Tell textbook publishers to stand up to the Texas Taliban

[DMC]

No one takes you serious, not because you don't have a real message at the core of your hyperbole laced diatribes, but because you don't take it serious enough to be honest about it. If you have to use extreme groups who throw acid on people's faces and behead young girls for talking as an analogy to an American political group who wants their beliefs taught in school, it seems, at least, that you don't have a strong enough case against them to present the facts more clinically as opposed to the you spew. Everyone here has been inundated with more of this partisan bull than they care to remember for as long as email has been active.

You obviously think people are generally too stupid to draw rational conclusions from hard facts, so you need to proselytize just like the religious right.

Both extreme sides make me ill. You are both alike more than you care to admit; both just want to be heard, the facts. If someone convinced you that the conservative right was the way to go, you'd be just as extreme in that direction as you are in this. It's like how a heroin addict becomes a Jesus addict and annoys the out of the rationally minded people both ways.

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Texas Religious Conservatives Mad About Climate Change and Evolution in School Books

The Dallas Morning News reports that religious conservatives on a review panel dedicated to voting on the textbooks in Texas have criticized books that don’t challenge Charles Darwin.

The review panel is now urging the Texas State Board of education to reject the textbooks unless they add disclaimers on evolution.

“This is a theory,” said one reviewer, Texas A&M University’s Karen Beathard. “At the same time, this is a theory. As an educator, parent and grandparent, I feel very firmly that creation science based on biblical principles should be incorporated into every biology book that is up for adoption.”

Religious conservatives are also objecting to the coverage of global warming in the books, saying that questions remain about the impact of climate change.

http://www.alternet.org/belief/religious-conservatives-object-texas-school-books-dont-question-evolution

a ing Aggie lecturer Bible-thumper! I suppose her nutritional science is as credible, "true" as her biological evolution science.

[boutons_deux]

No one takes you serious, not because you don't have a real message at the core of your hyperbole laced diatribes, but because you don't take it serious enough to be honest about it. If you have to use extreme groups who throw acid on people's faces and behead young girls for talking as an analogy to an American political group who wants their beliefs taught in school, it seems, at least, that you don't have a strong enough case against them to present the facts more clinically as opposed to the you spew. Everyone here has been inundated with more of this partisan bull than they care to remember for as long as email has been active.

You obviously think people are generally too stupid to draw rational conclusions from hard facts, so you need to proselytize just like the religious right.

Both extreme sides make me ill. You are both alike more than you care to admit; both just want to be heard, the facts. If someone convinced you that the conservative right was the way to go, you'd be just as extreme in that direction as you are in this. It's like how a heroin addict becomes a Jesus addict and annoys the out of the rationally minded people both ways.

ah, is DMC not girl enough to take my slappings like a little ?

keep going, your delusions are amusing as your weak-assed attempted slander.

[pgardn]

This has been a persistent problem in Science education in Texas for a while now.

Alas, if presented by a different messenger it would have more impact. A fanatical zealot giving us information concerning fanatical zealots has a bad taste for some reason. It's like Hitler telling the world to be wary of Stalin.

[DMC]

ah, is DMC not girl enough to take my slappings like a little ?

keep going, your delusions are amusing as your weak-assed attempted slander.

I haven't even read the regurgitated offerings. I just know your type.

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I haven't even read the regurgitated offerings. I just know your type.

you know about my "type" GFY

[DMC]

you know about my "type" GFY

Every forum has at least one just like you: someone who is a link hauler and basically rants uncontrollably about the government using hyperbole and buzz words instead of facts and common sense.

There's nothing unique about your shtick.

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Every forum has at least one just like you: someone who is a link hauler and basically rants uncontrollably about the government using hyperbole and buzz words instead of facts and common sense.

There's nothing unique about your shtick.

I don't rant about the govt, I about the VRWC/corps/1% CORRUPTING/CONTROLLING the govt, at all levels.

unique? strawman, I never claimed to be unique

And I present plenty of facts, and direct quotes by Repugs, "Christians", etc, nothing made up.

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"Christian" Taleban teacher gets kicked in the balls

Texas Student Gains Scholarship After Recording Her Teacher Preaching Christianity and Equating Atheism To Smoking in His Economics Class(Audio+Video)

The second is a video of her speech at a Humanists of Houston meeting, where she details her experience during his classes and her experiences involving friends after the recordings went public and a letter was sent to the school’s superintendent. A friend of hers who attended the class the next semester told his new class that Sheppard took away his right to “talk about Jesus”. She also said she lost many friends who disagreed with her as time went on, but she still stands by the belief that what she did was the right thing.

http://www.alternet.org/belief/gutsy...tter898329&t=5

ing stupid, crusading teacher thinks "freedom of speech" and "freedom of religion" means he can teach Jesus in taxpayer funded economics class. This is the kind of crap that needs to be stopped, and certainly happens is charter schools.

[EVAY]

Without all the melodramatic language, I have been concerned for years about the wide-ranging impact of the Texas BOE on textbook usage nationally because there is an undeniable rejection of scientific thought and objective historical emphasis in what they have been demanding of textbook publishers for some time. I have not been willing to run for the Texas BOE, however, so I cannot say that I am willing to do something about it.

I have comforted myself with the belief that teachers across America are increasingly using readily available texts and information from web-based sources for their in-classroom teaching.

As long as Texas has the dominant position in ordering texbooks, the publishers will continue to allow it to drive the narratives. And as long as the religious right wing has the dominant positions on the BOE, they will continue to impose their religious beliefs on the students in this state.

Being a lng-term believer in supply-and-demand economics, I assume that at some point the rest of the nation will demand a different narrative and enforce that belief with the only thing that publishers will understand, i.e. dollars.

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"believer in supply-and-demand economics"

in the SBOE, the "demand"ers are the "Christian" taleban, and everybody gets stuck with the crap they "supply".

The "Christian" Taleban in TX is dramatic, and those who remaind "mellow" will get the "Christian" crap they deserve.

How do rational, non-"Christian" Texans purge the SBOE of the Taleban, who are relentless in spreading their religious crap into taxpayer funded, secular government and ins utions? your supply-and-demand "free market" idea is pure myth.

[Ignignokt]

I'm confused, are we talking about creationism or global warming? Which fabrications are we trying to inject in our science textbooks?

[boutons_deux]

both

Creationist Climate-Deniers Reviewing Texas Textbooks May Help Set a National Standard

Texas educators selected by the State Board of Education (SBOE) and the Texas Education Agency (TEA) to review textbooks for adoption in November 2013 are insisting upon changes to major science and biology instructional materials that would contradict the widely established international scientific consensuses on the subjects of evolution and human-caused climate change.

If major education publishers such as Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Pearson and McGraw-Hill Publishers buckle under the pressure of religious fundamentalists in Texas aiming to cast doubt on two of the most widely supported scientific concepts in history, the changes that will affect Texas public schools for the next 10 years could become part of a larger trend affecting science education across the nation. Texas could set this national precedent because major publishers typically cater their educational materials toward the large Texas market first then make small changes to those materials for smaller markets around the country.

These appointed panels have been evaluating drafts of mostly electronic classroom materials and negotiating the content with publishers since July, with much of the review process taking place in private.

The SBOE had its first public hearing Sept. 17, 2013, regarding the textbooks under consideration, in which some of the reviewers pressing for changes expressed their views regarding evolution and climate change.

That same week the watchdog group Texas Freedom Network (TFN) released do ents obtained through an open-records request that provide some transparency in the review process and confirmed that some of the appointed reviewers are pushing creationism and theories that promote skepticism about the human causes of climate change.

The do ents also revealed the reviewers contested information relating to fetal development that recently has been used by anti-abortion activists in the state pushing the recent omnibus abortion overhaul expected to close the vast majority of clinics in the state.

"[The reviewers'] objections shape the content of the textbooks because the publishers have to decide how they're going to respond to those objections," said TFN Spokesman Dan Quinn. "Do they cave and include these junk science arguments against evolution or do they stand firm and take the risk that their textbook will get rejected?"

TFN believes the TEA selected largely unqualified individuals who do not have a background in biology or any kind of science and, in some cases, are themselves conservative political activists to serve on the review panels.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/19049-creationist-climate-deniers-reviewing-texas-textbooks-may-help-set-the-national-standard-for-science-education

ing Texas Repugs and Christians, what ing assholes. Does RickyBobby and his Repug posse really think companies with educated, sophisticated employees are going to locate to TX and get their kids ed up with SBOE garbage?

[Big Empty]

texas taliban lol i like that

[TDMVPDPOY]

might as well teach positive thinking every class...lol

[boutons_deux]

Dear PFAW Activist,

I wanted to share this important update from our friends at the Texas Freedom Network about the ongoing fight to keep religious creationism out of biology textbooks. Check it out and please add your name to the letter thanking textbook publishers for standing strong against pressure from Radical Right members of the State Board of Education.

-- Ben Betz, Online Engagement Director

---

From: Val, TFN Outreach Director
To: Ben Betz
Sent: Thursday, October 17, 2013
Re: Wow!
Dear Ben,

This week we got our first look at changes publishers submitted in response to objections -- many of them thinly veiled attacks on evolution -- raised by textbook reviews commissioned by the State Board of Education.

And I’ve got some truly encouraging news:

All 14 publishers are refusing to water down or compromise instruction on evolution and climate change in their proposed new biology books.

These publishers deserve our thanks for standing up to pressure from right-wing politiciansand activists working to corrupt the science in our children’s textbooks, and we’ve made it easy for you to thank them.

http://site.pfaw.org/site/MessageVie...&em_id=43061.0

[angrydude]

I don't rant about the govt, I about the VRWC/corps/1% CORRUPTING/CONTROLLING the govt, at all levels.

unique? strawman, I never claimed to be unique

And I present plenty of facts, and direct quotes by Repugs, "Christians", etc, nothing made up.

If they control the government they are the government.

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If they control the government they are the government.

correct, but you right wing ers and tea baggers whine and about only the govt, willfully ignoring the UCA/1% that really operates the govt. iow, small govt for the 99% BUT BIG GOVT for the 1% and corps.

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Texas Public Schools Are Teaching Creationism

hen public-school students enrolled in Texas’ largest charter program open their biology workbooks, they will read that the fossil record is “sketchy.” That evolution is “dogma” and an “unproved theory” with no experimental basis. They will be told that leading scientists dispute the mechanisms of evolution and the age of the Earth. These are all lies.

The more than 17,000 students in the Responsive Education Solutions charter system will learn in their history classes that some residents of the Philippines were “pagans in various levels of civilization.” They’ll read in a history textbook that feminism forced women to turn to the government as a “surrogate husband.”

Responsive Ed has a secular veneer and is funded by public money, but it has been connected from its inception to the creationist movement and to far-right fundamentalists who seek to undermine the separation of church and state.

The opening line of the workbook section declares, “In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth.”

Infiltrating and subverting the charter-school movement has allowed Responsive Ed to carry out its religious agenda—and it is succeeding. Operating more than 65 campuses in Texas, Arkansas, and Indiana, Responsive Ed receives more than $82 million in taxpayer money annually, and it is expanding, with 20 more Texas campuses opening in 2014.

Charter schools may be run independently, but they are still public schools, and through an open records request, I was able to obtain a set of Responsive Ed’s biology “Knowledge Units,” workbooks that Responsive Ed students must complete to pass biology. These workbooks both overtly and underhandedly discredit evidence-based science and allow creationism into public-school classrooms.

A favorite creationist claim is that there is “uncertainty” in the fossil record, and Responsive Ed does not disappoint. The workbook cites the “lack of a single source for all the rock layers as an argument against evolution.”

Another Responsive Ed section claims that evolution cannot be tested, something biologists have been doing for decades. It misinforms students by claiming, “How can scientists do experiments on something that takes millions of years to accomplish? It’s impossible.”

The curriculum tells students that a “lack of transitional fossils” is a “problem for evolutionists who hold a view of uninterrupted evolution over long periods of time.”

“The assertion that there are no ‘transitional fossils’ is false,” Miller responded. “We have excellent examples of transitional forms do enting the evolution of amphibians, mammals, and birds, to name some major groups. We also have well-studied transitional forms do enting the evolution of whales, elephants, horses, and humans.”

Responsive Ed’s butchering of evolution isn’t the only part of its science curriculum that deserves an F; it also misinforms students about vaccines and mauls the scientific method.

On the scientific method, Responsive Ed confuses scientific theories and laws. It argues that theories are weaker than laws and that there is a natural progression from theories into laws, all of which is incorrect.

The Responsive Ed curriculum undermines Texas schoolchildren’s future in any possible career in science.

Dan Quinn, the communications director for the Texas Freedom Network, a watchdog organization that monitors the religious right, said, “These materials should raise a big red flag for any parent or school administrator. It's bad enough that they promote the same discredited anti-evolution arguments that scientists debunked a long time ago. But the materials also veer into teaching religious beliefs that the courts have repeatedly ruled have no place in a public school science classroom.”

When it’s not directly quoting the Bible, Responsive Ed’s curriculum showcases the current creationist strategy to compromise science education, which the National Center for Science Education terms “stealth creationism.”

http://www.slate.com/articles/health..._movement.html

Christian Taleban s bags and greedy, fraudulent charter school predators ing up kids and education, all facilitated by VRWC/ALEC dictating policies to (red state) purchased legislators.

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Reponsive Ed indoctrination dumbing down center in San Antonio

http://premierhighschools.com/campus...f-san-antonio/


http://www.texastribune.org/public-e...san-antonio-c/

[RandomGuy]

Without all the melodramatic language, I have been concerned for years about the wide-ranging impact of the Texas BOE on textbook usage nationally because there is an undeniable rejection of scientific thought and objective historical emphasis in what they have been demanding of textbook publishers for some time. I have not been willing to run for the Texas BOE, however, so I cannot say that I am willing to do something about it.

