I've just read an article about the incredible decisions in the Texan board of education (the article is written in Italian so I don't bother pasting it here, I'm sure you already know what I'm talking about).
It really scares me, I wish it was a joke.
What the...
I mean, rewriting the story reminds me of fascism and nazi era, I've read about changes on Slave trade, B.C/A.D, T. Jefferson, an alcoholic Wisconsin senator, the meaning of the words "republic", "democracy" and "capitalism", the separation of State and Church, biblical values of the Constitution (lol? Washington was a mason, not really a good Christian).
I've even read that last year they changed the science curriculum to exclude the teaching of evolution and the Big Bang theory.
Quite worrying... Texas has never been a so called "dem" State, but rewriting the story doesn't belong to Western emisphere.

It's what you get when you let christian talibans run the country/state. Religion is opium for morons.

"Is Texas going back to the caveman era?"

The flaw in your reasoning and question is that Texas can not go "back" to something that it never evolved out of in the first place.

And I second Redzo's remarks about the christian taliban. Many years ago, when the fundamentalist Iranians' had taken over the US embassy in Tehran, and overthrown the Shah, a "commentator" was discussing the developments on TV here. The commentator said that the problem for the future was going to be the rise of fundamentalism in every religion and belief system, and that it was going to lead to very serious threats to world stability. Watching the developments in the world for the past 30 years, with his warning in mind has been very scary. When groups abandon logic, follow doctrine without question or analysis, go beyond merely condoning ignorance to actually promoting it (to keep the followers from stepping out of line), and resort to repression and any degree of violence necessary to force their agenda on the rest of the world, the very core values of civilization are severely threatened and we are in great danger of falling back to the stone ages. Or worse.

Imagine a world where the leaders of the three major religions have all devolved to taliban-like fundamentalists (or to Pat Robertson-like fundamentalists), the followers are all ignorant sheep, and the three religions and are all trying to wipe each other out (part of their agenda isn't it? Each exists by the divine and exclusive right granted by God, so they believe). Scary enough isn't it? Then throw in a Christian H-bomb (the west has plenty already), a Jewish bomb (Israel has plenty, whether or not they admit it), and an Islamic bomb (the fundamentalist Islamics keep trying). The only hope is that the people, the everyday, ordinary people of each group, have enough sense to keep it from going to that extreme. And sometimes, just barely, I see enough to make me believe in the ordinary people's ability to stop this insanity, despite the occasional development of a pocket of ignorance (Texas in this case).

The bigger problem is that since Texas is such a large part of the market for textbooks, the publishers do all these revisions in all the textbooks -- even those going to all the other states...

So, the rest of us have to deal with the politicization of these textbooks. The folks running the school book committee are not scholars or academics; they are elected officials with their own political agenda, and they distort the facts to suit themselves.

It's a crazy travesty.

What else would you expect of a population largely descended from a hotch potch of European religous extremists who weren't wanted in their own countries?
Religion is now almost extinct in non-catholic Europe...
Thank fuck.
(I suppose it means you get plenty of volunteers to join the US army - they get to kill Moslems!)

I think that the Senate could do something, because those textbooks may be exported in other States outside of Texas, so it's not a Texan matter only.
Furthermore, a group of politicans CAN'T run a school committee, that's crazy.

I second N7SC and think that people loose their logic and refugee in religion and extremists beliefs when there's fear of the future. Credit crunch crysis is the best candidate, after 1929 crysis... People is losing their jobs, their homes, their faith in life; historically these have been cases in which ultra conservative decisions and religion have found a large consensus, especially in low-culture classes.

Good posts all round, nice to see some sense.

The only way that I can see the US keep its sanity is to change some of the rules and regulations that affect religions directly.

There are 3 very simple ways of doing this.

1.) Tax them. Re-classify all religions as "businesses" because they are, they will then loose all oftheir special priveleges and be taxed just like every other business, this will reduce their financial muscle, and make the government some money which can then be spent on the next point.

