FROM EUROCENTRIC TO RACIST WHITE SUPREMACY CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICAN-DUMB TEXAN-CENTRIC! ... capping months of outcry over lessons that some academics say exaggerate the influence of Moses in American democracy ... hours of sometimes testy discussion and left publishers scrambling to make hundreds of last-minute edits [TEXTBOOK PUBLISHING COMPANIES EDITING PUBLIC SCHOOL-USED TEXTBOOKS TO PLEASE BIBLICAL LITERALISTS [EVERY WORD IN THE BIBLE WAS SPOKEN BY GOD AND IS GODS WORDS] AND ANTI-BLACK CONSERVATIVE SCHOOL BOARD MEMBERS!] ... the vote to allow the board and general public to better check those changes was defeated ... Thomas Ratliff, a Republican and the board’s vice chairman ... history, social studies and government textbooks were submitted for approval this summer, and academics and activists on the right and left criticized many of them ... Bitter ideological disputes over what is taught in Texas classrooms have for years attracted national attention. The new books follow the state academic curriculum adopted in 2010, when Republicans on the board approved standards including conservative-championed topics like Moses and his influence on systems of law. They said those would counter what they saw as liberal biases in classrooms ... riday’s 10-to-5 vote, with all Republicans on the board supporting the books and Democrats opposing them, was the first of its kind since 2002. The books will be used for at least a decade. ... Texas is such a large state that textbooks written for it can influence the content of classroom materials sold elsewhere around the country — though that clout may be waning. A 2011 state law allows school districts to buy books both on and off the board list. Technology, including electronic lessons, has also made it easier for publishers to design content for individual states. ----------- ... delay prompted a decision on Friday by one of the nation’s largest educational publishers, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, to withdraw a proposed high school book, “United States Government: Principles in Practice,” which included a total of five textbook and software products. The company said in a statement that its materials were a “national program” and did not meet 100 percent of Texas’ academic standards. ----------- A Republican member, Geraldine Miller, said the board had “sent a message” to publishers unwilling to make edits in a timely fashion. ... But others bristled. “What we saw today shows very clearly that the process the State Board of Education uses to adopt textbooks is a sham,” said Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network, a left-leaning group. “This board adopted textbooks with numerous late changes that the public had little opportunity to review and comment on and that even board members themselves admitted they had not read.” - nytimes/2014/11/23/us/texas-approves-disputed-history-texts-for-schools.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimes&_r=0
Posted on: Sat, 22 Nov 2014 23:13:52 +0000
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