I have comforted myself with the belief that teachers across America are increasingly using readily available texts and information from web-based sources for their in-classroom teaching.

As long as Texas has the dominant position in ordering texbooks, the publishers will continue to allow it to drive the narratives. And as long as the religious right wing has the dominant positions on the BOE, they will continue to impose their religious beliefs on the students in this state.

Being a lng-term believer in supply-and-demand economics, I assume that at some point the rest of the nation will demand a different narrative and enforce that belief with the only thing that publishers will understand, i.e. dollars.

Let me know if you ever do run. I will volunteer for your campaign.

[EVAY]

Let me know if you ever do run. I will volunteer for your campaign.

thanks for the thought , RG, but can you seriously imagine doing something like that (running for BOE) and the impact on one's family? One of my nephews who is really serious about running for office has been told by his wife, "Don't even THINK about it...they will come after not just you and me but the children as well". And, I fear she is right. The right wing in this state (and most others, I fear) seems to think nothing of character assassination and mud slinging as the FIRST line of political attack. I mean, their thought process seems to be "Why wait about ad hominem attacks? Let's just start with those and go downhill from there."

My nephew wants (wanted) take on Joe Barton for congress (we are, embarrassingly, related to him) for the sake of the family's legacy, but we all keep telling him to let that kind of person (Rep. Barton) and his similarly minded David Barton hang themselves on the scaffold of history.

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Texas Overhauls Textbook AppTexas Overhauls Textbook Approval To Ease Tensions Over Evolution

The Texas Board of Education, which has long been an ideological battleground for the teaching of evolution, says it will limit the use of citizen review panels and instead give priority to teachersin determining science and history curricula.

Because Texas public schools represent such a large market for textbook publishers, the state has an outsized influence on what is taught in the rest of the country.

Science curricula in particular have become a source of tension over the past 30 years amid moves to downplay the teaching of evolution or to include biblically inspired creationism or "intelligent design."

Critics have been concerned that a small number of religious or political activists can dominate the process of approving texts, and the Board of Education's move appears to try to tamp that down.

Conflicts have also seeped into the approval of history textbooks in recent years, where some have sought to change the characterization of religion's role in the development of the early republic.

Among the changes approved by the state on Friday was

"a mandate for teachers and professors to be given priority for serving on textbook review panels for subjects in their areas of expertise.

They also enable the board to appoint outside experts to check objections that review panels raise,"

The Associated Press says.


Meanwhile,South Dakotabecame the fourth state so far this year to take up legislation that would allow public schools to teach intelligent design. Similar bills have been introduced in Virginia, Missouri and Oklahoma. ( red states! ignorant Bible-thumping "Christian" s )

Proponents of intelligent design, which teaches that humans and animals were specially created by an unnamed en y, say it should be taught as an alternative to the scientific theory of evolution by natural selection. However, most scientists say intelligent design doesn't qualify as a theory because it cannot be falsified and has not demonstrated any predictive value.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/...n?sc=17&f=1001

[boutons_deux]

Confederate NC Christian Supremacists/Taliban:

North Carolina School Allegedly Forbids Club For Secular Students Because It Would Not ‘Fit In’

For over a year, administrators at a North Carolina high school have allegedly told students they could not form a secular student group because it would not “fit in” at the school. Now Pisgah High School in Waynesville, North Carolina may face a legal challenge from First Amendment groups for violating the students’ rights.

Two students hoped to form a chapter of the Secular Student Alliance at Pisgah High, which already has a Fellowship of Christian Athletes. According to a letter complaining of the school’s actions, Assistant Principal Connie Weeks told them the club both would not “fit in” and it could not find a faculty adviser.

The students encountered a resistance that is a frequent problem at public schools. Over the course of a year, the Secular Student Alliance says it receives one complaint about every other week.

According to a letter from the Freedom From Religion Foundation and the North Carolina chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union,

the school’s actions violate a federal law expressly prohibiting religious discrimination of student groups.

Under the Equal Access Act, schools receiving federal funds cannot discriminate against groups based on religious or political beliefs. The law states: “It shall be unlawful for any public secondary school … to deny equal access or a fair opportunity to, or discriminate against, any students who wish to conduct a meeting .. on the basis of the religious, political, philosophical, or other content of the speech at such meetings.”

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/201...-secular-club/

[boutons_deux]

Beware: The Christian Right's 'Religious Freedom' Wants to Elevate Religious Beliefs Above Human Rights—And It's Working





http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-an...tter968153&t=5

the bogus "religious freedom" bull is only freedom for Christians, with non-Christians allowed no "freedom FROM Christian religion".

The politicized, militarized "Christians" are as oppressive as any religious extremist terrorists, including murder (of abortionists).