2.) Education. Religion needs to be removed from the classroom in a big way, obviously needs to be included in RE classes, cant and should not be avoided in History, and so on, but opinions of teachers must be kept to themselves, and must be removed from science entirely.

3.) Laws. Rules and regulations must be changed to keep the sepreation of religion and state that is one of the pillars that the US constitution was founded on.

In recent years (the last 50) the religious now have more power than ever before, this is not at all right and must be changed now while it is quite easy to do, in the future things may become so bad that the change itself will tear the country apart.


Andy

California's (the single largest market for textbooks in the US) legislature is proposing a law that bans Texan revised textbooks from being sold/used in our state. Just like with auto emissions, we just need a couple more large states to hop on the bandwagon, and then Texans can just mess with Texas.

The publishers are saying that there are already different requirements by many states and that localized editions are already being published.

My favorite Creationism in education story involved the Kansas school board and one guy's fight against them. It lead to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Arr matey! All hail His Noodlyness.

Uh, umm, not sure how to do that.

1: why tax religons and not tax other non-profit centers? most churches attempt to provide some positive benefit to their community. they're not taxed because there's no reason why a belief in a higher power (and the assosciated promise of final judgement) should be discouraged.

2: religion has already been removed too much from the classroom in that there's literally no mention of it outside of the pledge. it's my belief that all students should be given a basic understanding of what the different (and most common) religions believe.

3: there already exists a separation of church and state. there doesnt NEED to be any more laws on the books regarding it. conversely, existing monuments that have a religious symbolism shouldnt be taken down just because of said symbolism.

though it seems a bit..godwin's law-ish of me, i'm going to liken the drives to take down the soledad cross to the taliban blowing up buddha.

though i dont really care about new stuff, that which already exists should be left the fuck alone.

the atheistic drive to end all mention of religion on the basis of curtailing its extremists has come to resemble a religion in itself. maybe we should be calling it the cult of atheism?



fwiw, i'm an agnostic. everybody whines too fucking much.

3: It's better to remember that SEPARATION MUST EXISTS in political and bureaucratic matters. It has to be studied on the text books because this separation is an important step in western history. "Already" is ambiguous. "Already" is in danger of being forgotten in the future, if you assume it as a life-long axiom and don't study it, don't talk about it.
However that monuments question is excessive, separation regards the State and its political matters/various decisions only, otherwise we should take down all the churches.
There's nothing wrong with religious buildings, some of them are beautiful.

Cavour said: "Free church in free State". This motto is a conquest you should always keep in mind in the whole life. Best way to do it? Studying it on school books, otherwise in which any other way you (as a child) could know anything about it?
Let's remember that this motto is way stronger in US than in any european catholic State for historical reasons; you MUST learn it when you're a child.

Crysis times are tough times, you don't know if some... weird... texan decisions could lead the future generation to learn some misbeliefs.

it's not misbeliefs. it's merely another viewpoint.

i tend to agree that the right to keep and bear arms is a necessary part of democracy... at least american democracy.

while this nation was founded as a secular nation, the vast majority of its founders were christians (or deists..) people nowadays tend to forget the HUGE role of the church (referring to individual community churches) in early america.

and "already" is not ambiguous. it's makes a clear definition. that which is currently up and in place is off limits. that which has yet to come is under scrutiny.

i tend to see this as a backlash against a screwed up trend in education currently. history books have ALREADY been rewritten with a heavily liberal slant. for example: going through school, in history class i never once got a proper breakdown of the civil war in terms of battles, major players, etc. every time a history class covered it, it always covered either: black contributions, or womens' contributions. this is in EVERY history class from 3rd grade through college. that's fucked up.

and it's always that way. no history class i was in EVER covered the role war played in the formation and expansion of this country. every time i was taught by heavily liberal teachers about how eleanor roosevelt was responsible for the formation of the UN.

i have my own pet peeve's about education, obviously, but it truly is fucked up in its current incarnation and needs to be changed.

