Perhaps you thought Texas’ malign influence was confined to corrupting science teaching in their own state. It’s far, far worse than that.
Until recently, Texas’s influence was balanced to some degree by the more-liberal pull of California, the nation’s largest textbook market. But its economy is in such shambles that California has put off buying new books until at least 2014. This means that McLeroy and his ultraconservative crew have unparalleled power to shape the textbooks that children around the country read for years to come.
Read the rest and tremble. It’s not just evolution, it’s all of science and history that they want to remake in the image of their vicious, petty god — and they’ve got a team of ideologues who will engage in all kinds of dirty tricks to get their way.
You mean the children will have to learn that Texas was brave and in the right when they fought their war of independence, not enormous dicks who reneged on an honest deal with Mexico?
But it’s a matter of balance and fairness, of academic freedom.
Maybe we’ll get to learn why slavery was the right thing to do, too.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Well, once that new-textbook-edumacated generation starts going political, at least we’ll no longer have to speculate if militantly ignorant fundies are a majority, a large minority or just a fringe group.
Once, a guy in a schoolbook storage room was the killer.
Now, the books themselves are becoming dangerous.
The only thing that really we can do is pay very close attention to the situation in Texas and make sure that friends are aware of what is going on in their state so they can act appropriately. Since there’s no way to recall board members in Texas were going to have to more or less wait it out until the next election.
There has got to be some kind of way for the states that still deal with reality to band together and put pressure on these publishers. If the blue states purchased textbooks as a single entity, Texas wouldn’t have nearly as much influence.
I can just see the history chapter:
Silly Glen, slavery was the right thing to do because the Holy Babble says so.
Oops, now I’m going to hell for teaching you that.
Okay, so, bullshit aside:
Things like this leave me kind of torn. On the one hand, I believe in state’s rights, and the right of a parent to raise their child.
But on the other hand, these idiots are ruining their children. Not just by indoctrinating them into an archaic, hateful religion, but by teaching them things that are blatantly, factually false.
How is someone from a McLeroy-style school going to train to become a doctor? Or an economist? They aren’t being provided with the tools they need to be an intelligent participant in society. Worse, they’re being actively hampered, indoctrinated with lies. It’s practically child abuse.
Ok, I freely admit that this is not a positive, and Texas has far too much influence on textbook publishers. What you’re missing is the other side to this: teachers are required to teach the state curriculum, not the textbook. I can’t speak for educators nation-wide, but when I find my textbook to inadequate or errant, as I find the one I’m currently assigned, I can use other materials to properly teach the curriculum.
The changes to Texas’ standards, and therefore textbooks elsewhere, need to be fought, but let’s not go chicken-little here… responsible educators can and will still teach the material they’re required to teach, and yahoos are still going to short-change evolution and the New Deal in exchange for creotard science and false claims about the U.S. being a Christian Nation (wish I could add a TM here). The key is to pay attention to what’s being taught locally, and openly (publicly) criticise the whackjobs who attempt to insert their religion where it doesn’t belong.
Back on the state’s rights issue. I hate the idea of having a central point of failure, and I’m all in favor of a limited federal government. But how else can you address something like this, if not through a national testing standard? There needs to be some way of telling this state that, sorry, you aren’t going to be allowed to screw over your kids like this.
When I grew up in Utah, we were taught that nonsense at least 4 times during grade school. The deal with Mexico was never mentioned. (Nor was the goal of gaining more Senate and House seats for the South.)
It really is astonishing. The sheer gall of these people to insist that their twisted alternate reality be enshrined in books like this and taught to everyone’s children by the state. This is simply unbridled authoritarianism. That’s what we’re up against ultimately, and creationism is not an end in itself, but a means toward controlling the past and thus the future, a la Orwell. We need to remember that.
My biggest fear is that the only thing this generation is going to be qualified for is public office.
Have you seen the number of history textbooks out there? States outside Texas will have their own selection.
This absolutely screams for a bill requiring national standards for Public School textbooks…
I think I feel a letter to my senator coming on…
Use <sup>TM</sup>
eg. Christian NationTM
Thanks, tsg.
On the bright side, the epically cretarded Cynthia NutBar… err, Dunbar… has dropped out of the running for the Texas SBOE. On the not so-bright side, the GOP replacement candidate Brian Russell doesn’t sound all that different.
However, the Democrats are fielding Judy Jennings, which might allow for some improvement.
As part of the Atheist Community of Austin, we are trying our best to keep abreast of this stuff. There is hope!
Gee, thanks for ruining my Monday with this news, PZ. My first impulse is to want to hide from the sheer ugliness of it, then finally facing the realization that it’s yet another battle that has to be fought.
