As Loyola said, "Give me a child for his first seven years and I will give you the man."

Every dictatorship turns away from real education in favor of propaganda and conditioning. The child is not taught to think and reason, but to absorb propaganda, to be regurgitated on demand. They can then be ordered to commit any atrocity the government wants because "The Government is always right!"

Looking back, we remember the Hitler Jugend and the Soviet "Young Pioneers." Steeped in propaganda almost from birth, they were the willing tools of the state.

With the Texas action above, I fear you may be seeing the "New America."

“Efforts by Hispanic board members to include more Latino figures as role models for the state’s large Hispanic population were consistently defeated, prompting one member, Mary Helen Berlanga, to storm out of a meeting late Thursday night, saying, 'They can just pretend this is a white America and Hispanics don’t exist.'”
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I'm sure Ms. Berlanga is overreacting here.

Surely this enlightened new curriculum will reinforce the state's proud nativist tradition, and carefully teach their children to fear and dread the Brown Hordes swarming like parasitic insects or bacteria into their sovereign territory (formerly expropriated from those selfsame Hordes).

the other recent article on this highlighted the fact that the decisions made in Texas affect many other states...

this is because the size of Texas means their purchasing decisions actually influence textbook publishers in theirs...

the publishers publish the books that sell...

'everything's big' Texas determines what sells...

Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.
Voltaire

These same morons in Texas have been editing our children's school books for decades. Holy cow! Just look at the ignorance and stupidity that pervades Amerikkkan culture.

Most people coming out of public schools in this country have no sense of the nation's history and they can barely read or write. Their critical-thinking skills are nonexistent. This is the result of this reactionary propaganda, the dumbing-down of the educational system and Bush's No Child Left Behind nonsense.

Another generation of Texas morons....

I trust that most professional PhD historians are uncorrupted by liberal values. I know Bill O'Reilly doesn't agree, but my trust is not with the historians themselves, but with the educational institutions that promoted them to 'experts' in their fields. I also know that these institutions are not religious hierarchy's, but are inherently competitive. As in science, an historian that can prove a radical new interpretation of an item of history gets tenure and research money, and brings acclaim to his/her institution. Conclusion: unlike in religion, it PAYS historians to be radical and new in their research (but still prove their suppositions), NOT to support the status quo, because eventually the truth with out, and they want to be on top of that wave when it gets out.

This system of continual debate, study, and inquiry has concluded in consensus, for example, that McCarthyism was a regrettable incident in American history. The only way the counter claim can be given any serious attention, is if the consensus conclusion is evidence of a 'vast liberal university conspiracy' to promote communist values. But, given the competitive nature of these institutions, and the unyielding nature of the truth, how likely is such a conspiracy? And therein lies what is so tragic about this movement. Its NOT the teaching of the virtues of McCarthyism. Its the need to assassinate the character of the entire Western university system of higher education in order to support such an interpretation of McCarthyism. Thats just tragic. Thats destroying a village to get to a child.

If there is no place where the truth can be trusted, then the 'truth' is whatever someone says it is. Such a society cannot last. It is doomed to be overtaken by societies that didn't lose their respect for the truth and those who uncover it.

They burned the Library at Alexandria to the ground. The truth didn't suffer. The only ones who suffered were the human beings who had to swim through eight centuries of Dark Ages before what was in Alexandria could be rediscovered.

Not that it really matters. Ask some kid what he was taught about in school today. I bet they have no clue. The smart ones are gonna be smart enough to read other books as well anyway.

All and all, more waste of taxpayer money.

I think I'll revisit Carl Sagan's autobiographic series, "Cosmos." It's all there.

Them Texans are done right proud the NRA
can bring their six-shooters into Star Bucks now, and Dad Burn it, they better have a place to hitch their horses up at Starbucks while they get a Sarsaparilla and impress them plumb cute barristas.

Them Texans ain't gonna put up with no bull crap about dinosaurs taught in school, I mean heck, what a bunch of crap. Jesus ain't done talked about no Dinosaurs when they was suposedly around back in our holy son of gods time before he durn got nailed up on that Ku Klux Klan Cross...gee, I bet them Texans are a bit confused, why would the Ku Klux Klan nail L'il Jesus up on that Cross.

Them Texans won't take no crap about Joe McCarthy from those Commie Pinko Hippies in Bezerkley. Joe was a Great Commie hunter and he pounded those beers like there was no tommorrow. Joe was proud of them beers wasting away his liver, good man.

Them Texans are wondering: "Don't them Bezerkley Commie Pinkos have no shame"

Them Texans get mad when Northerners kid them about their 'Texas Tips'

Not much point in going to school if you come out more ignorant than you were going in, but this seems to play well in a backwash like Texas. I hope your state is proud .....

"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers."

-- Thomas Pynchon

I have cool friends in Texas, and know there are good humans and Liberals there. If there's just some part of that fine state that we can all agree can go, why not just finally let the Right Wing morons there secede, and anyone who agrees with them can go live there and pack their guns and rat on each other for thought crimes, and have no art or music that's not patriotic, have sex with each other only in the Missionary position with the man on top, and call it 'Dumbfuckistan.'

Filling the little cups full--assuring yet another generation of socially retarded Texans.

It is impossible to be an honest teacher in any humanistic field in Texas. They demand bigotry, and will reap a supply of hacks with education degrees.

Is Texas a harbinger of America's course?

Maybe those Texas kids, being naturally rebellious will start to read Howard Zinn's "A People's History." How cool is that. Even better if they ban and burn the book. That will make it irresistible.

Not all of those kids will end up going to college; those who do go to another state for college will be hard-pressed to catch up. Sad but true. Same goes for the home-schooled. In their first few weeks at a real college, these kids will discover the lies of their parents. E.O. Wilson, the famous Harvard entomologist, tells his story of being raised in a religious environment, then going to college and having the world opened up to him for the first time. It's in Consilience, Wilson's book on how the arts and sciences can merge. Great stuff.

I am proud to say that I live in Austin and that the only bad thing about living in Austin is that it's surrounded by Texas

If you can read this you weren't educated in Texas.

Is that the Board of education or Bored of Education?

If the latter maybe they should let someone competent take over and go back to bible thumping and writing about dinosaurs scampering about with man 6000 years ago.

They canned the Author of the Declaration of Independence? Thomas Jefferson?

How un-American can you get? I'd say corporate commies have infiltrated the Texas Board of Education, that's what I would say.

Time to let Texanistan secede from the Union before it proffers up another Oil Baron for president!

Why is it our worst presidents and congressmen always seem to come from Texas?

Must be something in the water.....