One might have thought it improbable, if not impossible.
Texas State Board of Education Member Cynthia Dunbar, in a parting shot, concedes the grounds upon which a challenge might be made to the gutting of social studies standards she wishes to accomplish today. Is there any doubt her intent is solely religious?
Tip of the old scrub brush to the Texas Freedom Network, for capturing this event for history.
This entry was posted on Friday, May 21st, 2010 at 2:08 pm and is filed under Current History, Education, First Amendment, History, Religious Freedom, Social Studies, State school boards, Texas, Texas Freedom Network. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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(The Life of Reason, vol. 1: Reason in Common Sense)
Ed Darrell on Texas's Colorado River
Come on in, the water's fine. Come often: Cleanliness is next to godliness.
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Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control. My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it. BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub
Tony, why would you rather the legislature do it? And what action would you want to see the lege do?
Interesting view. I would think a court rebuke would leave it to the new board to fix . . . do you disagree?
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I don’t know about an injunction, but a leader in the TX Leg Hispanic caucus told the Board Wed that the extent of changes they have made since they last involved the experts meant that they could be found to be acting outside their legislative authority, and that this was being studied legally in the Legislature.
I would much rather see it done in the Legislature, rather than in court.
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WordPress.com (which hosts his blog, and mine) does an excellent job on this.
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Invite the discussion board over here. I can use the traffic. They won’t get censored stupidly, like the old AOL boards. If they have something good and important to say, it’ll be indexed better on the web.
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It’s gonna be a while. Our high school is about 85% Hispanic. The current curriculum is irrelevant to way too many of them — Phyllis Schlafly? Are you kidding me?
Our kids have grandparents with 300-year-old roots in northern New Mexico, and in Durango, Mexico. 1776? Their families were already well established in this part of America, and Patrick Henry didn’t have a clue.
The demography is already changed. In a few years whites will be an absolute minority. Will the Texas State School Board look more like Texas then? Not without a lot of work.
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Ed and all…
This is probably more suited to a discussion board but I’m wondering how long this Christo-Fascism can survive in Texas? Given the demographic changes taking place, will Texas even be a Red state 20 (or even ten) years from now? Are these extremist outbursts the last gasp of the Talibagelicals who know their sun is setting?
Of course, that’s not to argue we should sit idly by. The opening prayer alone was enough to make this Christian retch. Whatever happened to “do unto others as you would have done unto you”? And the history standards are…well…tantamount to substituting fiction for fact. We might as well hand out copies of Jason and the Argonauts and call it history. Goodbye James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. Hello Jefferson Davis and Phyllis Schlafly. What a travesty!
I do wonder though. Do the Birchers and CCC’ers sense that their time is short?
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Not sure. There should be. Generally, in administrative law, an agency needs to have a “rational basis” for making regulations. Surely some of these changes are driven by religious animus, and not by any pedagogical or social studies discipline’s general findings.
Who has standing to sue? Would a Texas court want to get involved? Is there a clear federal issue?
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Are there any grounds for seeking an injunction to prevent these standards from taking effect?
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