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Texas to revise history textbooks: liberals out, Limbaugh and Gingrich in.

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FourScore Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Aug-21-09 11:49 PM
Original message
Texas to revise history textbooks: liberals out, Limbaugh and Gingrich in.
The Texas State Board of Education review committee is preparing to vote on a draft of proposed standards for history textbooks. Noting that the draft has “nothing about liberals,” the Houston Chronicle reported:

The first draft for proposed standards in United States History Studies Since Reconstruction says students should be expected “to identify significant conservative advocacy organizations and individuals, such as Newt Gingrich, Phyllis Schlafly and the Moral Majority.” <...> Others have proposed adding talk show host Rush Limbaugh and the National Rifle Association.


The 15-member committee, stacked with 10 Republicans, is expected to vote along party lines. Earlier this year, a panel of right-wing “experts” produced a report urging the committee to remove biographies of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Stephen F. Austin, and César Chávez, and instead add history about the “motivational role the Bible and the Christian faith played in the settling of the original colonies.

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/08/21/texas-history-gingrich/
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bluestateguy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Aug-21-09 11:57 PM
Response to Original message
1. Now George Washington is a commie lib?
I mean, gee, the man owned hundreds of slaves. You'd think that would establish some conservative cred, wouldn't it?
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Vinnie From Indy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-22-09 12:04 AM
Response to Reply #1
6. LOL!
Very funny! Texas is unique in it's madness!~
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mediaman007 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-22-09 06:53 AM
Response to Reply #6
24. This is incredibly dangerous!
Texas is very powerful in educational textbooks. Texas purchases books statewide, not locally. Therefore the publishers fight hard to get the Texas contract. In adapting for Texas, the publishers will often make the Texas textbook the offering for the rest of the country.

Texas is in the bottom five nationally for academic success. But it is the number one state in influence. The dumbing of America continues.

Work harder America. Take lower wages. Forget about health insurance. Just pray and everything will be alright! (sarcasm!)
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Zomby Woof Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-22-09 12:57 AM
Response to Reply #1
20. But he freed them upon his death
Obviously, a sign of weakness with conservatives.
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Kerrytravelers Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Aug-21-09 11:58 PM
Response to Original message
2. They don't like how history makes them look, so they rewrite and omit. This. Is. Frightening.
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Ken Burch Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Aug-21-09 11:59 PM
Response to Original message
3. Why would they want to remove Stephen F. Austin?
Are they gonna go after Sam Houston next time?
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wickerwoman Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-22-09 12:00 AM
Response to Original message
4. This is soooo what's wrong with America today.
Edited on Sat Aug-22-09 12:29 AM by wickerwoman
Texas has had a stranglehold on textbook publishing since the early 80s.

When I was in high school (90-94) our textbook stopped before Korea. There was absolutely nothing about the struggle of labor to achieve the 40 hour work week. It was all "so and so was president and then we won this war and then so and so was president and we won that war."

Sit your child down with Howard Zinn before they leave for college and you will be doing them a massive lifelong favor.
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a la izquierda Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-22-09 07:50 AM
Response to Reply #4
26. as a PhD grad student in history...
thanks for that suggestion.

i start teaching on Monday. I hope my students this semester are as good as my intersession class.
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texastoast Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-22-09 12:02 AM
Response to Original message
5. The smart will survive Texas curriculum
After all, I still grew up to find out that my ancestors were part and parcel to the slave trade and genocide.

No spin is ever going to change that.

And parents are still the best teachers. I've raised an argumentative liberal. He would have fun with anyone touting Rush in class.

That said, I'm so thankful that my kid is not going to read this crap.
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Ken Burch Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-22-09 12:23 AM
Response to Reply #5
13. It'll be too late to teach the truth to these kids if they don't hear it 'til their twenty.
Edited on Sat Aug-22-09 12:24 AM by Ken Burch
Any kid that is taught using the textbooks they're proposing is lost for life. They're all gonna grow up to be Dubyas. There's no way they can be reached as adults.
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babylonsister Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-22-09 12:05 AM
Response to Original message
7. Bizarre to me. I'm from NY, think I got a relatively good education,
and no one ever wanted to change history afaik.

