If you mean this, I would have no objection to it being added as a “great historical document”. I find it positively inspiring and would be overjoyed if my child came home from school and told me they learned about it.
We used to be our own country. There are times I regret that the Treaty of 1845 ever happened.
However, it’s not just Texas. Religious bigot assholes abound in all states. But local school boards haven’t got the guts to tell them to go piss up a rope when the bigots start their shit.
There are times I think I should run for a position on the HISD school board. I’d shake their world up from day one. The religious bigots would be protesting and demanding that I be burned at the stake.
Well, perhaps given their mindset we can convince them to walk off the edge.
I graduated from the Texas public schools four years ago and I don’t remember anything particurally conservative. Evolution was tought every year in biology with no refrence to creationism or any of that sort of junk. The history books were pretty were dull but they dealt with things pretty even handedly. The health books mentioned condoms in passing during a very brief sex ed section that really only covered body parts and discriptions of std’s. Abstinence wasn’t really discussed at all. Now a lot has changed in four years but at least Texas hasn’t put “Evolution is only a theory” on the top of text books like some non-southern state that begins with a k that I will not mention has done.
Kung Fu Lola: That’s the one. And I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with including it in a textbook, except that it didn’t exactly have the impact of the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, or the Magna Carta. But maybe that’s because our paternalistic society ignored it! I thnk that was the very point made in getting it added to the ‘great documents’ list. It would have been there long ago except until recently men called the shots.
The point is, both Liberals and Conservatives lobby to get textbooks slanted in their direction. Both sides win some and lose some. That’s just the way it goes.
I trust you realize that if it were not for George Rogers Clark pretty every thing north of the Ohio and Missouri Rivers would be Canada.
I actually spent a couple weeks once reading my History Textbook front to back. Then again, I’ve always been a history buff.
I have a copy of that document, along with the Declaration of Independence, from which the author intentionally borrowed heavily, the Bill of Rights, and the Magna Carta. The document in question is the Declaration of Sentiments from the Women’s Rights Convention held in Seneca Falls, NY in July, 1848. That convention is seen as the jumping off point for the whole women’s suffrage movement. It and the events leadin up to it are as key to women getting the right to vote in 1920 as the Declaration of Independence and the events leading up to it are to the United States becoming independent from Great Britain. It also led to such societal reforms as giving women the right to own their own property and control their own wages. I think most people in this country know that 100 years ago women couldn’t vote; are the also aware that 100 years ago if a woman was widowed, she was pretty much dependent on the kindness of her male relatives? Hmph. given that 100 years ago, I’d be handing my paycheck over to my father, I’d say throughout her life she was dependent on male relatives. This was also, by the way, one of the motivating forces behind the whole Temperance movement. While I regard Prohibition as a massive mistake, I can see the point of someone working hard and earning a decent wage only to have it turned over to her drunken husband or father who proceeds to drink the money, leaving her with no legal recourse.
Here endeth the history lesson.
Actually, when it came to history, as an English kid growing up in a small town in America during the bicentennial, I pretty much decided history was bunk when I got fed up with being taught a very one-sided view of the Revolutionary War. I remember getting fed up back in grade school because the British were depicted as having no redeeming features and, being British, I knew that couldn’t be true. I understand little kids don’t usually understand nuance and they do want there to be Good Guys and Bad Guys and I’d even argue that part of teaching history in grade school is teaching kids how to be American and showing them the American perspective of what shaped the world as we know it. I also know I didn’t like getting picked on for being British.
Science textbooks are another matter. There is no scientific evidence for Creationism; evolution is the best theory we have for how life came to be as it is and, if a theory which is more backed up by evidence ever comes along, then that will be the one that’s accepted and evolution will wind up being a quaint 20th century notion. To me, science and math are key to teaching kids critical thinking. Young Earth Creationism teaches kids to avoid critical thinking. If you want to teach your kids your religion, you are free to do so at home and at church, and I expect you to do so. I do not appreciate people inserting their religion into science classes, even when their religion is nominally the same as mine.
CJ
Perhaps some sort of (warning:PDF link)disclaimer labels should be introduced in science books.
They’d have to surrender the Rangers and Astros to the USA.
I don’t think they’d do it.
Siege, I know you can get desperate from witnessing Lunatic Christians Acting Stupid.
Comfort yourself with the reassuring thought that they (up to now) didn’t come up with the idea to declare that children must be teached that 1+1+1=1 . (of course to me 1+1+1=5, but that is brother Dyslex’s interpretation).
Salaam. A
I’ve always wanted to set up my own Christian Mathematics, and see if I could actually get anyone to buy into it. It was inspired by declaring that the perfection of god means that Euclid’s 5th POstulate must be true. From that, I’d start a movement to teach that in schools as an alternative to the 5th postulate being unprovable, just to see what would happen.
I love those. I’m going to email them to my chemistry-teacher friend. 
SpazCat:
Your OP included this line:
Since you apparently objected to this change, I asked you when you thought “the ice age” actually took place.
I contend that “In the distant past” is accurate, if vague, and “millions of years ago” is inaccurate. So I’m in favor of this change having been made.
I agree, with the caveat that “the ice age” be amended to “the ice ages.”
It is less informative and therefore less educational. Would you also be in favor of reducing a history text to “Some stuff happened”?
Your contention that “millions of years ago” is inaccurate is an example of the ignorance we fight here. It would have taken you little more time to look into it than to type that:
Please don’t. I realize you’re being facetious, but we live in a world where not everyone realizes the Onion is satire. The last thing I need is a chorus of strident militant nutjobs telling me that my research in hyperbolic geometry is blasphemous, just 'cause they took you way too seriously.
Death to the Riemannian heretics!
There was a book that came out last year which detailed how zealots from the left and the right have been demanding changes to text books and reading lists. Unfortunatly I can’t come up with the name. The author was on The Daily Show and I remember that the book had a yellow jacket.
The geologic record shows that there have been many ice ages. Some took place millions of years ago, others took place tens of thousands of years ago. This is not what I think, this is what is shown by the Earth itself when we look at it. Science is all about accuracy, therefore “the distant past” is not going to cut it.
The “my opinion on the ice age” horse is officially dead. Please respect the corpse by not kicking it.