Stop The Radical Religious Right from Changing Textbooks in Texas
Religious Right Leaders in Texas Wage War Against Science and History Textbooks
As reported on the People For the American Way website
People For the American Way Foundation is pleased to share with you a new report titled, Texas Textbooks: What happened, what it means, and what we can do about it.
Religious Right leaders in Texas have been waging war against science and history for the past few decades. A primary target and battleground has been the state’s public schools, in particular the statewide approval process for textbooks. People For the American Way Foundation first started working with Texans to resist Religious Right takeovers of textbooks back in the 1980s.
The Religious Right has invested so heavily in Texas textbooks because of the national implications. School districts in Texas have to buy books from a state-approved list, and Texas is such an enormous market that textbook publishers will generally do whatever they can to get on that list. Textbooks written and edited to meet Texas standards have in the past ended up being used all over the country. So Religious Right leaders in Texas see the opportunity to doom millions of American students, not just in Texas, to stunted, scientifically dubious science books and ideologically slanted history and social studies books.
The most recent battle, over the standards for new social studies textbooks, culminated in May with the adoption of social studies standards by the State Board of Education that give the board’s far-right faction and its Religious Right advisers far too many victories in their efforts to replace history with ideology and turn public school classrooms into Heritage Foundation seminars.
Read the full report here. Be sure to download the pdf version for the fully formatted report including pictures, charts and quotes.
– Ben Betz, Online Communications Manager
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2 Responses to “Stop The Radical Religious Right from Changing Textbooks in Texas”
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For the real facts about the Texas Social Studies standards, go to juststatethefacts .com to link to the actual standards that were just released.
It’s funny that you should make this comment, because in looking at the email address from which you submitted your comment, you are making my point for me. You’re commenting from John Brown University, one of the most fundamental christian educational organizations in the country. Which tells me what I need to know: we cannot let the religious extreme right to dictate the content in textbooks.
Don’t get me wrong. I have no issue with anyone’s personal choice in practicing the religion of their choosing. As Americans, it is one of our cherished freedoms to do so without persecution. I’m just saying that organizations with strong religious views, such as JBU, should not be the ones dictating the content of what we teach our children in schools. There is no way for such organizations to separate fact from religious dogma and have any objectivity.