Blows my mind. And I read this earlier and posted in TX forum.
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Xipe Totec Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-22-09 12:09 AM
Response to Original message
8. History repeats itself
First as a tragedy.

Then as a farce.
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sasquatch Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-22-09 12:13 AM
Response to Original message
9. When hispanics begin to get to close to outnumbering anglos, Texas will begin mass genocide
You've heard it here first from me. If you have any sense you'll leave that state if you're already there, stay away from it if you don't live there.
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Hawkeye-X Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-22-09 12:16 AM
Response to Reply #9
10. I lived in Texas for 3 months. Then I fled.
Back to my native Colorado, and grateful that I live there. My son will be taught history the way I learned history - through the eyes of a true historian. Mine was Mr. Artenberry - a wonderful, wonderful teacher that was African American and taught us all about Dr. King, Booker Washington, George Washington Carver, Marshall Thurman, and so many more famous people who have made their mark in American history. That, for I am grateful. Thank you, Mr. Artenberry, wherever you are.

Hawkeye-X
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texastoast Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-22-09 12:22 AM
Response to Reply #9
11. Hogwash
Edited on Sat Aug-22-09 12:22 AM by texastoast
We get along fine.

I would like to move from Texas eventually, but the Mexican food sucks anywhere else in the US of A.
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sasquatch Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-22-09 12:48 AM
Response to Reply #11
17. You may, but most white Texans don't share your attitude and disposicion
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texastoast Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-22-09 01:27 PM
Response to Reply #17
28. Yeah, but lots do
The native white Texans are fine with Mexicans for the most part. Except for folks over maybe 75, we grew up going to the same schools and (however unwittingly at the time) sharing cultures. Texas was never without Mexicans. They've always been here and are the very fabric that cloaks all that is "Texan." The new-to-Texas whites might not understand. Some of them are very racist.
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onestepforward Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-22-09 02:05 PM
Response to Reply #17
29. I do! n/t
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OHdem10 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-22-09 12:22 AM
Response to Original message
12. Marginalized for years--Erase us from sight. Get ready for one
party government. We are almost there.

We had better start standing for something besides a
party with a laundry list of policies.

Texas Now , Next, Next, Next.

I guess they will change the Founders to RWingers.
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conflictgirl Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-22-09 12:27 AM
Response to Original message
14. I am unfortunately not surprised
I lived in Texas for 8 years and moved back to Michigan just before my first born was to start kindergarten. There was no way at all that I wanted my kids educated in Texas schools.
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aint_no_life_nowhere Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-22-09 12:31 AM
Response to Original message
15. Will the textbook celebrate Rush Limbaugh's heroic butt pimples?
Those fine upstanding butt pimples that kept this man out of war so he could survive and bravely carry on the good fight sitting on his ass all day?
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Liberty Belle Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-22-09 12:44 AM
Response to Original message
16. Where's the ACLU? They should sue over this.
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GoddessOfGuinness Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-22-09 12:53 AM
Response to Original message
18. Will they add a chapter on Rush's drug habit?
How about Newt's indiscretions?
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G_j Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-22-09 12:56 AM
Response to Original message
19. they really do need to secede
since they obviously hate America.
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sasquatch Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-22-09 01:18 AM
Response to Reply #19
21. Oh God, that would be a blessing at first but see post #9 and reconsider
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aquart Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-22-09 01:49 AM
Response to Original message
22. I will sell Texas to Mexico for a buck.
But they have to take all the Texas millionaires.
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bobburgster Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-22-09 02:42 AM
Response to Original message
23. Give me a break!
How in the world can it be, that in this day and age we still allow school textbooks to be revised based on political ideology?
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theothersnippywshrub Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-22-09 07:43 AM
Response to Original message
25. How very republican. n/t
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G_j Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-22-09 11:47 AM
Response to Original message
27. kick
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