I think this is a product of the environment in which our children are taught. I grew up in an "upper class" county in South Eastern Pennsylvania where I attended public school from 2 through 12 grade...

Every American History class I ever had was heavy handed in either Civil War or Revolutionary War history. Why? Because we could look out the windows of our school and see the land where blood was spilled in the name of The United States of America. It was pertinent to us. I used to go fly kites where hundreds of Washington's men died from exposure or hypothermia in Valley Forge.

You know what I never learned about in school? The settlement of The West. The Donner Party. The Oregon Trail. My education on the West was that somebody bought Louisiana for pennies per acre and sent Louis and Clark down the Oregon Trail to discover gold in San Francisco so that we could all wear Levi's cotton denim jeans.

Why? And who should teach this in what way?

You can teach religion as a socio-cultural phenomenon, but this would have to include mentioning of the mutual exclusiveness of most of them and the logical conclusion that *at least* half of all religious people must necessarily believe in fairtytales. How many religious people would like that taught at school?

Then there's the issue of (e.g.) a Christian teacher explaining the Hindu faith. That doesn't seem fair and balanced. So probably every religion covered must be given the chance to send in one of their representatives. Once again, some might take offense, especially if a Buddhist Monk teaching kids about his faith is seen by some as doing missionary work, which is punishable by death in both Christian and Muslim tradition.

And who gets to decided which religions do get to send in somebody. Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindu and Buddhist without question. Scientology? Taoists? Some Native American Religion? And concerning Christians: Unified? Protestant and Catholic? Jehova's Witnesses, Mormons?

This is a big clusterf*ck that could be resolved very handily: the parents get to decide. If parents want their kids to learn about Judaism, they can send them to the temple. This way, the school needs not to be involved and still all the kids would get the religious "education" their parents want for them.



I agree. Historical cultural treasures shouldn't be touched because they rub some contemporary wave the wrong way.

The Acropolis was a temple, the Colosseum was a place of massacres. Doesn't matter now, they are part of our history.



There's no drive to end all mention of religion, but to be able to have a fair discussion. Pointing out the flaws in most religious beliefs is not an offense, is not Sacrilege, it's just part of the debate.
The Theory of Evolution (which is not disputed by anyone with credibility) gets attacked because it's accused of being inconclusive (which it's not) but if you mention the flaws in Creationism (I wanna see that Ark!) we're getting into taboo territory very fast.

Thats too simple to answer, whats the catch.... Religious body's are not by defenition "charaties" in the true sense of the word, but then again, neither are many charaties. That is pretty much besides the point, a religion dictates that it must be spread by its worshippers (with few exceptions), churches and the like are built, the churches have staff, all of this needs to be paid for so they can "sell" God to people, it is the primary purpose, the secondary purpose is to make money so it can fund itself, its third purpose is "real" charity work, where needy people are actually helped, therefore although they often do charitable work, it is not their primary business. And many of them (Catholic, Muslim for example) cause huge amounts of pain, and harm totally ofsetting all of the "good" that they do.



That is not what has already been suggested, but if that is the case then its mostly good, although religion does need to be discussed in relation to history, which is where it belongs.



There is not enough seperation, there are lobbyists, and people in power pushing their own retarded beliefs upon others simply because they can, that needs to be changed because the seperation is not nearly large enough, maybe the word should be gigantic chasam.

I certainly dont want to see religious symbolism being torn down for the sake of it, specifically if it is of historical, architectural or other important significance.



I certainly dont want to end the mention of religion, that would mean one less thing to ridicule and laugh at. But also as I have already mentioned it is important historically.

Where people start challenging the role of religious words in certian passages and in certain contexts, is usually because they have no righ to be there, and are blatantly NOT the seperation of Church and State, although this specific topic has been talked to death in another post or 2.

As far as Athiesm being considered a religion/cult, it plain silly, there is not a holy book of athiesm that dictates what people should/should not do, eat, or shag, there is no higher power that you must worship, there is no set or arbritary rules and regulations that you must obey, there is no command to kill everyone who does not believe what you believe and so on.....

