Branford talks about the kids

From the documentary Before the Music Dies.

Your daily update of what constitutes education in Texas

Well the madness is over and Texas has finally passed the last of their historical "adjustments" to make sure the children of Texas are readily aware that history has a nefarious liberal secular bias. They didn't get to add in all the parts about Indians turning into Mexicans and copious Dracula references that they wanted, but they have enough for now.

Of interest, one of the women on the Texas Board of Education came out and said that public education was a "tool of perversion" and another man referred to any opposition as coming from "the pagan left". So it's nice that the sane people are exercising control over this process.

So what were they able to sneak in at the last moment?

Elevating Confederate Leader Jefferson Davis To The Level Of Abraham Lincoln.

Requiring That Historical Figures — Except Conservative Ones — Must Be Dead For Students To Study Them.

That's right. As the argument went, keeping Davis out was "an attempt to “whitewash” history." Which, given the board's attempts to remove blacks and Latinos from their history books, even rechristen the Atlantic Slave Trade as the Atlantic Triangular Trade, is something the board would know a great deal about. So Davis' speeches are kept in to contrast with Lincoln's speeches. One notable thing about Davis' speeches? They're ones that don't talk about slavery being one of the main reason for secession and the Civil War.

As for the second, yeah, if you're a minority or viewed as a dirty liberal, you can't get into the history books unless you're dead. Even if you're dead, you might not make it in if you've offended these people's imaginary conception of Jesus. Just ask Thomas Jefferson. But if you're white and really conservative? Please, come right into the textbook, if you're having trouble finding room just elbow a founding father or a civil rights pioneer out of the way and have a seat.

But surely not every crackpot idea these goons have gets into these textbooks, right? Shockingly, that's true. Referring to President Barry as Barack Hussein Obama, probably with a couple of Islamic crescents and a black power fist encircling it, was apparently too nakedly political and openly race bait-y for the board. Instead, he's referred to as Barack H. Obama, or, alternately, "The black one that done usurped the White House" and is listed again in the section "12 signs that the rapture is imminent" under the header "Blacks in places blacks shouldn't be."

It's a shame this is over for now. I would have liked to have heard the board opine on European history as well as English Lit requirements. Sadly God doesn't love me enough to have these people take a whack at science requirements. Maybe they did and Bibles have replaced Biology 1010 textbooks. I guess we'll find out. Godspeed, Texas schoolchildren. Just remember, when it comes times to take your SAT's, remember to fill in the bubble for what seems to be the exact opposite of the things you just spent 12 years learning.

Your daily update of what constitutes education in Texas

You have to admire the education board goon in Texas. They've become national pariahs and jokes, they've become a symbol for all that's wrong in our educational system and prioritizing politicization and ideologies over facts, and they've even engendered the beginning of a backlash in their state. Yet still they go on, rewriting history so that maybe, just maybe, kids will have a more positive view of the Republican Party and definitely, definitely have to retake a bunch of basic, high school level history courses if they want to meet the minimum requirements to graduate from college.

So what constitutes history today? What race has been getting it too good in our history books? What awful historical event needs whitewashed? What relatively unimportant event within the conservative movement needs to replace a bit of actual history? Let us find out.

Several changes include... introducing a new focus on the "significant contributions" of pro-slavery Confederate leaders during the civil war.

The new curriculum asserts that "the right to keep and bear arms" is an important element of a democratic society. Study of Sir Isaac Newton is dropped in favour of examining scientific advances through military technology.
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The education board has dropped references to the slave trade in favour of calling it the more innocuous "Atlantic triangular trade", and recasts the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as driven by Islamic fundamentalism.
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Dunbar backed amendments to the curriculum that portray the free enterprise system (there is no mention of capitalism, deemed to be a tainted word) as a cornerstone of liberty and argue that the government should have a minimal role in the economy.

One amendment requires that students be taught that economic prosperity requires "minimal government intrusion and taxation".
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On the education board, Dunbar backed changes that include teaching the role the "Jewish Ten Commandments" played in "political and legal ideas", and the study of the influence of Moses on the US constitution. Dunbar says these are important steps to overturning what she believes is the myth of a separation between church and state in the US.

Ahh Newton you hack, go sit with Jefferson on the swings, we need to learn how George Wallace is the exact same kind of fighter for racial rights as MLK (true, according to Texas curriculum). And thank God the softened the language on the slave trade. Otherwise kids might get an idea that slaves were the only thing being traded. I think some tools and a couple barrels of molasses were involved.

