Texas Fundamentalists Set Their Sights on Social Studies Standards

by Clay Burell · 2009-05-02 12:55:00 UTC
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In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made School Boards.
- Mark Twain, Following the Equator; Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar

The Texas fundamentalists on the State Board of Education have shifted their sights, now, from creationism/Intelligent Design in the science standards to Bible-based social studies standards. From the Texas Freedom Network:

The Texas State Board of Education is set to appoint a social studies curriculum “expert” panel that includes absurdly unqualified ideologues who are hostile to public education and argue that laws and public policies should be based on their narrow interpretations of the Bible.

TFN has obtained the names of “experts” appointed by far-right state board members. Those panelists will guide the revision of social studies curriculum standards for Texas public schools. They include David Barton of the fundamentalist, Texas-based group WallBuilders, whose degree is in religious education, not the social sciences, and the Rev. Peter Marshall of Peter Marshall Ministries in Massachusetts, who suggests that California wildfires and Hurricane Katrina were divine punishments for tolerance of homosexuality.

It gets worse.

There are a lot of good folks in Texas, so I don't mean this image literally - but you can't help but fantasize that the Texas fundies could all gather in an obscure corner of Texas and, just for that little slice, do as their governor recently threatened, and secede. They could warp the minds of their young only, and leave the rest of Texas, and the United States, to learn in peace.

Texas secession

Clay Burell
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