Texas History Lessons to Drop Mother Teresa, Neil Armstrong
The state Board of Education in Texas has come out with its new educational standards, and this time they rain teh stupid on sixth graders. They’ve decided to take some names out of the texbook, including Mother Teresa and Neil Armstrong. Evidently they aren’t evangelical enough.
The new Texas schoolbooks are here! The new Texas schoolbooks are here!
We can’t help but be reminded of Steve Martin in The Jerk, all excited because the new phone books are here. Every once in a while news comes from Texas that the new textbooks are being planned and some new desecration to fact has been perpetrated. Usually this means creationism is being snuck into the texts, or the Texas powers that be have found a way to teach Christianity in public schools, and that’s the case this time with new guidelines for sixth graders that they learn the differences between a whole host of religious traditions. That’s what we’ve come to expect from Texas. But this time the school districts have struck a few names of people sixth graders don’t need to know about. From the Houston Chronicle:
After board members settled the Christmas controversy, the focus shifted to which historical figures and contemporary leaders to include.
More than 50 people mentioned in current textbooks are not included in the proposed standards, including Carl Sagan, Colin Powell, Nathan Hale, Neil Armstrong, Eugene Debs, John Steinbeck and Mother Teresa.
OK, clearly Carl Sagan is Godless, so that explains why he’s thrown to the ditch. Eugene Debs and John Steinbeck are damned pinkos, so that makes sense in the Texan scheme of things. Mother Teresa? Well, maybe her work on the part of the poor hit conservatives in their values, and besides, she’s a Catholic like all those brown Texans. Colin Powell? Why he disagreed with Bush and supported Obama, so strike that black man, but quick! But why in the world would they onit teaching about the first man in the moon to sixth graders? Eric Berger of the Chronicle reports that Neil Armstrong is excluded because he’s not a scientist. Phil Plaitt of Discover rightly notes that Texas is showing some monstrous “dumbosity.”
Whether Texas tries to teach that the earth is flat will have to wait until the next episode of “The Texas Schoolbooks are Here!”
There is a term in economics called competitive advantage. Means that some person or organization has a significant advantage over someone or something else.
Texas is apparently determined to make sure that anyone who uses their textbooks will be ignorant as a sack of hammers.
This will, of course, lead to people that are better schooled having a significant competitive advantage over Texas school graduates.
They only thing that surprises me is that Texas did not drop the educational system entirely and require home schooling. Guess how much Dubya’s brother could make from that? I’m sure Barbara Bush would donate millions to the home schooling provided the money went to her son’s phony educational organization.
I heard on the local news here awhile back that the kids enrolling into college are having to take classes to get them up to the college scholastic level. They had checked CU in Boulder.
If they do the text books in the way they have listed, kids graduating from high school in Texas wouldn’t stand a chance of getting in anywhere. Except for the for profit colleges advertised here. The ones that put you in debt to the tune of $120,000.00 with no better education that a good high school.
I’m so glad we got out of there in ‘95.
I think Texas should secede. Just get it over with. They’re obviously a whole different breed of stupid down there. Hell, Mexico can take them back and then we can build a border fence.
@ less is better:
Unfortunately, due to the size of purchase, Texas standards are usually followed in publication of all textbooks. So it doesn’t just affect one benighted state, it affects all. “Be afraid - be very afraid.” –Wednesday Addams
@ E in MD:
Why don’t we just give Texas back to Mexico? (Probably cuz they wouldn’t take it!)
The ignorantization of America proceeds apace.