Finally someone is willing to stand up and say that the separation of church and state is a myth. Sure, some wags might point out that it's in the 1st Amendment or that Thomas Jefferson talked about how the combined effects of the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause in the 1st formed a separation of church and state. But if Jefferson was so important, wouldn't he be part of Texas educational guidelines?

Go read the article and get a little insight into the mind of the Texas school board. The phrase "paranoid persecution fantasies" and "rampant flag eating bullshit" don't even begin to explain their mindset. They believe that God has called them to indoctrinate kids with conservative dogma. Kind of frightening to think about what they'd try to pull if they thought no one was paying attention and they weren't being made national lightening rods. Then again, maybe schoolchildren haven't learned enough about President Jesus H. Christ and His victorious fight against the Kaiser.

Messing with Texas

One must appreciate the fervency with which the Texas right wing has attempted to dumb down kids and fill textbooks with conservative fantasies and nonsense. It takes some stones to de-emphasize Thomas Jefferson so you can get in some claptrap about Phyllis Schlafly and the Moral Majority, pretend Latinos all just jumped the border and started contributing to America about six months ago, go on about how Japanese internment was just peachy, and make sure you've sufficiently provided enough information to the kids about how violent the philosophies of the Black Panthers were in case they got too nice of an idea about black people from MLK.

But, to the credit of Texas, they did finally get rid of Don McElroy, the man spearheading the changes.... except he still has time left on his term to do damage. And he is using every second of that time to its full stupid effect. What more can he have on tap for the Texas textbook standards that will likely affect dozens of additional states? Is another one of the founding fathers going to have to take a back seat so kids can understand how important Rush Limbaugh was to the rise of conservative talk radio? Do we have too favorable an opinion of Frederick Douglass? Are there still no Latinos of any historical note? Let's find out.

The new amendment (.pdf), which is expected to get a vote on Thursday, would require high school history students to "discuss alternatives regarding long term entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare, given the decreasing worker to retiree ratio" and also "evaluate efforts by global organizations to undermine U. S. sovereignty."
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As justification for that second item, McLeroy writes: "Threats of global government to individual freedom and liberty include the votes of the U. N. General Assembly, the International Criminal Court, the U. N. Gun Ban proposal, forced redistribution of American wealth to third world countries, and global environmental initiatives."

Oh Jesus, not only do kids have to learn about the evils of socialism and entitlements, they apparently need to bone up on their UN conspiracy theories. And who can disagree? I mean it is important to learn that the UN is secretly marshaling armies to come and steal everyone's guns as a precursor to robbing us and giving all our money to Africa. Plus they want governments to deal with the environment. *shudders* The horror....

One wonders if staging a junior high Model UN gets you imprisoned now or shot outright. After all, Texas must protect itself from the black helicopters, both real and those ordered by a security council of 14 year-olds in Mr. Carruthers 3rd period Social Studies class. And what of proposals for science classes to analyze the use of tinfoil headgear to block the UN's mind reading satellites? That vote is scheduled for next week.

So congratulations to Texas. Just when I thought your textbook rewriting attempts couldn't get any more weird you fire back with some things that would raise an eyebrow or two at a Teabagger vs. Ron Paul-ite competitive bake-off. Good luck with that. The first sign of a vibrant ideology is ramming through low-rent textbook changes in an attempt to indoctrinate kids. My only consolation is that when I have children they won't have to learn any of this nonsense... they'll have to learn how to dismantle the neural net of a robot before it can get its grabber claw on you and drag you back to the hive mind for "purification of the flesh".

Picture of the day

In all our childish mockery of the 2010 World Expo in Beijing, from America's utterly shite building to the architectural ridiculousness of it all, it seems we forgot to highlight one important design facet brought to us by the great nation of Spain. Via the Big Picture blog, I give you: GIANT CREEPY BABY!!!!!


The deeply unnerving, huge, animated, breathing, blinking, smiling, 32 different gestures baby mannequin is supposed to represent how all our action have an effect on future generations... and overly large, realistic puppets. Obviously.

Giant baby beat out their first suggestion: Paul Gasol standing in the entrance and pulling at the corners of his eyes to make him look Chinese.

Eat it, Jefferson. Eat it hard.

Last week we congratulated Texas for sending Don McElroy, the man who was spearheading Texas' efforts to use school textbooks as a means to rewrite history with a right wing christian conservative bent, packing in a primary contest. But we added in the caveat that the man still had several months left on his term and the board still had a christian conservative bent, so there was still time for them to do some damage. And boy did they ever decide to use the time they had left.

