Texas Drops Thomas Jefferson/ The Enlightenment Period

[pinkocommie]

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/texas-drops-thomas-jefferson

From the article -

   

9:30 â€" Board member Cynthia Dunbar wants to change a standard having students study the impact of Enlightenment ideas on political revolutions from 1750 to the present. She wants to drop the reference to Enlightenment ideas (replacing with “the writings of”) and to Thomas Jefferson. She adds Thomas Aquinas and others. Jefferson’s ideas, she argues, were based on other political philosophers listed in the standards. We don’t buy her argument at all. Board member Bob Craig of Lubbock points out that the curriculum writers clearly wanted to students to study Enlightenment ideas and Jefferson. Could Dunbar’s problem be that Jefferson was a Deist? The board approves the amendment, taking Thomas Jefferson OUT of the world history standards.

    9:40 â€" We’re just picking ourselves up off the floor. The board’s far-right faction has spent months now proclaiming the importance of emphasizing America’s exceptionalism in social studies classrooms. But today they voted to remove one of the greatest of America’s Founders, Thomas Jefferson, from a standard about the influence of great political philosophers on political revolutions from 1750 to today.

    9:45 â€" Here’s the amendment Dunbar changed: “explain the impact of Enlightenment ideas from John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Thomas Jefferson on political revolutions from 1750 to the present.” Here’s Dunbar’s replacement standard, which passed: “explain the impact of the writings of John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and Sir William Blackstone.” Not only does Dunbar’s amendment completely change the thrust of the standard. It also appalling drops one of the most influential political philosophers in American history â€" Thomas Jefferson.

My head just exploded and honestly all I can say is WTF?  These people seem to be dedicated to manipulating history to fit their theological whims.  It's the same with every monstrous entity out there - get 'em while they're young.

[Squid]

Tell me about it, I live here.  I realized how pitiful my public education was when I entered into college.  I was woefully unprepared especially in the sciences.  Good thing I've made up for it since.  Eventually these people will realize how they're intellectually crippling the children of this state but by then it'll be too late and these now new "standards" will be cemented and it will take an educational revolution or disaster to change them.  This type of mindset is the antithesis of the type of thinking Jefferson and all the greats upon whose shoulders he stood exhibited.  It's sad...

[pinkocommie]

It's scary for everyone, considering with California in a recession and not in a position to purchase new textbooks, Texas is setting the standard for what a lot of the newest textbooks are going to have in them.  These kinds of ridiculous decisions have a high likelihood of affecting the education of any school who purchases a replacement textbooks in the coming years.     I have a 6 year old and more and more I'm considering homeschooling.

[Will]

Intellectual dishonesty seems to be a prerequisite to sit on that board. It's bad enough we're constantly having to beat back the idiot creationists, but now we have Enlightenment denialists and Jefferson haters? This can't be allowed to happen.

[theTwiz]

My father is a very high-ranking employee of a school district here in Texas; my mother taught in the same school district for 25+ years, and I have more relatives in public education than I care to count.  I'm gonna leave it at that because I don't feel like being identified by any crazies who see this post.  Needless to say, public education discussions have been plentiful all my life.  It's news like this that makes me seriously consider becoming a teacher and climbing the ranks the same way my father did, if only to influence the decision-making concerning what is and is not taught in school.  This is getting dangerously close what Islamic extremists do: integrate religious opinions into the education system early on.  If I had it my way (I'm preaching to the choir here, I know), any argument that had religious motives behind it would be shot down in a heartbeat. I was about to type out a well-thought-out post about my feelings on this issue, but I can already tell I'm basically about to go off on a rant here because of how pissed off I get at this type of news. Plus I'm still feeling the effects of St. Paddy's day on my body.

I consider the above paragraph to be both an argument for and against whether or not I should get into public education.  I probably won't, though.  I don't think I'll last too long when the Administration finds out I'm telling my student that the TAKS test is a giant load of sh1t and to spend more time studying maths and sciences than reading what their textbooks said about the founding of our country. Also I'm sure taking sharpie to the Pledge of Allegiance poster in my room wouldn't go over too well, either.

[Whitney]

Want this to stop and live in DFW's district 12?  Vote for Amie http://www.lpdallas.org/node/1466  We hope she wins despite being very open about her involvement with Camp Quest Texas and the freethought community in general.


^sorry, just had to plug my friend since I know there are quite a few dfw people on HAF

[Sophus]

I do believe that IT IS TIME TO MESS WITH TEXAS.

[elliebean]

Please do.
I'd love to see, for example, a nationwide ad campaign calling for the boycott of all Texas school board approved textbooks.

[Kidnapkid]

As troubling as this is, I'm afraid it doesn't really matter much. History taught in high school is soooo boring that kids don't remember it anyway. There are no debates and a super lot of information is already left out. They just read some stuff then vomit it out on a standardized test. Two days later the information is gone from the brain. Good 'ol Tom won't be forgotten because some silly Texans leave him out of history books.

There's a really good book that we sell where I work (Right next to Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell) called "Lies my Teacher Told Me" and it talks about all the stuff they don't bother to teach highschool kids. Such as the Native American Genocide, How black people are misrepresented, How Helen Keller was a socialist, etc etc etc. Basically the argument in the book is that history for high school is written by the white republican man to reflect white republican male ideals.

Kids don't really start learning the facts of History in an objective (and debatable) way till they get to college.

I want to be upset that these people want to leave Jefferson out of their history books, but I just can't seem to rise the the audacity. In my opinion a lot more important stuff has already been left out. When these kids get to college, hopefully they'll learn the truth anyway, and those who don't go to college will be working at Wal*Mart anyway and not some important decision making person in government. Just more blind leading the blind.

[elliebean]

They can still vote.

[Kylyssa]

I ranted irl (and on facebook) about this at length.  They not only took out the primary author of the motherfucking Declaration of Independence they screwed with other things.  They are putting in favorable mentions of Senator McCarthy and the anti-feminism movement.  They are now going to portray the US as a Christian nation.  They are going to state that affirmative action was bad.  And other clearly biased (and sometimes totally irrelevant stuff like Country music) will be added as well.

After the next presidential election, I do believe that we, as a country, may just be completely fucked.  I thought we dodged the second dark ages when we dodged the McCain/Palin bullet but we are not even close to out of the woods yet.

[KDbeads]

So they actually went ahead and voted the changes in.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37271857/ns ... ?GT1=43001

Yeah.  Not a happy camper here.

[elliebean]

I think all other state school boards should boycott texas-approved books. Just a suggestion.

[JillSwift]

Liars for Jesus strike again.  

[KDbeads]

Cements the choice for homeschooling for us once we can adopt.

I'm just still so very disgusted.  It's hard to put it into rational wording.