I can understand why some people get confused, but that is quite brief when you actually compare athiesm with belief. Mostly that Athiests tend not to have been brought up in a strong religious environment, have an open mind, understand science (or at least can only believe in believable things), evidence is required, all of the laws of the universe cant be suddenly dropped for a while.

Yes Athiesm can be considered a belief system, the belief in anything that can be proved, or at least there is a good theory for.



It is a misbelief when you have "faith healers" that persuade very ill people to abandon their medication, Jehova's witnesses who die because they refuse blood, people being infected with AIDS because they have been told that condoms are worse than AIDS.

You only have to look at a few of the more modern pieces of bogus knowlege that people actually believe to be true, take for example something that everyone has seen on TV, someone shoots someone with a shotgun and blows them through a window, but the shooter does not move a lot (usual movie recoil). That is totally impossible, but huge amounts of people actually believe it is true, also you dont have to look far through Snopes to find something that is plain wrong that millions believe.

Thruth is important, simply because knowledge that is not true is bollocks, knowledge must be true, and yes I know that much of history is far from being true because it was written by the winner, re-written etc.

Here is an interesting test to ask a Christian "when was Jesus born, and where", "where did Jesus then go". Simply then ask them "which gospel they got that from", and "why other gospels disagree?". The answers are fascinating, and often have little to do with whats in the book, but mostly what they have been told by some guy in their church.

The "truth" of those Christians knowlege compared to their "holy book" often does not compare to what they believe, so you have to ask why do they believe something in the Bible, but not other things that disagree with the former. Essentially most of the bible is complete bollocks as we know, the fact that half of the gospels were removed to make its readings a bit more sane is obviously a testament (haha) to the fact that religion is man made, and is still being updated, and controlled by man for the benefit to some men, and for the detrement of many more.

Another interesting point following on from there, if there is only one god (much of the worlds believers believe that) why are there so many gods.? And why specifically have there been in excess of 40,000 Gods, because they were invented. Just like there are over 4,000 branches of Christianity, and even the flying spaghetti monster has now branched out into more than one (mock) religion. The answer is very simple they are all man made, evry single last one of them, and that is the truth.

I think that it is very sad when someone who seems totally normal, totally sane says that they belive tha Jesus was born of a Virgin for example, it simply proves that some people will believe all kinds of sillyness and nonsense simply because they were told whilst a child "this is true", children will believe almost anything, like Santa and the Tooth-Fairy, the exception is that when they are little older they are then told that Santa and the Tooth-Fairy dont exist, but God really does exist, what a load of bullcrap millions of people feed to their childrens vulnerable minds.



You could say the same things abouts Pubs, millions of our future generations will only exist with the help of Pubs (and of course alcohol).



Yeah, thats pretty shitty, and retarded, very far from a step forward.



Or that some terrible events are actually very important, such as Pearl Harbour.

lol.

till 6th grade, i went to school in colorado. thereafter i went to school in california.

i dont think the lousiana purchase was EVER covered in great detail. merely the mention of it, how france was desperate for money, jefferson bought it (one of the few good things jefferson did as president. brilliant man and statesman, terrible president.)

the settlement of the west was far more glossed over, so my knowledge of the oregon trail comes from the video game.

so yeah...the mainstay in all this is "how instrumental women were in for formation and direction of our country". really retarded view of history.

i'll respond to the rest of your post later. just wanted to say this.

i never had a history class that covered WWII in any greater detail than the mention that we had a war. none of them ever mentioned any specific battles, commanders, etc. merely leaders of their respective countries.

you really should take notice how truly fucked up our education system is currently before saying what texas is doing is so wrong.

"You can't total a car twice."

Look forward to reading and responding after a good nights sleep



We didnt just have it covered, but had it covered by parents, uncles, uants, and specifically grandparents who had friends, relatives and next door neighbours not just killed in direct conflict but in the bombing raids that devestated parts of england, especially east london, where I grew up close to.

