Texas State Board of Education Ravages Social Studies Curriculum
Here’s what the democratically elected (although, I guess they’d prefer republicanally elected) Texas State Board of Education did to the state’s social studies curriculum:
During meetings in January and this week, the state board made numerous changes to standards proposed by teachers, scholars and other curriculum writers over the past year. Among the decisions made by the board this week:
The board rejected a proposed standard requiring students to “examine the reasons the Founding Fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion over all others.” That means the board opposes teaching students about the most fundamental constitutional protection for religious freedom in America.
Even as board members continued to demand that students learn about “American exceptionalism,” the board stripped Thomas Jefferson from a world history standard about the influence of Enlightenment thinkers on political revolutions from the 1700s to today. In Jefferson’s place, the board’s religious conservatives succeeded in inserting Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin. They also removed the reference to “Enlightenment ideas” in the standard, requiring that students should simply learn about the influence of the “writings” of various thinkers (including Calvin and Aquinas).
The board removed the word “capitalism” from the standards, mandating that the term for that economic system be called “free enterprise” throughout the standards. Board members such as Terri Leo and Ken Mercer charged that “capitalism” is a negative term used by “liberal professors in academia.”
The board removed Santa Barraza from a Grade 7 Texas history standard on Texans who have made contributions to the arts because board conservatives objected to one of her (many) paintings, which included a depiction of a woman’s exposed breasts. Some of Barraza’s works had been displayed in the Texas Governor’s Mansion during the gubernatorial administration of George W. Bush in the 1990s.
Board members added Friedrich von Hayek to a standard in the high school economics course even though some board members acknowledged that they had no idea who the influential Austrian-born economist even was.
In a high school government standard about ”the importance of the expression of different points of view in a democratic republic,” board conservatives added a requirement that students learn about the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms.
The board decided in November to proceed on its revision of the standards without further formal input from scholars and classroom teachers. As a result, board members cast their votes in January and this week without any guidance from classroom teachers or experts in the social sciences.
They also struck the word “democratic” from any descriptions of the American system of government because… well, because Republicans outnumber Democrats on the board by a two-to-one margin.
This just makes me sick to my stomach. I mean, can they even teach students about the Bill of Rights in Texas anymore? Because the “freedom of religion” part of the First Amendment is out completely, and the “free expression” part has to also include the Second Amendment, for some bizarre reason, not to mention the fact that Thomas Jefferson, a major proponent of having a bill of rights in the first place, is out of the curriculum entirely because he’s not Christian enough for the American Taliban members of the Texas SBOE.
And since Texas students won’t be learning about Thomas Jefferson, board members won’t have to worry about kids googling Jefferson, finding out that he was from Virginia, and then seeing a woman’s breast on our state flag, because just seeing a breast once would scandalize them for life. (By “them” I’m referring to… well, I actually don’t know if I’m referring to the students or the board members.)
Oh, and isn’t it great that these morons can just add and remove things from the curriculum without consulting teachers or experts? Even if they have no idea who a person is? This sounds like a great way to improve education in our country! And don’t even start in on the “capitalism” thing, because that just doesn’t make any sense. None whatsoever.
Ugh. If you live in Texas and plan on sending your kids to public schools, I’d get the heck out as fast as possible.
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was in Denver, CO, today for a town hall meeting. The event, at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, was billed as “open to the public.” Yet Carol Kreck, a 61-year-old librarian carrying a “McCain=Bush” sign, was taken away by police for trespassing.
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Kreck received a ticket for trespassing and her court date is July 23. McCain has apparently taken a page from the Bush playbook. In 2005, the White House had three activists expelled from a Denver public forum with President Bush because it was the administration’s policy “to exclude potentially disruptive guests from Bush’s appearances nationwide.”
Watch the befuddled woman be escorted from city property for holding a sign outside of a public event.
This is Freedom of Speech in George Bush’s America.
Through its FOIA project, the ACLU has made public information on Defense Department policies designed to control information about the human costs of war. These practices include:
Banning photographers on U.S. military bases from covering the arrival of caskets containing the remains of U.S. soldiers killed overseas;
Paying Iraqi journalists to write positive accounts of the U.S. war effort;
Inviting U.S. journalists to “embed” with military units but requiring them to submit their stories for pre-publication review;
Erasing journalists’ footage of civilian deaths in Afghanistan; and
Refusing to disclose statistics on civilian casualties.
[Pachino] Hill, 29, of Davenport was sentenced Wednesday by Scott County Associate Judge Christine Dalton to a counseling program offered by Third Missionary Baptist Church. She also ordered him to attend church there eight consecutive Sundays, to pay a fine and be on probation for one year.
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Prosecutor Marc Gellerman did not object to the counseling program [suggested by Hill's attorney] but did request that Hill attend church services.
“I would think that listening to Rev. Kirk every Sunday would be very beneficial for Mr. Hill,” Gellerman said, adding that Hill reaching out to Kirk “says a lot.”
If Hill skips out on one of Rev. Kirk’s court-ordered sermon, he’ll end up in jail for two years.
I don’t understand how any lawyer, especially a judge, can think that this punishment is even constitutional, let alone appropriate. Is Hill even a Christian? Has he ever been to church in his life? Did Judge Dalton ask any of these questions or take any of this into account before making her ruling?