It does highlight the theory that the Civil War was a big mistake and perhaps we should have let the South secede after all. By now it would be more of a third-world country than it already is, and quite possibly begging to become part of its highly-advanced neighbor again (because we’d have developed without the dead weight of Southern backwardness slowing our progress) – under *our* terms.
It would also have prevented the remaining states from attaining as much power as we have and using it so recklessly around the world!
And for only a very loose definition of “qualified”.
Perhaps the other 49 states should use Texas as an example of what allowing illegal aliens (such as Davey Crockett) to overrun a country can do to it.
Rob Jase (damned Google name mangler!)
“When I grew up in Utah, we were taught that nonsense at least 4 times during grade school. The deal with Mexico was never mentioned. (Nor was the goal of gaining more Senate and House seats for the South.) ”
Really? That just makes it worse! That makes them invaders fighting a war of invasion, not jackasses who started a war of independence because they reneged on their agreement to live according to Mexican law. We at least learned about the deal’s EXISTENCE, though our teachers always portrayed it as the Mexicans being at fault for abridging the Merikans’ rights (When the Merikans were now Mexican citizens).
“Things like this leave me kind of torn. On the one hand, I believe in state’s rights, and the right of a parent to raise their child.”
None of that conflicts with “Texas, you assholes, you’re changing OUR stuff. Contract for your own minor changes to be made, rather then forcing the rest of us to deal with your fail”
The problem with that, “single point of failure”, is that a) it encourages schools to teach how to pass the test, over teaching, and b) it doesn’t tell you jack shit about what they have learned, given the sort of tests that are easiest to use. Or, to put it another way, if the gauge of how educated you where depended on how well you could *write* useless jingles and sitcoms, someone like Rosie O’Donnell would test in the top 1%, while having no actual skill at doing *either* of the things supposedly being tested about. A font of trivia, with no skill. Same with anyone able to pass the sort of tests we now use, both in schools in general, and in the “national tests”. Anyone with a photographic memory could “pass” as one of the top 1%, while still being either educationally incompetent to use any of it. A Rainman type, who just happened to soak up every fact set before them, but couldn’t successfully tie their own shoe laces, never mind use anything they learned, tests the *same* as someone run through a “memorization” system, designed to promote the school as good, when its not, *and* the guy/gal that actually has two working brain cells to rub together, and got their by actually learning.
If you want a national standard, you need one that works right. Sadly, about the only way “to” do that, might be to pick names randomly out of a hat, for each school district, test them using “real” tests of their knowledge, so you are not running 5,000 students through a multiple choice, but rather 50 through spoken/written, etc. tests, which require thinking about the subject, to derive an answer. And then, you would have to make sure it *was* random, and the schools couldn’t just pick the best 50 out of their 5,000, to run the gauntlet. That is the only sort of “national” test that will work.
The only other alternative is to actually work out what the hell is going wrong some places, placing the blame where it belongs, not on 50 other side issues, then fix the problems at the schools, so you can *trust* that they are telling you the truth when they show something from the fed a set of report cards, and they have As and Bs on them, instead of Ds and Fs. But, that is *hard*, it costs money, requires more direct interference to make work, and robs both the state “and” the local schools of their ability to do what ever stupid shit they want to. In other words, we can’t fix the problem by fixing the problem, so we have to fix the problem by making up imaginary problems, and fixing those, in as indirect a means possible, and using the worst, and most unobtrusive tools that exist, instead.
Yeah.. That worked so damn well with every financial market that ever deregulated, then plummeted into the ground. Works just about as well with school systems…
Have you seen the number of history textbooks out there? States outside Texas will have their own selection.
First, this kind of authoritarian rewriting of reality for the purpose of indoctrinating schoolchildren would be a significant social ill, even if the phenomenon was entirely limited to the Texas school system, and would still be worth fighting. Second, you’re missing the significance of this. Yes, of course, there will always be other options in the textbook market. But the Texas public school system is so large that it exerts pressure on the publishers themselves to cater to their standards. What is “out there” will change as the publishers compete over the huge market that is Texas, putting disproportionate power in this matter in the hands of authoritarian nutjobs whose agenda actively discourages free inquiry and critical thinking.
@Rutee, #1: Both sides to that argument are gross simplifications. I’m not a Texas native, so I have no idea what schoolchildren are taught regarding Texas state history. However, if curriculum consists of either “Texas was brave and in the right when they fought their war of independence” or “Texans were enormous dicks who reneged on an honest deal with Mexico”, they are not being served.
Really? Would you prefer if I add in “Mexico held its established religion as the only one, as there was no freedom of religion”? Because that’s true, along with their denying Texans their slaves, as slavery was illegal in MExico. To me, that says “Don’t emigrate there if it bothers you.”
You appear to be indicating that I’m forgetting something else, though, and if I have, by all means remind me.
The Texas dentist-in-charge-of-education (or so he thinks), also thinks that teaching critical thinking is gobbledygook. Well, he would think that since he has never learned to think critically, and look how successful he is.
The political tactics are interesting:
I was just thinking that. I’ve read elsewhere that other states don’t buy textbooks as a single entity, but by district. Maybe the NCSE could write an open letter specifying some litmus tests for textbooks, and try to get school board members around the country to sign it.
What law? Santa Ana unilaterally abolished the constitution. The only “law” was that dictated to the inhabitants of Tejas by Santa Ana. Who reneged?
Et nota bene that many of the Texians who joined the revolt weren’t even settlers.
I’m not saying that self-interest played no part in fomenting the revolution, or that the southern slave trade didn’t stand to benefit from Texas breaking off from Mexico. However, I don’t think anyone could make an argument that Santa Ana’s repeal of the constitution was a positive good for democracy in Mexico. Nor is it clear that the entire revolution was the result of the actions of a few self interested “enormous dicks”.
I prefer to use the HTML entity itself: ™ = ™. Super- and subscript formatting tends to screw with the line spacing.
(I’m Tony Lloyd, rather than the bunch of numbers Google gives me).
So Texas determine what goes in textbooks for the rest of the United States?
Not if the rest of the United States just buys UK published textbooks:
Have a look at the contents of the first one listed by Amazon UK.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0435580817/ref=sib_rdr_dp
Incidentally, the quote from Santa Ana (below) indicates the kind of government he planned to institute in Mexico (and of course Coahila Tejas, if the revolution failed):
@CJO #25
Let’s say there are three history textbooks on the market. One is the standard kind of textbook people don’t have a problem with. Another is riddled with errors and revisionist history and something Texas would like. The third felt the pressure of what Texas likes and is in between the two books.
The first book will find buyers outside of Texas. The second will find buyers inside of Texas. But why would those inside or outside Texas buy the third book. It’s less ideal than the first two.
This is all assuming that the textbooks Texas orders are as bad as what is made out to be believed. I’d like to see some examples of it. A lot of the time when I hear accusations of history textbooks being inadequate its because the books don’t put enough emphasis on certain things like slavery and women’s rights. The solution then includes something like a Howard Zinn book. It sounds to me like a difference of opinion of what should be taught in class. There is only so much time in class and certain things need to be cut out. Should there be more focus on things like presidents and wars or should the focus be on slavery and what life was like? Both have their merits.
Perhaps as serious, or even more serious, CJO @25, a problem is that these authoritarians mistake their twisted thinking for “free” thinking, and their objections to liberal reality-based bias in history, science, etc., as critical thinking. They have been inadequately taught the skills of logic and critical evaluation, and based on their own poor education, would further damage their children’s education (and yours) as well.
It isn’t easy, mandating a minimum standard for teaching critical thinking, nor a minimum standard for teaching any subject really (I worked with my school’s board on standards many years ago and it took us many hours of wrestling and jawing to come up with even one clear standard) but it has to be accomplished, and it may well be that a national standard would be a better, if more authoritarian, way to clarify and focus the efforts of local and state school boards nationwide. I’m not sure I like the idea, but the more I see the alternative (complete local and state independence) in action, the less I like it.
While this is troubling, I have a hard time imagining that publishers will stop producing the quality text books that everyone else in the country wants to buy. While Texas may have the economic clout to get a book they like published, the major publishers are not going to make it the only book they publish if no one else in the country will buy it. I hope.
@hznfrst #20:
Sadly, this is too true. I almost think we should let all those wacky Texan separationists and “the south will rise again” types leave and form their own country; right after we take back all US Federal assets and give the more intelligent citizens a chance to move. All those whackjobs should agree with this: after all, in their mind the Federal government has no right to exist and anybody with an IQ over 70 is “wun a dem derdy intalecshuls.”
I am especially troubled by this line:
Really? They can’t show women having jobs outside the home? More and more I wish we could just take all of our fundamentalists and all the Islamic fundamentalists and Jewish fundamentalists and whatever other fundamentalists and give them their own piece of land that nobody else wants and watch them revert to the stone ages all by themselves without bothering anybody else.
A part of me wishes Texas would just hurry up and secede. Let the sensible people move out to the State of their choice on the Texas dime, and leave the remaining idiots to rot in their own shit. They could depend entirely on God to provide for all of their needs. Of course, they’d probably run out of food and other necessities within a year, and be forced to declare war on the rest of us. I’ll get back to you all when I decide whether that would be a pro or a con.
Please resist this kind of superficial exceptionalism (articulated in #s 37 and 38). You cannot just draw a line on a map and call something like this “not my problem.” Authoritarian forces exist, and they want to lie to your children with the imprimatur of the state attached to their doctrines. Even if they succeed only in lying to “their own” children, those children grow up to be ours and our children’s neighbors, co-workers, fellow voters etc. This is a human problem, not a Texan problem, or a southern redneck problem. We should look for solutions, not a convenient rug to sweep it under.
