A major education group will present the Texas Freedom Network with its 2009 National Intellectual Freedom Award this month for our efforts to help teachers counter political attacks on sound curriculum standards in Texas public schools.
We are very grateful and profoundly humbled by this honor from the 50,000-member National Council of Teachers of English. TFN President Kathy Miller will accept the award at the NCTE’s national conference in Philadelphia on Nov. 19.
But we also think it’s important to highlight the hard work of dedicated teachers who have been promoting sound curriculum standards in language arts as well as science, social studies and other Texas classrooms. They truly have been in the trenches with us in this long fight to ensure that Texas schoolchildren get an education based on sound scholarship, not political and ideological agendas.
You can read more about the NCTE/SLATE National Intellectual Freedom Award here. Please see NCTE’s press release after the jump.
NCTE/SLATE Announces 2009 National Intellectual Freedom Award
Nov. 3, 2009
The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) has awarded the 2009 NCTE/SLATE National Intellectual Freedom Award to the Texas Freedom Network in Austin, Texas, for supporting the state’s educators and working to be sure their voices are heard.
When the Texas State Board of Education in 2008 presented and ultimately adopted a new English language arts curriculum, the Texas Freedom Network supported the Coalition of Reading and English Supervisors of Texas in getting its position out to a wider audience through the media. Throughout the adoption process the Texas Freedom Network honored the expertise of English language arts educators while crafting and delivering the messages, and since the final vote on the curriculum, the organization has continued to support the work of the teachers and to fight for intellectual freedom in Texas schools by educating reporters and the public.
Founded in 1995, the Texas Freedom Network is a nonpartisan, grassroots organization of more than 30,000 religious and community leaders. The Texas Freedom Network works with educators, classroom teachers, and experts from colleges and universities across Texas to ensure that curriculum and textbooks approved by the state’s Board of Education reflect the very best scholarship in every subject area.
The NCTE/SLATE National Intellectual Freedom Award will be presented to Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network, at the Thursday General Session on November 19 during the 2009 NCTE Annual Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Established in 1997, the NCTE/SLATE National Intellectual Freedom Award is given by a joint subcommittee of the SLATE (Support for the Learning and Teaching of English) Steering Committee and the NCTE Standing Committee Against Censorship to individuals, groups, or institutions that merit recognition for advancing the cause of intellectual freedom. The winners of this award have shown courage in advancing the cause of intellectual freedom or fighting censorship; and the winners’ activity is related to particular recent events (e.g., as in a censorship dispute) or is ongoing (e.g., as in leadership demonstrated over a period of years).
Since 1975, SLATE has been an NCTE Standing Committee on social and political concerns. SLATE seeks to influence public attitudes and policy decisions affecting the teaching of English language arts at local, state, and national levels. SLATE makes no policy of its own, but seeks to implement and publicize the polities adopted by NCTE. SLATE serves as NCTE’s intellectual freedom network.
Peggy Adair, Omaha, Nebraska, and Carrie Faust, Aurora, Colorado, won this year’s honorable mention awards.
For more information about the NCTE/SLATE National Intellectual Freedom Award, see http://www.ncte.org/awards/slate.
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The National Council of Teachers of English (http://www.ncte.org), with 50,000 individual and institutional members worldwide, is dedicated to improving the teaching and learning of English and the language arts at all levels of education.