There are literally devestating holes in the ground where bombs and V-bombs made their marks all around the area, that is also a good reminder of what our ancestors went through, and what we want to avoid happening again.

The history that I was taught would have always be different from the history that you were taught, if you are a born and bred american, you never had your country directly attacked in WW2. Many of my neighbouring countries were taken over, their history lessons again were very different from mine. A little perspective always needs to be taken

So to Texas.



I shall take a greater care of notice, however, the question still remains who to take notice of. I know Fox news is a total joke, some people think that CNN has agenda's, the others I dodnt know about........... This really makes no difference though, simply because if I watch those channels here, they are different to the ones that you are watching there.

My views are at best vauge, and at worst distorted. A great deal of the (specific) news story's happening in the US I pick up from here, what would help me make up my own mind is to know where YOU in the US pick up your news story's from.?

The other problem from news in the US, is that the country is so massive and different across its massive range that one side and the other might as well be different countries, not just states - still the union holds, let it remain so.


Andy

I can't even believe they did not acknowledge an entire country and stepped up like this.. I could agree with a segregated christian taliban...

I mean if to challenge text books, Rewrite the columbus part and add vikings discovered america in the 1100s.. kicking spanish right in the big fat lie again anyway...and put a picture of a maine coon cat in there too.


maine coon cat

speaking of texas and lying spanish.. why don't they put the caveman to use by protecting soveriegnty of international borders, and let the text book stay sacred as well. there is a big gov't to ask if help is needed, it is part of the "other" america.

Predictably, with a nut like bush gaining presidency, this should be expected from texas.

i dont watch network news, and the only published news i get is an rss feed on my google homepage from Al Jazeera english.

while i dont like their editorials, their reporting itself is quite good.

Having been present at a number of events that Al Jazeera subsequently covered and published, I would say that their coverage is as circumspect as any of the other international outlets. My experience is that AJ does in fact cover quite a few events that other agencies either ignore or are ignorant of, but that the accuracy of the reporting by AJ leaves something to be desired (and is sometimes quite fantastic compared to the reality of the event).

Do any of you actually live in Texas? Or even the US?

Texas is a very right leaning state. Yet education is largely dominated by hard left leaning academics.

We have a right to determine what will be taught to our children and how it will be taught. If you don't like it, there are 49 other states that will probably be more to your liking.

Did you know that we also like to carry guns and drive trucks?

Strange though, how with all those crazy right wingers clinging to their guns and religion, we still manage to have either the first or second best state economy in the US. We are 'rasslin with Utah for that title and they have just as many guns and probably a few more churches than we do.

How about a little live and let live - if you think we got it wrong, then do it better and show us how it's done - but it's not like the last 50 years of left wing dominated public education has been any kind of bright spot.

N7SC lives in Florida, NeilBlanchard in Maynard, CA_Steve from California and so on. As you can see quite a few americans here.




Well I would disagree with you there. Texas will be breeding milions of Christian talibans and I would like to put a stop to that because those talibans will affect the world in future. A good example would be Bush family.


Yes i did. And that is number 1 reason why I consider Texas to be a taliban country.
If you think about it talibans and texans have a lot in common. Both are religious freaks, and both just love weapons and using them to kill "other" religious freaks (because both of them think their religion is the only right one).
Both also like to make fun of science and belive that some "god" "designed us" and everything around us without any f***** shred of evidence to back it up with.

It's like texans and talibans were distant cousins or something....

An interesting tactic to avoid answering a single point, just go off on a tangent and point out how "crazy" the average Texan appear to most of the world (and even other Americans), you did a good job on the last part



Brilliant answer, better from an American as well, no doubt because Limeys dont carry guns so we cant be "real people" with views and opinions


Andy

Redzo,

We are used to bigotry, but your response is so over the top that is is difficult to take seriously.