CJO,
I don’t think anyone who is proposing shoving all of the idiots off the live in their own country is being serious. We know it won’t work, it’s pure snark.
Unfortunately, the only feasible way to “fix” the Texas problem is education. And education is exactly what is being attacked here.
@Rutee, Shrieking Harpy of Dooooom (#23)
Agreed, however, this makes me want to take away Texas’ right to set their own educational policies, and the parents’ rights to raise their children. And I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.
I mean, on the one hand, yes, these people are clearly idiots, and I think their children should be protected from inheriting that idiocy. On the other hand, my mantra is “I might be wrong,” and I don’t want the responsibility of setting educational policy for the entire nation. I don’t know that there is a good answer.
@Kagehi (#24)
Totally agreed. I think the kind of testing we’re talking about needs to be both comprehensive and nation-wide. There isn’t a quick fix to this.
CJO, yes it is a snarky suggestion but I still wish it were possible. Countries do it to each other all the time, allowing parts of the world to suffer under tyrannical regimes under the cloak of “national sovereignty.”
There is an alternative to letting Texas and those other cesspools of ignorance secede, though, and that it to *kick them out* of the country! Maybe that would work…
@qbsmd (#29)
That would be a good step in the right direction, I think.
Rutee: I hadn’t seen your comment #27.
1. Don’t you think that requiring a tithe to the Catholic Church and abolishing slavery are complicating factors?
2. I would remind you of a few things.
-The initial agreement of 1822 was established through the Spanish government, which was about to be thrown out. This agreement was abolished by the new president of Mexico(Bustamente). As a result, slavery was now prohibited and new taxes were imposed on settlers of American origin.
-The government of Mexico was dangerously unstable, with the presidency changing hands 12 times between 1830 and 1835, increasing dissatisfaction with the new terms of settlement, and limiting Mexico’s ability to police immigration to Texas.
-Santa Ana’s abolishment of the Constitution of 1824 concentrated power in Mexico City, and was seen as an act of tyranny in Mexican states other than Coahila Tejas, several of which seceded and established independent republics. Texas was the only one to retain its freedom, and at that, only briefly before annexation into the US.
Again, my point is not that Texas was brave and right to seek independence. The alternative view (let’s call it the “enormous dick” interpretation) is also over-simplified, and no more accurate.
In reality, the republic came about through the actions of opportunistic settlers, instability of the Mexican government, and horrible judgement and tyrannical behavior on the part of Santa Ana. It is a very interesting history, that I have only just begun to read about (as a recent transplant to TX), and it would be a shame to short-change history students through oversimplification.
This is an aside, though. Really I am as disgusted as everyone here with not only the deplorable actions of the SBOE, but the implications that they may have for text-book content.
@CJO We fully realize that these are real problems that confront everyone and need real solutions, but in the face of seemingly intractable problems, sometimes its fun to imagine a fantasy scenario, especially if your fantasy scenario has Muslim fundamentalist suicide bombers living side by side with Christian fundamentalist text book “bombers” because at heart they share the same ideology.
“The never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the American way? Well, that fight is still going on. There are people out there who want to replace truth with political correctness. Instead of the American way they want multiculturalism. We plan to fight back—and, when it comes to textbooks, we have the power to do it. Sometimes it boggles my mind the kind of power we have.”
Yes, it’s quite obvious your mind is boggled, McLeroy.
Truth comes in the form of corrected social policy and America is all about cultural multiplicity. Why do these people get it so wrong?
I don’t think anyone who is proposing shoving all of the idiots off the live in their own country is being serious. We know it won’t work, it’s pure snark.
Well, I know. But there are unstated premises behind the snark, and I assume that if folks take the time to publicly announce this attitude, even if in a snarky way, they are buying into those premises. It reminds me of the attitude I hear all the time about the Israeli Palestinian conflict: just put a fence around these madmen, and let them kill each other if that’s what they’re so hell-bent on, and leave the rest of us civilized people out of it. It’s exceptionalism; it’s saying, in effect, that these are problems affecting other people’s communities because they’re inherently violent, or stupid, or unreasonable, and my (more peaceful, more enlightened) community could never be subject to such barbarities or stupidities.
Just another of the numerous reasons why I advocate books developed collaboratively by educators. With the internet and the huge computing machines in it, imagine something similar to wikipedia but for books and developed by professionals. It would be a huge effort and certainly not cheap, but easily funded by a mere fraction of all that money that goes into the crappily rehashed dead tree editions. It doesn’t help any that state boards love to create bullshit lists for the syllabus. We need greater coordination between the lower level educational institutions and the universities (and technical/trade schools). Just cut out the publishers. If you want dead trees, fine, you can keep the printers busy, but forget the textbook publishers, ok?
