Texas textbooks to alter history 17, May 2010
Posted by thegulfblog.com in American ME Relations.Tags: School textbook controversy, Texas textbooks, Textbook history
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Christian evangelists on the cusp of a majority on Texas’ schools board are seeking to change the curriculum and the books from which children will be taught. Some of their sought changes include:
- Sidelining Thomas Jefferson, famous for (among other things…) his views on the necessary separation of church and state.
- A “new focus on the significant contributions of pro-slavery Confederate leaders during the civil war.”
- Asserting that the right to bear arms is an “important element of a democratic society”.
- “Suggestions” that the anti-communist McCarthy witch-hunts of the 50s may have been a good idea.
- References to slavery will be dropped in favor of references to the “Atlantic triangular trade”
- The Israel-Palestinian conflict will be “recast…as driven by Islamic fundamentalism”.
This is an utterly deplorable state of affairs. I expect this kind of retrograde Orwellian rubbish from tin-pot dictatorships around the world, not from the US.
The Gulf blog 