Texas is a Constitutional Republic with a strong tradition of individual liberty. We are tolerant of all religions and indeed, the great religions of the world are well represented here.

We believe in freedom of expression, low taxes, free enterprise, minimal government and rugged individualism.

Yeah - almost exactly like the Taliban

Unlike the leftwing enclaves like California and New England, we have low crime, low unemployment (at least, compared to the rest of the nation) and affordable housing. Our people are widely considered to be among the most friendly and welcoming in the United States.

We, the people, have selected our representatives and they are carrying out their duties in a way that reflects and represents the people who elected them.

That you find this threatening is incredibly amusing. If there are more ways that we can practice self determination while pissing you off, we are open to suggestions.

Andy:

Texans don't like to talk about guns around subjects of the crown because we don't like to embarrass people or make them feel badly. We do not think it right your government has seen fit to almost completely eliminate firearm ownership in your country and yet we puzzle, as does the world, at the growth in gun crime even as guns have been banned. Our conclusion - which we came to a long time ago - is that when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.

Now we never bothered to test this hypothesis, because we just plain like our guns too much, but we would like to thank you and your country for moving our hypothesis squarely into the realm of theory and providing ample evidence to support it.

Perhaps once you get a handle on the "knife crime" and your people learn to control them selves with pointy objects, you may one day find the political will to reassert your right to simply live and keep living, even when your continued existence requires "self defense" - which, as far as we can tell is an idea that has been almost forgotten in your land except when a subject dares to decide that their life is worth more than the life of a criminal (or is it "misunderstood victim of society" now? it is hard to keep up) and at that point, their brief foray into manly exertion is quickly disparaged and they are locked away lest the very concept start catching on.

Anyway, if it ever does catch on, we have a LOT of firearm trainers that we could probably be persuaded to lend you. Just let us know.

riiight, the neocon extremist whackos on that texas board of education panel gave the "left leaning" texas academics the opposite of what they asked for in their textbooks

i think not... the teachers in texas will be glad to dish out that ignorant right-wing crap to their students.

why even bother printing textbooks in texas? just pipe foxnews right into the classrooms! glenn beck for everyone down there!!

I hope you are not going to try and compare murder rates, your State of Texas has a higher murder rate than the whole of the UK, only just its quite close, but then again we still have 2 and a half times the populous of Texas.



I wont dispute anything truthful. Yes our rates of knife crime over the last decade are pathetic, and that needs to be dealt with. The rest of your point seems to have got lost in waffle, the only parts that stand out are "self defence" and "misunderstood victim of society" - feel free to clarify/make your point.



It wont change, and its for the best that all of the idiots who carry knives around DONT have guns, not for their sake, but for innocent passers by who might get hit by a stray bullet.


Andy

Off topic :

haha, good one !!
I watch fox the same way I watch comedy central. Cuz fox and comedy have a lot in common after all : they both show a bunch of nuts explaining you how absurd the world is
The two channels could be swapped out and some people would not even see the difference !!!

Back on topic now !!
davidrees : I'm interestd to hear why you think politicians have the right/legitimacy/knowledge to decide what should or shouldn't be taught in school. I think they don't have the right to do that since history is not their field
Same reason why I think politicians have no right to tell me what to eat : they're not nutritionists (excuse spelling of that last word ).

[EDIT : typos]

Excelent point, how did I miss that glaring issue.

I have an answer to the question.

Religions claim they have the only answers for many issues, and religious people with power (politicians) seem to take this to the next level. The only difference between this and the pope saying that condoms are bad, is obviously the topic, and that this is being voiced by politicians preaching their religious mantra vs the religious preachers themselves.

It has nothing at all to do with them as Frenchie says. It is their job as politicians to make education (amongst other topics) better for everyone they have power over.

Making the education system better is one thing, but changing it to their (idiotic) view is simply wrong, they should be making it better behind the scene, but they should have no influence at all over the content that is being taught, that is down to the teachers - leave it to the experts.


Andy

This was exactly my first thought too!