The Texas State Board of Education voted last Friday to approve a batch of textbooks that will teach kids that the Constitution is based on the Bible, with Moses being the inspiration for American democracy, according to Patheos. It seems that Texas conservatives are doing everything they can to destroy young minds in the name of religious Republicanism.
The education board, which is mostly Republican, voted to approve the textbooks in a 10-5 vote. This move further bolsters the “instructional standards that the Board of Education approved back in 2010 with the explicit intention of forcing social studies teaching to adhere to a conservative Christian agenda.”
Texas conservatives are willfully mangling historical, American facts in order to prove just how God-fearing, conservative, and Texas they are. Sadly, children and their chance to be educated properly has gotten caught in the crossfire of this senseless culture war of theirs.
Some reports noted that historical scholars charged with reviewing textbooks to ensure factual accuracy were not given a chance to do so in this instance. The books’ publishers made the horrendous changes at the last minute in order for the inaccuracies to be snuck by any review board.
“What we saw today shows very clearly that the process the State Board of Education uses to adopt textbooks is a sham,” said Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network. “This board adopted textbooks with numerous late changes that the public had little opportunity to review and comment on and that even board members themselves admitted they had not read. They can’t honestly say they know what’s in these textbooks, which could be in classrooms for a decade.”
More specifically, the Texas Freedom Network noted that the new textbooks contain “passages that suggest Moses influenced the writing of the Constitution and that the roots of Democracy can be found in the Old Testament.”
Conservatives must be celebrating this culture war “win.” Even Fox News dedicated very limited news space to this atrocity: “Long decrying the books have been academics, experts, and activists . . . But approval means the books will be ready for more than 5 million Texas school students next fall.” Fox News lazily reports this news as if to say “yeah, that happened. So, what?”
What’s worse is that 5 million students will be reading this garbage allowed by Christian, conservative book publishers. The decision is morbidly fitting considering that it was recently announced the George W. Bush will have an elementary school named after him. Texas is in such bad shape. Maybe the state really should secede.
