This cartoon from Pearson Education’s Magruder’s American Government is an example of how Tea Party rhetoric shapes discussions on issues such as taxation and government regulation in proposed new social studies textbooks for Texas public schools. The same textbook includes this passage: “In the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., taxes are ‘what we pay for […]
TFNEF
Colorado Politician Shows Ignorance Isn't Limited to Texas Education Board
Ignorance and political nonsense clearly aren’t problems just on the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE). A Colorado Board of Education member this week echoed the ridiculous complaints of her right-wing counterparts in Texas about the new framework for the popular AP U.S. History course for high school students. Critics have charged that the new framework is unpatriotic and […]
Backlash Grows as Right-Wing Censors Push Political Attacks on AP U.S. History Course
The far right’s war on public education has a new target: Advanced Placement U.S. History, of all things. And now efforts to censor what students learn in those courses has sparked a growing backlash from students, parents, teachers and advocacy groups that are worried about efforts to politicize the popular course taken by nearly a […]
New Texas State Senator Equates American Government with Nazi Germany
It’s hard to be shocked anymore with it comes to the hyperbolic rhetoric we often hear from the right in Texas. But when elected officials — people in places of responsibility — employ that kind of heated, extremist rhetoric, you really worry about what’s coming. That happened yesterday when former state Rep. Charles Perry was sworn in as the […]
What's in the Proposed New Texas Textbooks? Segregation Wasn't All That Bad
What will students learn about segregation if the State Board of Education approves new social studies textbooks publishers have submitted this year for use in Texas public schools? Bowing to the desires of right-wing politicians on the State Board of Education, some of the textbooks give legitimacy to neo-Confederate arguments about “states’ rights” causing the Civil War and the legacy of […]