This is some of the most alarming news I’ve heard in very long time, are there not enough rational people in Texas to start a public outrage against this madness? If we could start a fund, with a reliable administrator, proposed by Mr. Myers would be enough for me, to spread the word in Texas about this madness. I would be willing to donate some money, and if we all donate we could at least run some type of awareness campaign to, hopefully, retard some of these monsters’ goals.
Hey Texas, don’t let Oklahoma hit you on the way out.
@C_Arroz…there has been a public outcry, but this is a big state, and there are clearly too few rational dissenters….yet! However, check out the Texas Freedom Network, the staunchest ally of rationality in the state. They have done great things to alert the public of the outrageous shit that the SBOE tries to pull.
http://www.tfn.org
Thanks for helping us (the citizens of Texas)
@ethylroor…Oklahoma has its share of nutballs too. James Inhofe?
Perhaps someone can kindly explain this to me – why doesn’t this country have a national education curriculum? What about one federally-mandated, structured syllabus that the textbook manufacturers will have to abide by? (I am familiar with the standard Libertarian trope, but is there any real reason?)
It just seems wrong, that the foundation for the education of children is left fractured, and at the mercy of every State/Local board and every
TomDick, Dick andHarryDick (such as McLeroy) with axes to grind – and that is such a huge pity.@thomas.c.galvin
And would lead to the next logical step of the NCSE sending voter information to its members on which local board members up for reelection signed and which didn’t.
And when there’s a televised campaign add telling people to support the candidate for a board of education that believes in education, I think we’re about there. Given the amount of money being directed at bus ads, this shouldn’t be that difficult. More people would support the cause, and the potential results are more tangible.
The thread-undying has already mentioned the great Open University’s Open Learning websites, in the context of geology. They do a wide range of other subjects as well.
And besides, dead trees are sooo last millennium.
“Again, my point is not that Texas was brave and right to seek independence. The alternative view (let’s call it the “enormous dick” interpretation) is also over-simplified, and no more accurate. ”
I suppose that’s true. Admittedly, I’m still pretty bitter over finding out that Merika crossed the DMZ first after Texas joined, then claimed the Mexicans shot first.
One possible consequence of texas and other states ceding may be for the US to have a powerful near neighbor with the same economic advantage of the slave economy as china.
Texas is one of our National Sacrifice Areas. They lead the country in some social problems such as child poverty and teen age pregnancy. Those problems are getting worse, not better.
I’ve heard that this is overrated these days. Modern publishing is highly automated and they can run off different versions of the same or similar book easily.
If I was a teacher in secondary school, I sure wouldn’t buy Texas-Safe textbooks. There should be a good demand for not-Texas books from most of the rest of the USA. One thing capitalism is good for is choices and finding a niche and filling it. I could imagine whole book publishing companies formed around the idea of not selling textbooks in Texas. Their selling point, “banned by the Texas State Board of Education.”
Raven,
That’s such a great idea! Why just books? Also TV shows. “Books/Ideas that the Texas SBoE doesn’t want you to see!” can be quite a catchphrase. Hmmm… May be, we can even have a DVD of “Evolution Gone Wild”.
That’s reasonable. While I don’t know much about how they teach history in schools, science education is wanting here. TX State history may well be taught as an extended hagiography of Austin, Houston, Bowie, and Crockett.
I’ve heard that this is overrated these days. Modern publishing is highly automated and they can run off different versions of the same or similar book easily.
Not sure what you mean. Printing presses are pretty advanced, computerized machines these days, but that’s manufacturing. Publishing houses by and large do not operate printing presses, they comprise editorial, production, finance, marketing, distribution, and publicity. Type-setting and the actual printing are outsourced, to compositors and printers, respectively. So sure, in theory, you could have the printer “run off” as many “versions” of a book as you wanted. But each one of those versions is a book, as far as publishing is concerned, with all the associated cost of goods, IP issues, initial print runs, and on and on.
You may be thinking of on-demand printing, which is a growing segment, but it’s for books that a publisher does not anticipate selling in numbers sufficient to justify a whole print-run, which is obviously not the case with primary- and secondary-level textbooks, which they hope to sell by the hundreds of thousands.
Third way: hold down ALT key, type 153, release ALT key: ™
As a resident of Texas, and a product of the Texas Public Education System, I am absolutely disgusted and utterly mortified by what I have just read. I graduated from high school in ’07, and things were dire enough then based on the old textbooks and standards. I can’t imagine our education system plummeting further into oblivion, but it seems it’s already continuing on it’s downward spiral.
I remember very clearly the sticker plastered into my and everyone else’s 9th grade Biology book. On the very first page, it proclaimed something along the lines of, “Evolution is just a theory; use critical thinking skills to evaluate the claims and come to your own conclusion.” It disgusted me then, and it still bothers me to this day.
