U.S. Textbooks about to go far to the Right

Full Story:
http://209.157.64.200/focus/news/2469406/posts?page=1
and
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7059048.ece

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Texas educators take aim at ‘left-wing’ curriculum with opt-out plans
The Times ^ | 3/12/2010 | Giles Whittell

Posted on Friday, March 12, 2010 5:43:06 AM by bruinbirdman

Country and western music, the leadership of the Confederate General Stonewall Jackson and the work of America’s most powerful gun lobby will all have to be taught in Texas schools if conservatives prevail at a highly charged meeting of the state’s board of education.

A total of 48 of the 50 states have signed up to a plan being promoted by the White House for new, higher national educational standards but Texas and Alaska have opted out, in order to keep control of what is taught in their state-funded schools.

The late Charlton Heston, a vociferous president of the National Rifle Association,
which could become compulsory study

The effects will be felt far beyond Texas, because of its dominant influence over US textbook publishing. According to one estimate, 90 per cent of all American schools use the books approved by Texan officials. Social studies texts are likely, therefore, to give new prominence to Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” and the role of Christianity in US history.

With more than a thousand school districts serving 4.5 million pupils, the Texas Education Agency is the second largest body of its kind in America, after its California counterpart, and by far the biggest to be overseen by elected conservatives.

Don McLeroy, chairman of the Texas Board of Education, is a Creationist who believes that the world was created 10,000 years ago and claims that history has vindicated Senator Joseph McCarthy, the instigator of the anti-Communist witch-hunts of the 1950s. Dr McLeroy, a dentist, will not be able to stand for re-election in November but says he intends to use his remaining time in office to leave his mark on Texas curriculum.

An amendment he proposed in January complained that the curriculum was “rife with leftist periods and events” including President Roosevelt’s New Deal and President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society legislation — watershed achievements for Democratic governance in the 20th century. Expected to come into force in May, the measure would require Texas high school students to be able to “describe the causes . . . of the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract with America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association”.

Mrs Schlafly is a prominent antifeminist, while the Heritage Foundation is a conservative think-tank that, like the gun lobby, helped to spearhead opposition to progressive reforms during President Clinton’s two terms.

Other amendments expected to be approved this week would require schools to teach the career of Stonewall Jackson, the most successful Southern field commander in the Civil War, as a study in effective leadership; to drop all mention of Ralph Nader, the consumer-rights advocate; and to assert the superiority of free enterprise over other economic systems.

The Texas Conservative Coalition said that the group was confident Dr McLeroy’s amendments would pass, thanks to the board’s eight-strong conservative majority. Any changes to Texas textbooks will stay for ten years before the next round of revisions.

Dr McLeroy, who has also said he believes that mankind and dinosaurs once cohabited on Earth, has objected to the teaching of Chinese literature in Texan schools. “You really don’t want Chinese books with a bunch of crazy Chinese words in them,” he said in 2008. “Why should you take a child’s time trying to learn a word that they’ll never use again?”

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http://www.AmericanWisdom.org