It’s educational when religious-right leaders reveal — inadvertently or not — the crass ideological calculations that motivate their agendas. A press release yesterday from Terry McIntosh, a Christian minister who evangelizes Muslims in the Middle East, offers a good example. The press release, headlined “America First,” warns Christians “against the dangers of socialism in 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)
Texas Preps for Next Science Battle
The process will be different than originally expected, but next year the battle over what Texas students learn about evolution in their science classrooms returns to the State Board of Education. With legislators tasked with closing a huge state budget gap next year, the state board voted in July to postpone indefinitely the adoption of […]
Wait, Wait…
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram has another story about the perils of educational publishing in Texas. It seems that a play by Peter Sagal, the host of NPR’s popular news quiz show Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me, was being considered for inclusion in an end-of-course exam under development for high school English students in Texas. Then, […]
Congress and the Texas Ed Board
We sent out the following Action Alert yesterday, calling on TFN members to contact their U.S. House members in support of a resolution on the Texas State Board of Education. Tell Your Congress Member to Support Education over Politics The Texas Freedom Network and the Texas Faith Network this week joined nearly two dozen national […]
Only ‘Real’ Christians Need Apply?
Religious-right pressure groups and their leaders regularly encourage Christians to get out to the polls and vote for candidates who support their political agenda. On Monday, for example, the far-right organization Restore America sent out a mass e-mail calling for churches across the country to register Christians to vote in the November general election. Of course, we […]