I feel very lucky that I had exceptional teachers, ones who actually cared about presenting the truth. Often, especially in science classes, teachers would go out of their way to correct fallacies in the textbook, although they could only go so far without getting in trouble. Nevertheless, I was fortunate enough to attend one of the best public high schools in Texas, a medical magnet school with a massive emphasis on science. I realize, though, that my school was generally the exception, not the rule.
All I can say is that the Texas universities are not like this at all! My biology textbook in university constantly degraded ID/Creationism, and even had a section on the fallacies of “irreducible complexity”. It’s a relief, and wonderful to have a proper, actual science education! It’s hard for students to fall in love with science when it’s being presented in the bastardized light that religious zealots want it to be.
But didn’t you know that
So which is it Texas? Use critical thinking to doubt evolution or is critical thinking gobbledygook?. Whichever is most convenient I suppose, after all, consistency is not a virtue to be found in the old testament.
Hey myao,
How many ordinary Texans does it take to get one like you? 10000? 100000? or more??
‘It’s not just evolution, it’s all of science and history that they want to remake in the image of their vicious, petty god’
And this is news?
Of course they do have and will.
And tis one reason that I could never trust them with science…they do not know the meaning of the word, they only hear the death knell of their fairy story.
Their delusion is way past its sell by date,it is stinking the place out, their only option is to corrupt dilute and murder the opposition, then maybe no one will notice!
It is the only thing they feel comfortable with!
It is the only thing they have ever done.
I’m pretty much the same as myao, graduated in 08. I actually didn’t notice a severe impact on my biology standards and all, maybe cause i took it in 10th grade, maybe cause i live in a metro area with better regional standards, idk. But we need to straighten shit up if we ever wanna be seen as anything more than science-retarded yokels. At the minimum, we need to kick all those assholes off the board of education and get someone who wasn’t a goddamn dentist on there, then maybe something will get done. Oh, and fuck you shonny, thanks for stereotyping Texans there. Yea we’re all a bunch of dumbass, for sure. Our boards perfectly reflect us, just like in every other state.
Our neighboring state of Texas not only deserves independence, but should have their own planet in a galaxy far, far away.
I wrote a detailed explanation of the economic power Texas has in the creation of elementary and secondary school textbooks, but now I can’t find it to link to it.
Really briefly (and to answer Raven, above), because Texas is the single largest buyer of textbooks (it’s the only state that buys as a State, the others have numerous separate school districts which buy separately) a textbook publisher will not publish a textbook unless Texas will buy it. Those who have pointed out that California actually buys more textbooks miss this fact. It’s not the number of textbooks purchased by geographic area but the fact that Texas acts as one huge buyer. Only if, as Raven would like to see, the rest of the country’s school districts banded together into a consortium or buyer’s club that made absolutely firm commitments for purchase of a larger quantity of textbooks than Texas will buy, would we see any challenge to Texas’ buying power.
Yes, there’s a “niche” market for non-Texas textbooks. Good luck finding anyone to fill it as cheaply as mass market textbook publishers without a large competing entity of some sort. Remember, niche market products tend to be more expensive and schools tend to be under-funded.
@24:
The rest of your post makes sense, and I agree with it, basically, but what does this example mean? I feel like I must be interpreting it wrong, but this reads to me like a completely gratuitous (not to mention factually wrong) insult directed toward sitcom writers.
@tsg:
Don’t forget jail. Though I suppose both “careers” have good synergy with each other.
As an outsider, from the United States, i’m curious to know how an employer would regard the academic record of someone taught in the Texas school arena? .. although I suppose flipping burgers doesn’t take much of an education ;)
One way to fight this might to be take advantage of the fact that these textbook publishers don’t just publish grade school or high school textbooks. They also publish college textbooks and many other books related to education (review books, etc). A massive campaign/boycott against publishers that include creationism or revisionist history in school textbooks by college professors and other professionals might make them hesitate about doing whatever McLeroy tells them. Does anyone have a list of publishers who are doing his bidding? We could start a boycott now.
mxh- Great idea. I’m on it.
Moral of the story, people: GET ON YOUR LOCAL SCHOOL BOARD. There’s a reason Pat Robertson targeted those first.
Rosie was known for having a show for a while in which here “big” thing was being able to, with minimal information, tell you what song, show, movie, etc. something came from. She didn’t, as far as I know, ever *write* anything herself *ever*. In other words, a walking encyclopedia of worthless trivia, but no ability to use it. What to know who played an obscure character in Minority Report, great! Want them to *write* a script for something like it, its not going to happen. Want to know who wrote the top song in March, 1973, again, no problem. Want to hear something *they* wrote, good luck! And so on.
