Texas Board of Education Tries to Correct History

After years of education’s leftward drift, Texas says remember the Alamo, remember America and remember the West.

By Selwyn Duke

In this age of new math and Newspeak, the term “revised standards” is usually a euphemism for lowered or, worse still, deformed ones. But not so in Texas 2010, where the State Board of Education (SBOE) has just voted to resurrect a more traditional curriculum for schools statewide.

Along a strict 10 to 5 party-line vote, the board’s Republican majority decided to institute standards that, among other things, question the constitutionality of the “separation of church and state” principle, mention the Christian nature of the Founding Fathers, emphasize the superiority of free-enterprise systems, and point out the unintended consequences of leftist legislation such as the Great Society programs and Title IX. In fact, writes James McKinley, Jr. of The New York Times, “Since January, Republicans on the board have passed more than 100 amendments to the 120-page curriculum standards affecting history, sociology and economics courses from elementary to high school.”

Read the rest here.

Comments

[Philip France]

Our esteemed Mr. Duke has hit it out of the park once again. Selwyn, I applaud you for your immeasurable and unassailable logic of mind and your ability to express yourself so cogently and unimpeachably (I may have made that last word up, but an hnest reader will know what I mean).

It is no secret that the radical and Marxist Western left has targeted schoolchildren. Their as-yet-maleable minds are really the only ones who accept socialist/Marxist doctrine uncritically (save for a few tragic souls that post at your site and elsewhere).

Who else but children would believe the rubbish and outright lies that present-day academia inculcates our children with?

To take the august and austere accomplishments, as well as the profound quotations and recorded intellect of Thomas Jefferson and dismiss them because he was a slaveholder is downright infantile.

To put forth that a cookie saleman such as "Famous Amos" (or whatever) should be mentioned in the same breath (let alone instead of) Thomas Edison and/or Albert Einstein is veritible insanity.

Pehaps we should all relocate to Texas.

[Laura]

God bless Texas.

[H. D. Schmidt]

However this in Texas, the Founding Fathers would be appalled finding their America, with a systemn of education called: Socialism/Communism! Yes, this Nation undeer God in reality punishes fathers and mothers who wish to educate their children in their schools of the choice many times Christian Schools! How so may someone asK? Yes, the Federal Government forces every father and mother to pay taxes to support public education and these same parents have to pay tuition, right? If this in not punishment that what is punishment, yes, double taxation. This was not so even in the Soviet Union.

[Whitey Lawful]

We were a radical right-wing country. Now only a fringe in Texas upholds our libertarian Republic. Despite the leftist Hamilton, then the International left, and their socialism came. We will do good by understanding our distinct right-wing heritage free from foreign influence, and monarchical convictions.

[Walt]

Right on HD!!! The only problem with your argument is, it is logical; the left can not compute. I am working on a proposal to put forward in our state that will deal with this problem. I am about 3/ done with the paper now.

[Larrry Rivera]

I grew up in Texas so this sort of nonsense isn't new to me. Texans are suckers for the conservative con-game more than any other people on earth. There is something appealing about it for us that almost cannot be put into words. We go after it like a cat after a feather on a string. Only, a cat will quit after the game stops being fun…Texans won’t. As the song goes, we just “Don’t Stop Believin”.

We don’t stop after our unions are busted, our jobs are gone, our houses foreclosed and our kids sent off to Afghanistan. We don’t stop after our loved ones die because we can’t pay for medical care to keep them alive. We don’t stop after our leaders tell us the most transparent lies over-and-over again. And we don’t stop after the corporate criminals who own our government have fleeced us and stolen our retirement plans along with our legacy.

Really, I think it has to do with the movies. Particularly Westerns…and Country Music. John Wayne and Lee Greenwood leading the March of the Dimwitted into the final sunset; while Wall Street gangsters beat the band, slap themselves on the back and laugh at the quaintness of the poor souls falling off the face of the earth to please and profit them.

