When coyote-shootin' Governor Rick "Dippity Do" Perry suggested last year that Texas secede from the Union over the possibility that President Obama might raise taxes, Texas Teabaggers snorted Pabst through their noses with delight while other (a bit closer to normal) citizens of the Lone Star State cringed in embarrassment. Now secession seems like a viable option as the state's school board has laid the foundation for Texas to separate from the entire planet, much less these sad United States.
Last year the board almost succeeded in passing a provision that would have ordered biology teachers to give equal weight and class time to lesson plans about Biblical talking snakes and magic apples as to those discussing evolution and natural selection. (Can you still call it "science class" if the Bible is considered a textbook resource on the same level as Darwin's Origin of Species or Isaac Newton's Principia? What would a sample biology test question look like? "God created Eve from what bone in Adam's body? a) femur; b) ulna; c) cranium, or d) rib . . .but I digress.) But this proposed alteration in the curriculum is even more more sinister than the snow-job they tried to pull last year as it is less obviously designed by the religious wackos.
It appears none of the Republican (them again) majority on the Texas Board of Ed care whether or not the public school students are laughed out of their college history classes; unless, of course,they all matriculate at Oral Roberts or Bob Jones -- and I've often wondered what biology majors learn there . . . but I digress. If these ultimate Teabaggers have their way, students soon will be studying the cultural value of the musical genre personified by such important artists as Mr. Billy Ray Cyrus and Ms. Carrie Underwood. No, that's not a joke.
Welcome to Texasland! Soon country music studies will be added to the curriculum next to history classes in which the syllabus will include lessons on the wise writings of unsung national heroes such as Sen. Joe McCarthy and slave-owning Confederate President Jefferson Davis, while removing Thomas Jefferson's name from the list of "great Americans." Newt's Contract With America will be taught along side the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution as examples of important American documents. And the NRA will be discussed as an example of an organization that defends constitutional rights.In the proposed curriculum changes for U.S. History Since 1877, out goes Susan B. Anthony and Shirley Chisholm and in comes Phyllis Schlafly. Why not replace Martin Luther King, Jr. with Fred Phelps as a real proponent of civil rights?
Board member Don McLeroy, the man who wanted to place 3-D classroom models of Adam and Eve next to the microscopes and cell slides, is also spearheading the changes to the social science curriculum. McLeroy is quoted as saying in a statement that the current ". . . standards are rife with leftist political periods and events: the populists, the progressives, the New Deal and the Great Society. Including material about the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s provides some political balance to the document."
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Don-t-Mess-With-Texas-by-Kathy-Malloy-100524-423.htmlIt would probably be better at this point if the schools just used their books from last year. They need to save money anyway, why throw it away on trash.
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