Its not about how good or bad *writers* are, as you oddly seemed to get confused about. Its about producing a whole generation of people that can tell you that E=MC2, but can’t replace a fracking AAA battery in their TV remote, never mind *build* anything based on the equation – mix eggs, milk and flower, never mind nuclear physics. Think, Idiocracy, where every damn person you ran into could tell you how many bolts where used in “constructing” a 747, but less than one in a billion of them could manage a paper airplane.
Infinite knowledge makes you a damn library, not a genius. Being able to think critically, would make you a genius, even if your entire world was based on a patch of sand, 500 miles from the nearest “modern” convenience. You can’t create a genius, and most people will never *remember* enough facts to turn into a DVD addition of Encyclopedia Britannia. But, you can do a pretty good job of creating a school full of idiots, who all make a passably good library shelf. That is what the whole O’Donnell part is trying to say. Having vasts amount of information (and thus passing tests) is meaningless, if you can’t **apply** any of it to anything other than passing tests.
@ phoenixwoman
Pat Robertson didn’t magically wave his fingers, say a few magical words, and “poof” right-wing Christian voters appeared to stock the school boards with Creotards. These people already existed along with people who opposed them, but in the end they won and we lost.
Democracy isn’t concerned about the facts, all it does is give the knuckle-dragging masses what they want. Until the masses want actual science education, our plight isn’t gong to change.
And that isn’t going to happen anytime soon.
How does not make you want to give up and cry? I hate to go all pessimistic but how can we stop this kind of thing with so much ignorance and apathy around?
As long as people are still learning to read, there is still hope.
In the not-too-distant future, the prophets Serling and Wilson will be vindicated, I hope:
Damn dirty apes.
I don’t know and I don’t care.
Sorry, couldn’t resist ;)
Not to burst your stereotype bubble, but while there are certainly terrible atrocities being committed on the Texas school board, that does not mean the population as a whole is unintelligent or apathetic about education. There are plenty of brilliant, great minds here as well as excellent universities. There are also excellent secondary education institutions as well; I got a fantastic high school education, thanks to passionate teachers who cared.
It’s insulting to me, as a resident of Texas, that all Texans are broadly painted as idiots.Clearly, this is not the case at all, as people are trying to fight back against the advances of the school board, even though there is a pesky religiously inclined majority. As much as I hate the political happenings here, Texas is still my home, the place where I grew up, and where my family and many people I love live. I’d rather fight to make it better place than just brand everyone hopeless idiots and give up.
@49 – CJO, your comment is spot on. Thank you!
For those of you who are ready to surrender Texas to the fundies, please don’t move here! If you live here, please move somewhere else. This is not a fight for cowards.
As Antiochus Epiphanes pointed out, we have influential allies. The Texas Freedom Network is a one of a kind organization started by Cecile Richards. They exert pressure on the SBOE and the Lege, and keep concerned citizens informed about issues that impact all of us. If you aren’t aware of that organization, then you aren’t sufficiently informed to be telling Texans what we should be doing about this problem.
Now that you know about TFN, how about heading over to their website (www.tfn.org) and making a donation? They’ll put the money to good use, and it’s more productive than pretending the problem will go away if you sacrifice Texas.
I’m not an American nor a scientist, but it’s horrifying to see the great advances in science, the enlightened philosophy of your funding fathers and the struggles your nation went through to exist wiped out to accommodate this scary bunch.
I have no doubt that knowledge will win in the end (it has time after time) but it has to go through this constant struggle with ignorance and superstition. Trouble is that the squeeky wheel gets the grease and the rest of us are so incredulous at the sheer stupidity of it all that we’re often speechless. It’s terrifying that ‘educated’ and ‘liberal’ have become such undesirable qualities. We all have to be, in your country and mine, a lot more vocal to fight this.
Nobody is saying all Texans are idiots.
I highly doubt any of the sentiments to abandon Texas are meant seriously, but while I admire your willingness to fight this stupidity, don’t get sanctimonious towards people who react when the idiots on the State Board of Education (who Texans voted into office, by the way) threaten to inflict their ignorance on the rest of the country.
I feel your pain, but don’t shoot the messenger.
SteveM @ 65
Heh heh. I’m a SteveM too. Like minds and all that?
Obviously, their misuse of the term critical thinking is intentional – a form of turn-about to make them look like they have the intellectual high ground rather than the scientific community. They tried a similar tactic when they replaced all instances of ‘creationist’ with ‘design proponent’ in Of Pandas and People… except for the one they missed in an early edition which turned ‘creationists’ into ‘cdesign proponentists’.
