As with the shame of genocide, actual -- actual, as with as-raw-as-any-ugly-sin can be -- slavery, as with as morally desicated a policy of overthrowing someone else's government, as with the corporate theft of land in California . . . to class of "64 Allen Park students, none of that very much happened. It didn't because it was in none of our textbooks.
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So, who are these educational experts, deciding what will be in the textbooks that more than half of America's school children learn from? The list is composed of clowns. But, if clowns are supposed to be funny, this group is Freddy Krugerish terrifying.
Gail Lowe, chair of the Texas Board of Education, an arch-conservative Republican from Lampasas, a newspaper editor, and a strident, unapologetic Creationist, an anti-evolutionist who strongly opposes any theory that doesn't strictly align with Genesis. (http://www.teachthemscience.org/texas/sboe#lowe)
Dr. Don McLeroy, DDS, conservative Creationist Republican from Bryan-College Station who gleefully challenged, --Somebody's gotta stand up to [these] experts!" (Listen to McLeroy's sermon, "Primer on Intelligent Design" at click here)
David Bradley, a conservative Republican from Beaumont, a licensed real estate and insurance salesman with no college degree who has said, "This critical-thinking stuff is gobbledygook."
Peter Marshall, a Massachusetts-based preacher who has argued that California wildfires and Hurricane Katrina were God's punishment for tolerating gays.
David Barton, former vice chairman of the Texas Republican Party; has a bachelor's degree in religious education from Oral Roberts University; argues that the Founding Father principle there should be a wall of separation between church and state is a myth.
Barbara Cargill, self-described ultra-conservative Republican who earned her undergraduate degree at Baylor University, the private Baptist college at Waco, has contradicted the world's leading astronomers with her own observation, "The universe is not expanding."
Terri Leo, a hard-Right Republican and past volunteer delegate for George W. Bush, a supporter of Bill Archer and Dick Armey, and a member of the Daughters of Liberty Republican Women's Club and a charter member of the Texas Tea Party Republican Women's Club. (http://texasgopvote.com/users/terri-leo)
Ken Mercer, Vice-Chair on the Texas BOE Committee on Instruction, is a solid, take-no-prisoners Creationist Republican from San Antonio. (click here ) In 2009, Mr. Mercer worked to have tossed from Texas two 6th-grade math text books, Everyday Math and Connected Math, on the charge they "established New Age religious behavior in public school math instruction." (Italic emphasis is the original) ( click here ) And in an attack on more moderate Republicans on the board who opposed his Creationist aggenda, Mercer wrote: "I pray for my three friends, Pat Hardy of Ft. Worth , Bob Craig of Lubbock, and Geraldine "Tincy' Miller of Dallas. They voted against the Republican Party platform and allowed themselves to be constantly lobbied by prominent atheists and secular humanists."(click here )
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And with all the preceding noted and annotated you yet disclaim any personal interest in what goes on in Texas? Just one more time: There are two ways to tell a lie. One is to tell it. The other is to deliberately not tell the truth. When your son or daughter, or grandchild comes home from school repeating nonsense, or grows to an adult voting according to it . . . Too late then, my friend. Too late.
ADDENDUM
Sunday, March 14. According to Politics Daily (click here ), not only has the Texas board decided on the above radical -- used here both colloquially and in the mathematics senses of the term -- abuse of what ought to be the task of educating our youth so they can become well-versed, independent thinking citizens, toward the end of satisfying their far-Right evangelical agenda, they have "deleted Albert Einstein and Thomas Alva Edison from textbooks."
Towards more effective impact let me bring two of the board's decisions into juxtaposition: They want public school students to better grasp an appreciation of the contributions of Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association, Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich and William F. Buckley, Jr. but have deleted references to Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison?????
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