This is not a Christian nation, folks, which means that no government official should be permitted to force anyone, for any reason, into any house of worship.
Alberto Gonzales, My College, and Where All That Money Is Going
Did you hear? Disgraced former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has decided to use his newfound free time to take part in a time-honored tradition among criminals: making a profit. Yes, Gonzo is taking his long career of public service to George W. Bush on the road as part of a new speaking tour! And guess where his first stop will be:
Earlier this week, the [Washington University in St. Louis] Student Union Treasury approved funds to bring beleaguered former attorney general Alberto Gonzales to speak on campus [well, technically he's (conveniently for the administration) speaking at a building off-campus next semester, but that's beside the point].
College Republicans, the primary sponsor of the event, appealed for $10,000 to augment funding of $25,000 from the SU speaker series budget.
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According to SU President Neil Patel, Washington University will be one of Gonzales’ first speaking appearances since he stepped down as attorney general.
Now, I take issue with pretty much everything that Alberto Gonzales did during his tenure as Attorney General–and I interned in his Justice Department–but just because I disagree with him doesn’t mean he doesn’t have his Constitutional rights. And yes, yes, you could make a very compelling argument that Gonzales may have waived those rights after having spent much of his career pissing on or providing justification for others to piss on the Constitution, but you undermine your credibility if you do the same thing to him (trampling on his rights) that you’re criticizing him for doing to us (trampling on, well, all of our rights).
So Alberto Gonzales gets his right to free speech, and so should the people who will be there protesting him. And it’s no secret that there will be protesters.
Because Gonzales is such a controversial speaker, there will be additional security to ensure that any demonstrators do not interfere with the speech; almost $5,000 of the total money allocated for the program will go towards security and other expenses unrelated to Gonzales’ honorarium.
“There’s a tendency to be demonstrators when there’s such a big name,” said Patel. “That’s fine, but I wouldn’t want his speech to get disrupted.”
According to Patel, while it is still unclear what additional security measures would be implemented, there may be an additional police presence.
“There’s a tendency to be demonstrators when there’s such a big name…” That understatement-of-the-century shouldn’t surprise anyone, but there’s something about all this that isn’t quite adding up. Actually, to be more accurate, it’s something that is adding up. $35k from Student Union , $5k for security… that means, for the mathematically challenged among us:
The majority of the $35,000 budget for the event will go towards Gonzales’ $30,000 honorarium.
Holy shit! Thirty grand for one 50-minute speech! And we don’t even know what he’s going to talk about. To be perfectly frank, I don’t think he even knows what he’s going to talk about. There isn’t very much he can say about being in charge of the Department of Justice without incriminating himself, and, even if there were, he probably couldn’t recall what happened anyway.
WashU is, according to StudLife, one of many stops on Alberto Gonzales’ “I Can’t Recall” Express. If we figure that he makes three speeches a month, at $30,000 a pop, that means he’s making $90,000 in very easy income every month and bringing in a cool 7-figure salary every year. Pretty safe to say that the man isn’t exactly living from paycheck to paycheck. Of course, this begs the question: why exactly does he need a legal defense fund?
Supporters of former attorney general Alberto R. Gonzales have created a trust fund to help pay for his legal expenses, which are mounting in the face of an ongoing Justice Department investigation into whether Gonzales committed perjury or improperly tampered with a congressional witness.
The establishment of a legal defense fund for the nation’s former chief law enforcement officer underscores the potential peril confronting Gonzales, who is one of a handful of attorneys general to face potential criminal charges for actions taken in office.
David G. Leitch, a Gonzales friend and general counsel at the Ford Motor Co., wrote in an e-mail solicitation to potential contributors last month that Gonzales is “innocent of any wrongdoing” but does not have the means to pay for his legal defense after a career spent mostly in public service.
“In the hyper-politicized atmosphere that has descended on Washington, an innocent man cannot simply trust that the truth will out,” Leitch wrote. “He must engage highly competent legal counsel to represent him. That costs money, money that Al Gonzales doesn’t have.”
Alberto Gonzales is being investigated, but he hasn’t been indicted yet. Hell, I don’t think there’s anyone left in Washington who is far enough removed from Gonzales’ corruption of the Justice Department to even bring charges, and even if he is convicted he’ll certainly get the deluxe version of the Scooter Libby package. Nevertheless, he’s already raising money by the hundreds and thousands because, ironically, he needs to pay for highly competent lawyers.
David G. Leitch, I am calling your bullshit. Alberto Gonzales does have the means to pay for the highly competent legal counsel that he couldn’t get by representing himself. He’s getting the means to pay in the form of a $30,000 gift from the student body of Washington University. He’s getting the means to pay to the tune of $30,000 every time he gets up in front of a big enough crowd and talks–and I’m sure he’ll find that task much easier while he isn’t under oath. Don’t you dare try and tell us that Alberto Gonzales is just a poor, innocent man who’s been maligned by the liberal press and can’t make it on his own. If you really give a damn about justice for all, take that legal defense fund and donate it to help the people who really can’t afford legal counsel. But if you keep raising money for this sham of a charity, if you keep raising money to defend the man who had to resign in shame from the nation’s top law enforcement job because he lied when he said he upheld the law… well, sir, you’re no better than Alberto Gonzales.
Here’s what the democratically elected (although, I guess they’d prefer republicanally elected) Texas State Board of Education did to the state’s social studies curriculum:
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