( - promoted by Matt Glazer)
I'm exactly the kind of person who should have known about what's been developing at the Texas State Board of Education regarding textbook curriculum.
I'm a product of the public schools of Texas, I have two children in public schools and another who recently graduated from a public high school, and I'm politically active. Yet, like many of my fellow Texans, I just haven't paid close enough attention to what many would consider to be a not-so-glamorous elected panel.
So thanks to Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and just about every other working comedian, I am now more than just aware of the ludicrous actions regarding textbook selections being undertaken by the SBOE; I'm fired up.
At first I thought I was seeing yet another round of the ongoing racism we still haven't completely evolved from in our great state, but I quickly came to realize the SBOE actions go way beyond racism. Their plans are much more pervasive and actually affect school children all over the country.
In short, members of the SBOE are systematically engaging in an extreme ideological agenda in an effort to skew history, science, literature, and any other area of study they can come across, to fit their own narrow views and beliefs. I would call it Orwellian, but that would be an insult to George Orwell. And the SBOE would probably try to ban his books from Texas public schools if they haven't already thought of it.
Members of the SBOE are free to believe anything they want, but when they start forcing their beliefs on the rest of us using the very textbooks my children and many of your children (or nephews, nieces, cousins, friends...) are being taught from, then they've crossed the line. So we have to stop these school yard bullies!
Thankfully, State Representative Richard Peña Raymond has started the Thomas Jefferson Movement to stop the SBOE from succeeding with their agenda. http://thomasjeffersonmovement...
The online organization, named for just one of the many great Americans who are being historically revised by the SBOE, has been formed to educate, inform and mobilize the vast majority of Texans who disagree with the current SBOE members' radical views.
Additionally, the Thomas Jefferson Movement, in the spirit of Jefferson himself, will be a forum for open, honest discourse on the subject. The site is built on a Ning platform and allows for anyone who doesn't cross the line into hate speech and extreme profanity to express their points of view for or against the SBOE. But make no mistake, the creators of the site do not agree with the current majority on the SBOE. Neither do the majority of Texans.
http://budurl.com/jefferson
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