Among the changes made include:

removing a reference to “sex and gender as social constructs” in order to avoid exposing students to “transvestites, transsexuals and who knows what else”, refused to require that students learn the Constitution prevents the U.S. government from promoting one religion over all others, added references to "laws of nature and nature's God" in sections about major political ideas, made the second amendment the only relevant idea in the Bill of Rights, considered it important to learn about "the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association", students now learn about the "violent philosophy of the Black Panthers" to counterbalance the nonviolence platform of MLK, tries to excuse the inherent racism of Japanese internment, added apologetics for McCarthyism and the McCarthy hearings because I guess that whole period wasn't all bad, made it so that Hispanics don't exist inside of US history, added ominous references to the "unintended consequences" of of the Great Society legislation, affirmative action and Title IX, removed the word "capitalism" because it has a "negative connotation", and knocked Thomas Jefferson out of the required curriculum and the Enlightenment... mostly because he coined the phrase “separation between church and state”. It also didn't help that he was a paleontologist.

So America is a Christian nation whose founders gave no thought to anything other than Biblical law ruling the land, whites did everything, McCarthyism and internment weren't so bad, and Thomas Jefferson isn't important to US history but Phyllis Schlafly is. Let's let Donny boy explain himself.

“We are adding balance,” said Dr. Don McLeroy, the leader of the conservative faction on the board, after the vote. “History has already been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left.”

Yes, reality does have a well known liberal bias. What's one of the non-crazy board members think?

Mary Helen Berlanga, [stormed] out of a meeting late Thursday night, saying, “They can just pretend this is a white America and Hispanics don’t exist.”

Yes they can.

“They are going overboard, they are not experts, they are not historians,” she said. “They are rewriting history, not only of Texas but of the United States and the world.”

Yeah, but if you rewrite history, then it becomes history! See how it works? Ah well, who needed to learn about Thomas Jefferson anyway? If he was important he would have had a bigger role in HBO's John Adams mini-series.

A round of applause for Texas' contributions to education, culture, and knowledge. It's not enough that our culture, media, entertainment, government, politicians, and news work to dumb this country down, now we have to go into books in an attempt to more proactively dumb our kids down. I'm sure it's all for the best, who learns anything from history anyway?

Art of the day

Artist Dave Devries' Monster Engine, an art project in which he takes shoddy drawings from our nation's overabundance of untalented children and turns them into painted nightmares of well rendered but poorly proportioned bodies, spindly legs, gruesome smiles, and random appendages and squiggles.





(via Buzzfeed)

Is our children learning?

For 49 out of 50 states, the answer to the question posed above is "Yes... at least by shoddy American standards." The soon to be exception to that rule? Utah. Maybe we were too harsh to call them out for their blinkered state legislature backed climate change denialism. It seems that education isn't their strong suit.

The sudden buzz over the relative value of senior year stems from a recent proposal by state Sen. Chris Buttars that Utah make a dent in its budget gap by eliminating the 12th grade. The notion quickly gained some traction among supporters who agreed with the Republican’s assessment that many seniors frittered away their final year of high school, but faced vehement opposition from other quarters, including in his hometown of West Jordan.
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During a hearing of the state’s Public Education Appropriations Subcommittee earlier this month, Buttars suggested that funding 12th grade amounts to “spending a whole lot of money for a whole bunch of kids who aren’t getting anything out of that grade.” The state senator also has also suggested ending “all busing for high school students,” which would disadvantage poor students and only save a paltry $15 million.

Something that dumbs down education tacked on with a semi-racist/classist measure to cut costs because your retrograde Republican policies can't function with raising taxes or scaling back the tax cuts to the rich you've handed out to cover a nearly billion dollar budget shortfall? You knew Utah, or possibly Texas, was going to blaze that trail first.

Frankly they're just responding to the realities of our financial apocalypse. Who needs education when there aren't any jobs? Furthermore nearly everyone in Utah derives an income from one of those "Isn't it precious how we have 14 kids" reality shows, so doesn't really need an education, skill set, or pliable trade.

I know what you're saying, "Matt, don't Mormons believe that if you record them for television, the camera steals their soul? How can they all have TV deals?" Well you can't steal their soul if they're wearing special underpants that deflect the heathen voodoo rays. Plus 14 kids is a lot, a man has to be willing to put his soul at hazard to care for the fruits of his loins.

So, apologies to Utah. We didn't mean to make fun. We didn't realize you were one of the "special' states. Enjoy your eleven grades. It's all going to be fire, spears, and animal skinned barbarians heaving rocks at each other pretty soon. Who needs AP Physics or English 7/8?

Quote of the Day

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, telling the student newspaper of Texas Tech how he is inspiring his students now that the Red Raiders have inexplicably allowed him to teach there.

Gonzales said he wants to encourage Tech students to have high aspirations but to realize that success doesn’t come overnight.

