57.0°,
Partly Cloudy Is it too late to give Texas back to Mexico?
It’s not that I have anything against Mexico; love the country; love the people. It’s just that I would like to edge the state of Texas over the border and out of America.
My issues with the Lone Star State, aside from the fact that it nurtured and launched the career of George Bush, is that the Texas school board has staged an intellectual coup d’état, voting in changes to the school curricula based on political and religious bias rather than educational criteria.
In this case, the board is pushing an ultra-conservative, Christian agenda. But no religious or political agenda would be acceptable.
This is a cautionary tale because what happens in Texas doesn’t necessarily stay in Texas. Textbook publishers are paying close attention. According to published reports, over the last year, they sent curriculum writers to the contentious Texas school board meetings to see which way the political winds were blowing down there.
Publishers are in the business of selling books; if evolution is a nonstarter and creationism is to be embraced, the publishers will tweak their texts accordingly. Of course, those same books will be purchased by other states, which may not concur with Texans’ religious theory. But Texas has 4.8 million schoolchildren, and business is business — or, as Molly Ivins, the great Texas writer, used to say, “Bidness is bidness.”
In the past, the influence of conservatives on the Texas Board of Education has been balanced by the liberal influence of California, the largest purchaser of textbooks. However, because of the economic collapse, California has put off purchasing any new books until 2014. So, Texas rules.
As one editorial writer said, “The disgusting thing is ... that publishers don’t stand up to the bullies in Texas. If parents in Texas want to raise a bunch of morons, that’s their choice, but they shouldn’t be able to foist their ignorance on the rest of the children in the country.”
The Texas Board of Ed voted along party lines, 9 to 5, to basically challenge the doctrine of separation of church and state. Does anyone really want to know why American children are falling behind? Listen up:
