […]
