Texas' education standards cause nationwide alarm

There are several news stories and opinion pieces published recently from around the country, indicating a real level of concern over the proposed, soon to become real, schoolbook standards in Texas.

Educators and legislators across the nation are baffled by the glaring inaccuracies proposed, and apparently accepted by the SBOE. The concern is such that one California legislator has proposed a bill that would keep those standards out of California schools.

Others are just laughing, saying Texans are proud of their ignorance.

The Texas State Board of Education is top-heavy with young-earth creationists who would rewrite history and science to fit an ignorant and myopic worldview.

Regardless of how it seems, not all Texans are that ignorant. These idiopathic zealots on the Board deny documented, verifiable evidence and force their own ignorance upon the rest of us.

Still, reasonable Texans seem powerless to stop the malignant devolvement from within, but there could be hope from outside the state. If enough school systems and state boards refused to buy books containing the Texas brand of revisionism, the publishers might be forced to print alternate versions of the same book to suit different markets. That would be costly.

Another possible solution would be for textbook publishers simply to reject the TxSBOE’s standards, simply refusing to print texts meeting the obviously inaccurate standards.

…but I guess we can figure that won’t happen.

So what do we do? As a first step we can all join Just Educate, a grassroots effort being pushed by the Texas Freedom Network with the goal of persuading politicians in Texas the future of our kids is being compromised by the politicized nature of SBOE actions, and to ensure that sound scholarship, not personal agenda, guides Texas public school curriculum.

Reasonable Texans are tired of our state being the laughingstock of the world.

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