Last Friday the Texas Board of Education voted along party lines to approve a new school curriculum that will, in effect, rewrite history. The new social studies curriculum will address what one board member referred to as a “skewed” history with a “liberal bias.” Although the proposed changes may individually seem relatively minor, they are not innocuous. For example, the [...]
In the children’s book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, the title character answers the question of the title with, “I see a red bird looking at me.” For one member of the elected Texas Board of Education, the bird’s color could have been confirmation of her suspicion that the picture book promoted Communism. But then again, Board [...]
GRADE: C The debate around the role of creationism in American high school science classrooms continues to evolve. Although the courts have rebuffed creationist attempts to re-brand their religious message as “intelligent design,” creationists continued their assault on science in the classroom with urges to “teach the controversy.” Texas, the nation’s second largest purchaser of high school textbooks and therefore [...]
The New York Times reported yesterday on the fight in Texas over science standards. The standards for 20 years have required that science be taught in a way that show the “strengths and weaknesses” of Darwin’s theory of evolution. The third draft, passed in December 2008 didn’t include this phrase, but this year 7 of the 15 members of the [...]