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Next thing you know they'll be teaching our children habeas corpus ISN'T in the Cons ution.
better smile when you say that yankee !
Next thing you know they'll be teaching our children habeas corpus ISN'T in the Cons ution.
It's insane but hopefully, the tide is turning somewhat.
lol @ nbadan and This Modern Strawman.
Outside Texas, alarm over textbook changes
latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-texas-textbooks23-2010mar23,0,821035.story
latimes.com
The state's Board of Education votes for conservative new social studies standards, raising concern that students nationwide could be forced to learn from the same books.
By Richard Fausset
5:47 PM PDT, March 22, 2010
Reporting from Atlanta
When Texas' conservative-leaning Board of Education voted for new social studies standards this month, parents, teachers and lawmakers far beyond the Lone Star state -- particularly the liberal ones -- took notice.
With the changes, Texas' curriculum is likely to de-emphasize the concept in U.S. history of separating church and state, and the influence of Thomas Jefferson on 18th century world history. It would also cast a positive light on conservatives, such as Phyllis Schlafly and the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy.
Concerned observers have warned that those ideas could seep into textbooks throughout the country, because Texas is one of the nation's largest textbook buyers. In California last week, state Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) announced that he was working out the details of legislation that would inoculate California students from the Texas version of history.
"While some Texas politicians may want to set their educational standards back 50 years, California should not be subject to their backward curriculum changes," he said.
But it is far from clear that non-Texans will be subjected to the proposed changes, once they are finalized, as expected, in May. Though none of the three major K-12 textbook publishers -- Pearson Education Inc., Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and McGraw-Hill -- would comment for this article, observers of the $8-billion industry offered differing views on the likelihood that Texas could wield such influence beyond its borders -- in part because the textbook business, like American history itself, is a fluid affair influenced by commerce, culture, legislation and technology.
Texas and California are not just the two largest textbook markets in the nation. They are also among 20 states that industry insiders refer to as "adoption" states, meaning that they choose which textbooks can be used statewide. The remaining states let local schools and districts essentially choose whatever books they want, as long as the students who read them meet state-mandated standards.
Many states did not adopt such standards until they were compelled to by the 1994 Improving America's Schools Act, a major plank of President Clinton's education reform effort.
Before 1994, many schools bought largely uniform "national editions" of textbooks, said Jay Diskey, executive director of the school division for the Assn. of American Publishers. Back then, he acknowledged, big states such as California, New York and Texas were able to muscle in extra pages in national textbooks on, say, the Gold Rush or the Battle of the Alamo.
But since then, Diskey argued, publishers have grown accustomed to regularly printing different textbooks to conform to different states' needs. The new Texas standards, he said, won't change that.
"It's gotten to be an exaggeration, if not an urban legend, about how curriculum in Texas automatically hops state lines," he said.
Diskey also noted that the computerization of the publishing industry has made it possible to swap pages and chapters in textbooks to meet differing expectations.
Publishers may become even more nimble as digital publishing becomes more widespread, and as educators move closer to the e-book model promised by the iPad and the Kindle.
"It's already happening in the college textbook market," said Laura Dawson, a New York-based consultant to the publishing industry. "Professors can put together what would amount to a mash-up, where they can mix and match content to create a custom book just for their class. I definitely see that trickling down."
Critics of the current system argue that textbook manufacturers don't so much offer variety as they do texts crammed with every special request from around the country -- creating books that are often unwieldy and unreadable.
They also point to forces that may be limiting the variety of textbooks on the market. One is the consolidation of the textbook industry. Ten or 15 years ago, there were more than a dozen major players cranking out schoolbooks; now the three largest companies are responsible for about 80% of the core K-12 textbook market, Diskey said.
Another factor that could limit textbook variety nationwide is the California budget crisis.
California has traditionally served as the liberal and multicultural yin to the Texas yang in the industry. But in July, the Legislature suspended, until 2013, the adoption of new educational materials. That gave cash-strapped districts a break from having to buy updated textbooks.
"That means that California right now is of much less importance to publishers making decisions about content," said Gilbert Sewall, director of the American Textbook Council, a research center.
richard.fausset@ latimes.com
Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times
============
So maybe TX's "Christian" ignorance and ant-science prejudice, and Vast Right Wing Conspiracy will not infect and degrade students outside of TX.
The stereotypes contain, ah, a kernel of truth, perhaps.
That differs from the status quo in these United States how, exactly? So the deck chairs on American public education have been arranged in a manner pleasing to Pat Robertson. Grand. It's not like the pedagogy that was there before has been fundamentally altered. Students are still trained like dogs to obey state and employer and are fed a watery Alpo-esque instructional diet, which much like Alpo itself looks like dog . Americans have been turned out of these factory schools for decades as "pre-programmed ideologues." We only become vaguely aware of this when something over the top such as this recent historical revision hits the news.
Is it too late for the Texas School Board to give a late scratch to John Adams as well?
http://open.salon.com/blog/paul_j_or...-212_years_ago
In July, 1798, Congress passed, and President John Adams signed into law “An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen,” authorizing the creation of a marine hospital service, and mandating privately employed sailors to purchase healthcare insurance.
This legislation also created America’s first payroll tax, as a ship’s owner was required to deduct 20 cents from each sailor’s monthly pay and forward those receipts to the service, which in turn provided injured sailors hospital care. Failure to pay or account properly was discouraged by requiring a law violating owner or ship's captain to pay a 100 dollar fine.
Too bad that like the democrats in congress, you don't know how to read.
It is authorized that the ship owners pay the sailors less. Not mandated.and shall pay to the said collector, at the rate of twenty cents per month for every seaman so employed; which sum he is hereby authorized to retain out of the wages of such seamen.
GuardianThe board is to vote on a sweeping purge of alleged liberal bias in Texas school textbooks in favour of what Dunbar says really matters: a belief in America as a nation chosen by God as a beacon to the world, and free enterprise as the cornerstone of liberty and democracy.+
Those corrections have prompted a blizzard of accusations of rewriting history and indoctrinating children by promoting rightwing views on religion, economics and guns while diminishing the science of evolution, the civil rights movement and the horrors of slavery.
The new curriculum asserts that "the right to keep and bear arms" is an important element of a democratic society. Study of Sir Isaac Newton is dropped in favour of examining scientific advances through military technology.
The education board has dropped references to the slave trade in favour of calling it the more innocuous "Atlantic triangular trade", and recasts the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as driven by Islamic fundamentalism.
Texas doesn't have more students than California but they waste money (TAX PAYER MONEY) simply to buy influence over textbooks. As the article points out the Texas school-board has been overrun with fundies.
I like it when people complain that God isn't at the center of education and government, then complain about Islamic fundementalism as if calling for the US military to be full of "God's soldiers" and our classrooms full of "God's teachings" isn't the least bit odd.
People are funny.
WC, there was a fine if one didn't pay or account properly.
How is that not a mandate?
Would you like fries with that reading comprehension fail?
"authorized" when it comes to the law generally authorizes and requires the executive to create some agency.
But when you start seeing the word "shall" that is the definition of a mandatory requirement.
You shall read and understand the law before talking out your ass again.
You shall be required to fully understand the law before posting more examples of how you suck at reading comprehension.
Random, you are such an idiot. I already read the quoted material. Misunderstand "authorized" as you wish. I simply don't care about your education, or should I say lack of.
WC, you just don't know when you've been beat.
It's ok to be wrong every now and then. Insisting you're right all the time that's the damn foolishness you need less of.
Yeah, I could have been nicer. I will try to work on that.
I have no doubt you read it.
I do highly doubt that you understood the finer points of what you read.
The payments were mandatory of anyone who wanted to dock their ships.
You are right in the most absolute sense that the ship owners were not required to pay their sailors the same amount as before the levy and the levy itself,
BUT
Do you think that the ship owners absorbed the costs of that levy any more than modern employers do for FICA taxes?
The levy made less money available to pay sailors. Paying them less would not be entirely mandatory, but that was the practical effect.
Let's face it, there are 2 kinds of students:
1. The smart kids. They will go ask their parents, teachers, go to the library, or browse the web to learn more about stuff in school. They know of the material in school, but they will not be indoctrinated to their slant because of their inquisitive nature. They will take AP classes and eventually have a real education though good teachers, parents, and their own pursuit of the truth.
2. Everyone else. They will forget everything they half-learned not even a year removed from the material. They were indoctrinated to the material, but they will never remember it. They will either become indoctrinated again later as adults through political media or eventually turn into a smart person and find out whats what on their own.
In the end, the standards don't matter. Just think back to public school. How many adults do you know that actually get their talking points from what they learned in class? Fact is, they are either truly educated or they parrot political view points. School has no effect.
This just shows how broken the educational system is.
Here Are the Proposed Texas Science Lessons Freaking Out the Scientific Community
http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfa...d_texas_sc.php
TX "Christian" Taleban just showing their Bible-induced ignorance.
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