February 8^th

George Will has declared that the states and not the federal government should be in control of funding education. Yes George, that control has surely produced a circus and who doesn’t love the circus?  I don’t really think it’s the sort of result you had in mind though.

Then there is Governor Wallace’s “standing in the schoolhouse door.” States’ rights you know; “segregation today, tomorrow and always.” Eventually we had Brown vs The Board of Education. That SCOTUS decision you may remember stopped the silly notion proposed by some states of the old confederacy that they had a so called “separate but equal” educational system. Score one for the federal oversight of education. George skips over that part after all it was so long ago. Just ask Gwen Ifill, NPR anchor; she was there!

Recently we have a much more entertaining circus: we have the Texas School Board determining what shall be in Texas school books. The school board has ten Republicans and five Democrats and they control the content of the 85 million (that’s right 85 million) Texas school books. With this market publishers are very willing to accommodate whatever request the Texas School Board makes.  The history section gives scant coverage to the Mexican-American War and in no way can the United States be thought the aggressor. Then there is a global warming disagreement in which both sides must be given equal time; this even though the number of scientists and the overwhelming evidence is all on one side of this issue. Richard Mueller, a global warming skeptic whose investigations were funded by the Koch Bros. has admitted that he’s now convinced of the reality of global warming, but not in Texas school books.

Thomas Jefferson also gets short shrift from these Texas “historians.” Jefferson you may remember was notorious for proclaiming a wall existed between church and state, not a good fit for our revisionist history right wingers in Texas. For them this is a Christian Nation founded on Christian principles, never mind that many of the founding fathers were Deists. Do you think that any of these Texas school book pontificators know what a Deist believes?

They insist that in addition to the Japanese internment horror the history books include the fact that German and Italian POWs were interned here as well. The difference in these two situations seems not to have penetrated their awareness. No matter their equivalence will be perpetuated in Texas schoolbooks.

Then we come to that awful “Core Curriculum.” The Core Curriculum is a major complaint for Mr. Will. I’ve looked at this curriculum, particularly at the requirements in mathematics.  Horrors, this curriculum requires that students study algebra and even statistics in high school. How awful, what a burden; not to worry. Texas has banned the Core Curriculum so it is now illegal, by law, to teach this evil content. The Right ‘s objection to this curriculum is not clear; no matter the right’s objection to many things is not at all clear; objecting is what they do best.