What would have been really funny was if their little textbook disclaimer back-fired and came out like this in print:
Evolution is just a theory; use
critical thinking skillsreligious dogma to evaluate the claims and come to your own conclusion.The danger is that a Texas education won’t be sufficient, though. This is not a problem specific to Texas, nor would it be because it was a Texas education that it wasn’t sufficient. Many university systems have a minimum set of requirements for admission, such as
This is a subset of the upcoming requirements for admission to any University of California school as a freshman. I highlight these two because they are not required for admission to University of Texas (2 years of science is, but it need not be laboratory science), and so some Texas schools may choose to limit the availability of these classes.
It’s a matter of concern when key figures of science and history are eliminated from the list of what may be taught. The document at http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/teks/social/HistoricalFiguresOct2009.pdf is the official draft standards for next year.
To be deleted from “required” and “what may be taught” in high school world history:
In constrast, these are newly required (upgraded from “may be mentioned”)
To be deleted from Government: Thomas Hobbes
To be deleted from Psychology: Sigmund Freud
The sole deletion from grade 5 social studies: Carl Sagan
Also to be eliminated from list of historical figures: Robinson Crusoe and Paul Bunyan (no, I’m not kidding)
I am not a biologist, but the standard
for high school biology looks like creeping IDism to me, since I have never heard any concerns about the “complexity” of the cell outside of the ID context. That may be my own ignorance showing.
I have an M.S. degree from a Texas university. I’m sure there are some people who view Texas as full of hopeless idiots, but many of us do not and are truly concerned (whether for altruistic or selfish reasons) about keeping it from heading in that direction.
One of the problems with the election of the SBOE is that Texas allows straight ticket voting. All of the ultra-conservatives ran as Republicans. People vote the straight ticket without looking at the actual candidates. Suggestions have been made to eliminate the straight ticket or not have the SBOE members run as Republican or Democrat.
Oh yeah, edited to add… TFA that PZ linked to is frightening in its implications. A very nice piece of investigative journalism by Mariah Blake.
Nor proofread anything they write.
I’m not getting sanctimonious towards people who dislike the policy makers of Texas; I hate them just as much, perhaps more, than many non-Texans do, being a denizen of Texas and all. What does bother me is when people insult and broadly paint all of the citizens of Texas, – the people who have to deal with the aftermath of these policies – as if we are all actively desiring these changes, or are apathetic.
I know many do desire these changes, but there are plenty of us who do not. Why CunningLingus’ comment bothered me so much is that the kids in public schools are the victims, not people to be insulting. They didn’t ask for this. They are not dumb, and it’s not their fault they are being lied to.
If people must curse Texans, please, curse the religious, right-wing zealots who vote to put these people in office; I’ll be cursing them with you, believe me! It’s just disheartening to those of us who actively fight for change when the usual “dumb Texan”, “Texas is hopeless” stereotype is pulled out to be applied to the whole of Texas over and over again.
This is incredibly true; I’m glad you brought it up! I know firsthand that both of my parents do this. They are die-hard republicans and vote straight ticket, even though they are completely unaware of the the candidates, who they are, what they stand for, etc. All that matters to them is that the people in power are red, sadly enough. My parents are not stupid, just incredibly apathetic; they, like a lot of Texans, are “value voters”. They are completely unaware of the Republican party’s stance on issues other than that of abortion, gay marriage and the death penalty.
Gosh, ain’t that the truth. :P I guess “critical thinking” to the people who implemented that sticker means opening up their Bible so it can think for them. Luckily, many of us can think for ourselves!
I took the comment as a slightly tongue-in-cheek look at how the kids are going to suffer from these changes, because if your State Board of Education succeeds in revising the textbooks, that’s pretty much what is going to happen: nobody is going to take a Texas education seriously.
Not to be snide, but maybe they wouldn’t if Texas stopped living up to it so well. We are cursing the right-wing zealots, and everybody else, who vote to put these people in office. And they are Texans. We understand you aren’t one of them.
Firstly I totally agree with you Myao, secondly my comment was tongue in cheek hence the ;). Fair point that the kids themselves aren’t to blame, but like TSG states, the people of Texas voted for these retard school officials, and it never hurts to ridicule such morons.
I’ll apologise to any offended burger flippers, next time i’m in the United States ;)
Fair points, TSG and CunningLingus; I can certainly understand where you’re coming from. I’ll try to be less sensitive. (I suppose the sensitivity stems from the fact I’m so personally invested in helping my fellow Texan students.) I apologize. :)
As long as we’re ridiculing the elected morons and their voter lackeys together, right?
My feelings on this McLeroy character stem from a saying I have about kickers, punters, umpires, and refs:
If I know your name, you’re probably not doing your job right.
I recognize McLeroy’s name instantly as the creotard on the Texas SBoE. Now why would I, as someone from outside Texas, have any reason to know that name on sight? It’s the same reason I know C.B. Bucknor’s name: he doesn’t do his job!
We can only hope that the result shown in this cartoon comes to pass.
http://www.farleftside.com/2009/7-13-09.html