“Dream big but be patient,” he said. “You never know when the next George W. Bush is going to come along and give you a once in a lifetime opportunity like he gave me, but you have to be patient.

"Kids, I'm a big believer in dreams coming true. And one day, if you dream hard enough, a rich, pampered, idiot manchild will like the way you don't talk back to or contradict him. And when he gets swept into higher office, he will drag you along on his coattails and sweep you into a position you are grossly unqualified for. Whereupon, if you're lucky, you'll get to fuck with the most basic institutions of law with an almost sociopathic disregard for ethics or basic humanity. Dream big! It worked for me!"

I imagine at this point his students lifted him up on their shoulders and carried him out triumphantly, chanting "Fre-do, Fre-do, Fre-d0!" After all, who doesn't dream of being a mindless, yes-man cipher who goes on to become a disgraced halfwit all based around not what they know, but who they know? That's preparing kids for the future in a manner that is surely worth the $15k in-state and $23k out-of-state tuition cost.

Correspondence of the day

The chronicle of a young child named Billy (otherwise known as adult pop-culture historian Bill Geerhart), the sage wisdom of Hustler publisher Larry Flynt, and the cruel tyranny of porn stealing authoritative parents. Just one of the many amazing episodes of The Billy Letters, one small boy's disturbing correspondence with Charles Manson, the Night Stalker, the Unibomber, Larry, the Governator, and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

"Art" of the day

via FuckYeah4Chan

That's a nice cover you have there

Surprisingly the answer is yes, your baby is a huge fucking brown shirted frothing racist. In fact, your baby probably was holding up a crazy racist/conspiracy laden placard at this weekend's 9/12 Glenn Beck United States of Tea-merica protests. For shame. You and your racist infant sicken me.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 09.11

Sarah Palin Ebay Dinner Offered -- With Disclaimers
I know times are tough, but if you happen to have $25,000 sitting around in a bank account somewhere, or perhaps in non0sequential bills in a burlap sack with a dollar sign on it, you can afford the privilege of dinner with Sarah Palin. You and 4 friends will get to eat dinner with Wasilla's own Brad and Angelina: Sarah and Todd. Now she does reserve the right to refuse a winning bid, so you will have to maintain your lies about admiring her intellect up until the very end. So give her money, she's broke and doesn't have a job now.

Ohio Cheetah Clocks In At 36 MPH
Not content to let Usain Bolt get all that "fastest this" and "fastest that" hype for running 100 meters in 9.58 seconds, the good people at the Cincinnati Zoo went out and got a cheetah to run a 100 meter dash in 6 seconds. What does that mean? That in an international competition a cheetah would run down and devour the world's fastest man somewhere around the 50 meter mark, possibly sooner. This is good information to know.

Museum Scours World For New Videos Of 9/11 Attacks
How do you get people to a museum commemorating the deadliest terrorist attack in US history? New camera angles!!! And they need your help. So if you're sitting on any unseen footage of the towers falling or the plane's impact, send it in, they need it to "tell the story." Here let me help: planes crash, buildings fall, people die, country flushes mind, morals, laws, and money down large toilet in an as yet unsuccessful campaign of revenge and justice. It's not a great story, but that's why we need to dress it up with different camera angles.

9/11 as a Lesson, Not a Memory
A nice reminder from the Washington Post that no matter how important people think an event is, schoolchildren who don't remember it or didn't live through it will always find the learning of said event to be an unbelievably boring dirge that is being unfairly foisted upon them. I think the best part is kids complaining about the length of the learning packet on flight plans and US/Afghan relations.

Pawlenty: It's "A Viable Option" To Invoke State Sovereignty, Keep Minnesota Out of Health Care Reform
Hey Minnesota, you elected this jerkoff, as well as his jerkoff counterpart Bachmann, and almost re-elected that jerkoff Coleman, so I guess you deserve to go through this. Invoking the 10th amendment to make sure citizens don't get access to cheaper health care, that's a good one. What's funny is that he's supposed to represent the "rational" and "moderate" factions of the Republican party and use that reputation as a springboard for his 2012 Presidential aspirations. Oh well, I guess he'll have to settle for signing his own political death warrant instead.

Word of the day

La·od·i·ce·an [lay-oh-diss-see-an]

adj.

1. Of or relating to Laodicea.

2. Indifferent or lukewarm especially in matters of religion.
3. A word that was used once, when it was created, and then never used again until the 2009 National Spelling Bee.
4. A word that is apparently easier to spell than "palatschinken."

n.

A native or inhabitant of Laodicea.

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[Adj., sense 2, in reference to Revelation 3:14-16.]