Thomas Frank can ask “What’s the Matter with Kansas” till he’s blue in the face, but I guess your average Kansan will still vote against his own interest much of the time…Just so long as he can watch football on Sunday. Personally, I don’t care what happens in Kansas as long as it stays in Kansas. The problem is… what happens in Kansas doesn’t stay there.

With all the drive toward conformity of a junior high school cheerleader, the folks that make things happen in Kansas want you to join in. They insist on it, in fact. Much like the Hard Hats that attacked Vietnam War protesters in another lifetime, they want you to step in line. Not necessarily with them of course. If anybody recalls any forty year old construction workers walking around the A Shau Valley with pasty rolls of fat hanging out between the bottoms of their dingy white tee-shirts and the tops of their drooping tool-belts, let me know will you…But, they want you to step in line none the less.

And it is that mix of conformity and stupidity that produces language like “the Nanny State” in the first place and fuels the genius of the Tea Party.

“We don’t want no socialized medicine…Not here in the U.S. of A.” The Tea-Baggers proclaim with their eyes glazed over and the flesh of their rotting jowls falling to the floor. Actually, those who are calling the tune don’t want anything that will help out the average guy or provide a safety net for him. It just might cost them too much; which in their world view is… anything. Anything at all. They are against everything…a national health care plan, the minimum wage, the right to collective bargaining, Social Security…everything.

“All that is Nanny State mentality sure enough. God damn socialism!” At least that’s what the guy in the herd is told by those who lead him around like a farm animal. And after a lifetime of being an “employee” (a person used to complete a task, much like a machine or a mule.) I know about being lead around by the nose. So believe me, if we’re told it long enough we’re going to believe it. And if we’re told in the right ways, we’re going to fight for it. Country Music’s Merle Haggard gave us the iconic line in that respect with his “I ain’t never been on welfare, that’s one place I won’t be.”

No sir, Merle won’t go to the welfare office. He did go to jail a couple of times and San Quentin at least once. But, he never was on welfare and that’s good enough for us. No safety net for Merle you see, “Not as long as [his] two hands are good to use.” Even if that means him forcing you at gunpoint to stick yours up.

Boy-oh-boy did the Texas pointy-boot crowd cheer for that one. And they still cheer that anthem of independence and self reliance. Two things that by the very nature of human beings living in a common society are impossible concepts to achieve; false notions reserved for Liver-Eatin’ Johnson and his mountain-man cronies of another century who probably numbered, at their height, less than the number of shoppers in a Texas Wal-Mart store on a Saturday afternoon.

It’s that confusion of worlds that is in conflict today. The early 1800’s and early 2000’s clashing in a war between the (red and blue) states. And red and blue people competing for control of this country. And as they say, “May the best man win!”

Only competition does not ever produce the best. It only produces winners and losers.

Don’t you cowboys get that by now?

[Philip France]

Larry,

You are a troubled man. In your rant, you have it EXACTLY backward. You are what V.I. Lenin accurately described as a "useful idiot".

All that you accuse the Right of being is sadly true about you.

Your worldview has been proven time after time and ad nauseum to cause nothing but suffering, misery and death. Your worldview is in complete harmony with monsters such as Marx, Lenin, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Gueverra, Pol Pot, Kim Jong Il, II and Chavez. Not to mention Barack Hussein Obama II and Nancy Pelosi.

Here's a little education for you:

http://bigjournalism.com/hfontova/2010/03/20/banned-in-britain-for-hate-speech-unless-youre-the-daughter-of-a-mass-murderer/

It is twisted sisters like you who encourage and abet misery.

May God have mercy on your soul.

[Jerry Denham]

Dear Selwyn,
The title of your recent "News With Views" essay, "States Must Rise Up: Only Way to Combat Obama's Agenda" prompted me to encourage you to consider a September 11 occurrence (not the 2001 one....the 1973
one), and thus, perhaps, to weigh another approach.
Sincerely,
Jerry Denham
Candidate for Congress, 10th California District
(925) 937-1405
www.freedomcoalition.com
Nehemiah 2:17-20 KJV