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 […]
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)
Politics, Curriculum and Textbooks
The religious right doesn’t just target science and social studies when it comes to politicizing public school classrooms. The movement’s pressure groups attack education on a broad front, pushing a divisive agenda throughout the public school curriculum — including even reading and English classes. Educational Research Analysts, the old right-wing warhorse of the textbooks “culture […]
Creationists Face Big Louisiana Defeat?
A Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Schools committee has given its approval to new biology textbooks that have been under heavy attack by creationists and anti-evolution pressure groups. The 6-1 vote today sends the matter to the full board, which is expected to take a final vote on Thursday. All six committee members who […]
Science Under Siege — Louisiana Edition II
The religious right’s war on science continues this week when Louisiana’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) meets to consider the adoption of new biology textbooks for the state’s public schools. Two special panels that included educators, scientists and scholars have already approved the proposed biology textbooks. (The National Center for Science Education has […]
Cynthia Dunbar’s ‘Parting Gift’
On Thursday outgoing Texas State Board of Education member Cynthia Dunbar, R-Richmond, offered what she called a “parting gift” to fellow board members. Her “gift”: a proposed board resolution attacking federal involvement in education as unconstitutional and calling for state “nullification” of “unconstitutional directives” from the federal government. Not surprisingly, the resolution reads like a […]
