The Atlantic: It's Like They're Proud Of Being Ignorant

[marmar]

It's Like They're Proud Of Being Ignorant Cont.
Mar 15 2010, 11:00 AM ET


We talked a few weeks ago about the efforts of Texas conservatives to turn the school textbook industry into an arm of the radical right. They have, evidently, succeeded:

After three days of turbulent meetings, the Texas Board of Education on Friday approved a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers' commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light.

"We are adding balance," said Dr. Don McLeroy, the leader of the conservative faction on the board, after the vote. "History has already been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left."

Battles over what to put in science and history books have taken place for years in the 20 states where state boards must adopt textbooks, most notably in California and Texas. But rarely in recent history has a group of conservative board members left such a mark on a social studies curriculum.

Efforts by Hispanic board members to include more Latino figures as role models for the state's large Hispanic population were consistently defeated, prompting one member, Mary Helen Berlanga, to storm out of a meeting late Thursday night, saying, "They can just pretend this is a white America and Hispanics don't exist."

"They are going overboard, they are not experts, they are not historians," she said. "They are rewriting history, not only of Texas but of the United States and the world."

From the deparment of "This Would Be Funny If It Weren't So Sad," the Texas conservatives have launched an attack on Thomas Jefferson:

Cynthia Dunbar, a lawyer from Richmond who is a strict constitutionalist and thinks the nation was founded on Christian beliefs, managed to cut Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century, replacing him with St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone. (Jefferson is not well liked among conservatives on the board because he coined the term "separation between church and state.")

"The Enlightenment was not the only philosophy on which these revolutions were based," Ms. Dunbar said.

This is one of those "Why I'm Not A Conservative" moments. It's not that the Left doesn't have its extremes, but the honest truth is that I find, say, marching against th War In Afghanistan right after 9/11 much more tolerable than attempting to erase Hispanics from history, or hating Thomas Jefferson. Or being racist.


http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/03/its-like-theyre-proud-of-being-ignorant-cont/37484/