Why is Texas faring so well? | Page 4 | TigerFan.com

LSUMASTERMIND · May 25, 2010

LaSalleAve said: ↑

Yeah they are trying to change the word "slavery" or "slave trade" to something like the Atlantic Trade Triangle or something like that because the words slave trade are just so negative. WTF??? Well, yeah it was negative. Disgusting.
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I didnt even mention that, because I dont want to be accused of dwelling on what really happened in history.:usaflagwa:hihi:

LaSalleAve · May 25, 2010

LSUMASTERMIND said: ↑

I didnt even mention that, because I dont want to be accused of dwelling on what really happened in history.:usaflagwa:hihi:
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Dude that disgusts me. You know another thing that is rarely mentioned in history books, was the way our government treated Japanese Americans during World War 2.

MLUTiger · May 25, 2010

34.

That's the number of electoral votes. National politicians actually give a **** about states with large numbers of electoral votes, swing states, etc. Small, poor states? Not so much.

LSUMASTERMIND · May 25, 2010

LaSalleAve said: ↑

Dude that disgusts me. You know another thing that is rarely mentioned in history books, was the way our government treated Japanese Americans during World War 2.
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Here are the changes and some of the proposed changes.

burned by very bad publicity, social conservatives on Texas State Board of Education scrambled to undo an earlier vote to delete Thomas Jefferson from a list of influential political thinkers in world history. After renewed debate today, the board reinserted Jefferson (but not James Madison, who didn't the cut) in the world history curriculum. The deletion of Jefferson -- whose separation of church-state philosophy doesn't get high marks among Christian conservatives -- sparked a flurry of criticism on cable TV, where some pundits held the board up to ridicule. So today, members put Jefferson back on the list of writers including John Locke, Thomas Aquinas and William Blackstone.

UPDATE: The full board gave its final approval shortly after 5:30 p.m. to the entire social studies curricula -- K-high school -- largely on a party-line vote with Republicans in the majority. After months of fractious hearings and debate, the social studies curricula were adopted.

Board member Cynthia Dunbar set the stage for today's meeting with an opening prayer describing America as "a Christian land governed by Christian principles."

"I believe no one can read the history of our country without realizing that the Good Book and the spirit of the savior have from the beginning been our guiding geniuses," Dunbar said in her prayer. "I like to believe we are living today in the spirit of the Christian religion. I like also to believe that as long as we do so, no great harm can come to our country."
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Several changes include sidelining Thomas Jefferson, who favoured separation of church and state, while introducing a new focus on the "significant contributions" of pro-slavery Confederate leaders during the civil war.

The new curriculum asserts that "the right to keep and bear arms" is an important element of a democratic society. Study of Sir Isaac Newton is dropped in favour of examining scientific advances through military technology.

There is also a suggestion that the anti-communist witch-hunt by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s may have been justified.

The education board has dropped references to the slave trade in favour of calling it the more innocuous "Atlantic triangular trade", and recasts the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as driven by Islamic fundamentalism.
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One change would require students to "contrast the Founders' intent relative to the wording of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause, with the popular term 'Separation of church and state.'"

Board Member Don McLeroy explained that it would "stimulate critical thinking relation to the actual wording in the First Amendment." The Texas Freedom Netowork, in a press release, asserted that the amendment "maintains [that] separation of church and state was not the intent of the Founders who drafted the Constitution and Bill of Rights."

The board's actions towards religion recently sparked a rally by local religious leaders.
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currently, the writings of Upton Sinclair, Susan B. Anthony and Ida B. Wells are judged in history by their impact to society. An amendment would require students to "describe the optimism of the many immigrants who sought a better life in America" contrasted with the muckrakers.

McLeroy's goal is to show that the muckrakers were more negative than other authors, who promoted the idea of "American Exceptionalism"

TFN notes that McLeroy has had a long distaste of the progressive movement. "McLeroy’s disregard for those who have worked to make America better — whether during the Progressive Era or the Civil Rights Era of the 1950s and 1960s — has continued to flash brightly throughout this long debate over the social studies standards," they wrote in a blog posting last week.
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McElroy's had hoped to remove Delgado v. Bastrop ISD from the list of important Supreme Court decisions, which struck down the segregation of Mexican Americans five years before the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case of 1957, because it was "not a Supreme Court case," he wrote. Delgado was moved to the section on Civil Rights.

In its place, McLeroy hoped to add Kelo v. New London, a recent eminent domain case, and Ricci v. DeStefano. The latter, decided in 2009, was one a conservative argument against the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
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Board member Cynthia Dunbar wants to change a standard having students study the impact of Enlightenment ideas on political revolutions from 1750 to the present. She wants to drop the reference to Enlightenment ideas (replacing with “the writings of”) and to Thomas Jefferson. She adds Thomas Aquinas and others. Jefferson’s ideas, she argues, were based on other political philosophers listed in the standards. We don’t buy her argument at all. Board member Bob Craig of Lubbock points out that the curriculum writers clearly wanted to students to study Enlightenment ideas and Jefferson. Could Dunbar’s problem be that Jefferson was a Deist? The board approves the amendment, taking Thomas Jefferson OUT of the world history standards.

We’re just picking ourselves up off the floor. The board’s far-right faction has spent months now proclaiming the importance of emphasizing America’s exceptionalism in social studies classrooms. But today they voted to remove one of the greatest of America’s Founders, Thomas Jefferson, from a standard about the influence of great political philosophers on political revolutions from 1750 to today.
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The Board refused to require that “students learn that the Constitution prevents the U.S. government from promoting one religion over all others.”
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"Board members also rejected requiring history teachers and textbooks to provide coverage on the late U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy and new Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, while the late President Ronald Reagan was elevated to more prominent coverage."
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LaSalleAve · May 25, 2010

Oh.....My.......Gorsh........

We may start doing home schooling after all.

Anyone else think it's frightening that people with religious agendas are influencing what our kids learn in school?????

MLUTiger · May 25, 2010

LaSalleAve said: ↑

Anyone else think it's frightening that people with religious agendas are influencing what our kids learn in school?????
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I think it's frightening that they still exist in 2010...

gumborue · May 27, 2010

wow. im going to have to redact my kid's schoolbooks when he gets there