posted March 21, 2010 09:05 PM         

Furthermore, fundies often dominated the curriculum and even friggin TEACHERS (and other faculty) were scared of kids casting spells!

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn not only got taken off the reading list in the early 90s, but removed from the school library under pressures of local church groups (that got real active after Waco believing they were entering the "end times") because of that scene where Huck tries to pray for forgiveness for "stealing Jim" (ie, helping Jim, a slave and thus property, escape), and finally decides he'll burn in Hell before he prays for forgiveness for helping Jim escape. The churches feared this would teach us kids that we didn't have to go along with the so-called morality of the Bible and make up our own rules.

And the very high rate of teen pregnancy & STDs can also be accredited in large part to "abstinence only" sex ed, also promoted by fundie, right wing Christian groups.

Capitalism & competition were taught as good things (save when it came to schooling of course). Communism was bad, America was always right. Corporal punishment was sometimes eagerly given out.

Most of the possible exceptions to this are actually fuzzy as both left & right practice them (but they hate the other side for doing the same thing). One preschooler got sexual harassment on his permanent record for hugging a teacher, but that could just be uber morality the fundies promote as much as some feminist hysteria gone to the mind boggling extreme. And one science class I was in did teach global warming was real, though it's possible this was a brilliant way to make me a skeptic since much of what they taught turned out to be wrong (for example, by 2010 many of our coastal cities should be flooded, according to them, and obviously they were wrong).

But overwhelmingly it was right wing.

Oh, and it helps the rest of the USA to be right wing (just as California also does for the Left), by pressuring textbook producers to create books that sell to the most schools (and Texas being a huge buyer):
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12705167/

quote:

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In Texas, the Board of Education is dominated by political conservatives who are heavily lobbied by conservative activists, among them the evangelical group Focus on the Family and the husband-and-wife team of Mel and Norma Gabler, whose tireless campaigning for religiously centered teaching materials has made them among the most influential forces in the production of American textbooks.

Texas’ textbooks, which are often adopted by other states that have few alternatives, have included board-ordered passages mandating politically conservative definitions of marriage, abortion and same-sex relationships and instructing students that pregnancies are best prevented by “respecting yourself” and getting “plenty of rest.” They have eliminated any mention of condoms, even though Texas leads the nation in teenage pregnancies.

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The point being that Texas isn't "just now fighting back against the socialist" or some such, they're just doing what they've always done, but a lot harder now.

posted March 21, 2010 10:43 PM         

i mean, can anyone imagine that w's state was monopolized by socialists?

posted April 27, 2010 11:03 AM         

quote:

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Firing over creationism e-mail leads to appeal
By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN, AP
16 hours ago

NEW ORLEANS — The former director of the science program for Texas' public schools asked a federal appeals court Monday to revive a lawsuit over her firing for forwarding an e-mail about a forum opposed to teaching creationism.

The agency that runs Texas public schools argued that Christina Castillo Comer's e-mail broke its policy of neutrality toward any potentially controversial issue, including creationism. A lawyer for Comer says the agency has an unwritten, unconstitutional policy of treating creationism as science.

A three-judge panel from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans heard arguments Monday in Comer's lawsuit against Robert Scott, commissioner of the Texas Education Agency.

A federal judge in Austin, Texas, dismissed her claims in March 2009. Comer is appealing that decision. The 5th Circuit panel didn't indicate when it will rule.

Comer says she was told to quit or be fired in 2007 after forwarding an e-mail about a presentation by a Southeastern Louisiana University philosophy professor viewed as opposed to teaching creationism in schools. Her only comment on the forwarded e-mail was "FYI."

The agency says Comer violated her employer's "neutrality" policy by airing her personal opposition to creationism.

Douglas Mishkin, a lawyer for Comer, said the agency's neutrality policy violates the First Amendment's establishment clause because it endorses a religious belief.

"It takes something that's not science and treats it as if it is," he said.

Judge Fortunato Benavides pressed Mishkin to explain how the agency violated the establishment clause.

"I can see a free speech claim," the judge said. "This looks like to me a First Amendment claim in the robe of an establishment claim."

James Ho, Texas' solicitor general, said Comer doesn't dispute that her e-mail violated the agency's neutrality policy.

"This is a policy of employee neutrality, and neutrality is the touchstone of the establishment clause," Ho said. "It's certainly not a violation of it."

The agency says Comer was fired for "repeated subordination." Besides violating the neutrality policy, she allegedly attended meetings and presentations without agency approval and disclosed details of the school board's deliberations to non-board members.

"What makes this case unique is that there is a pattern of misconduct," Ho said.

Comer's lawyers say no other agency employee has been warned, reprimanded or fired for failing to remain neutral on an issue before the board. Mishkin said the neutrality policy requires teachers to "pull your punch" if students ask about the relationship between creationism and evolution.

"They said, 'You must do your job with one hand tied behind your back,'" he said.

Creationism is the belief that the Earth and its creatures were created by a deity. It's an alternative to the origin of life explanation taught in public schools under the theory of evolution, which puts forth that all living organisms descended from a common ancestral gene pool.

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posted April 27, 2010 11:29 AM         

That's pretty innocuous.

So, unless there's something more, this person should not have been fired.