http://www.salon.com/2013/03/13/11_heinous_lies_conservatives_are_teaching_americas_school_children_partner/


The question is...why?

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1: Racism has barely been an issue in U.S. history and slavery wasn’t that big a deal.

2: Joe McCarthy was right.

3: Climate change is a massive hoax scientists have perpetuated on the public.

4: The Bible is a history textbook and a scientific document.

5: Black people are the descendants of Ham and therefore cursed by God.

6: Evolution is a massive hoax scientists have perpetuated on the public.

7: Sex is awful and filthy, and you should save it for someone you love.

8: Dragons actually once existed.

9: Gay people do not actually exist.

10: Hippies were dirty, immoral Satan-worshippers.

11: Ayn Rand’s books have literary value. (well, maybe --I read her stuff)

7: Sex is awful and filthy, and you should save it for someone you love.

That one made me laugh because of the wording. Yes, indeed let's save what is awful and filthy for the one you love.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/25/2013 05:22PM by quebec.

Sounds a bit like those Raelians, who practice literally "loving people" into their cult.

Both religions want to produce human host bodies for aliens. The Mormons do it via mass reproduction and the Raëlians want to do it via cloning...

Apparently even the lies are bigger in Tejas.

In my entire career as a teacher I haven't heard that stuff being taught once.

If it was as widespread as the article implies I think I might have seen them at least once. It seems like many of the evidences presented cite that one to a few schools are practicing these things.

I agree with many of the points they are making though. ALEC as well as the Texas school board aim to do some pretty ill advised stuff to the educational system. It is so far out of their reach though.

"They went without bathing, wore dirty, ragged, unconventional clothing, and deliberately broke all codes of politeness or manners. ...It’s unclear if the book also teaches that if you play a Queen record backward, you can hear Satan telling you to smoke pot."

Hah, that entire paragraph is awesome!

They would like those things to be taught, but I haven't seen it either

My mother was a middle school teacher and I went to a (supposedly) secular private prep school and I know from personal experience that many of the faculty and students (and by extension their parents) had opinions like these and expressed them openly in class.

When I was in high school in the 70s, we were taught that slavery was only one of the minor reasons for the Civil War, that it was really about states' rights. I had a little argument with the teacher during class abiut this. It was and still is patently absurd, but of course the teacher wouldn't back down. States' rights to do what? Well, it was about the southern agrarian economic model, and being able to continue it without northern interference. So did this interference consist of, and on what was the economy dependent on? Cheap slave labor. No, no, repeat ad nauseum.

The genocide perpetrated on the native people by the American whites was glossed over and swept under the rug. McCarthyism ditto. Teaching of sanitized American history is still alive and well, certainly in Idaho.

Serena, you are still right. This is what my children were taught in both Utah and California public schools.

This list does seem to be weird "Greatest Hits," but I know that some of this does go on. We debated in our AP American History class very seriously the cause of the Civil War -- because -- like it wasn't obvious.

And lately I read an article about how southern women's groups were instrumental in repressing a great deal of genuine southern history. It was chilling because it reminded me so much of the Mormons suppressing THEIR history. Professors who admired Lincoln would be fired. People who insisted slavery had a role in the Civil War would find their careers cut short. I had the same thought -- so it isn't just the Mormons.

janeeliot Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> This list does seem to be weird "Greatest Hits,"
> but I know that some of this does go on. We
> debated in our AP American History class very
> seriously the cause of the Civil War -- because --
> like it wasn't obvious.
>
> And lately I read an article about how southern
> women's groups were instrumental in repressing a
> great deal of genuine southern history. It was
> chilling because it reminded me so much of the
> Mormons suppressing THEIR history. Professors who
> admired Lincoln would be fired. People who
> insisted slavery had a role in the Civil War would
> find their careers cut short. I had the same
> thought -- so it isn't just the Mormons.


Can you provide a link for the article?

What state where you teaching in? This sounds like the inquisition. How appalling.

I'm trying to track down that article.

Got it. At *Salon,* "The South Still lies about the Civil War" -- published just a few days ago.

http://www.salon.com/2013/03/16/the_south_still_lies_about_the_civil_war/

"As the UDC gained in political clout, its members lobbied legislatures in Texas, Mississippi, North and South Carolina, and Florida to ban the purchase of textbooks that portrayed the South in anything less than heroic terms, or that contradicted any of the lost cause’s basic assertions. Its reach extended not just to public schools but to tenured academia—a little-known chapter of its propaganda effort is detailed by James Cobb in his 2005 book “Away Down South: A History of Southern Identity.” Cobb recounts how in 1911, for instance, University of Florida history professor Enoch Banks wrote an essay for the New York Independent suggesting that slavery was the cause of secession; Banks was forced by the ensuing public outcry to resign. Perhaps Banks should have seen that coming: seven years earlier, William E. Dodd, a history professor at Virginia’s Randolph-Macon College, had complained that to merely suggest the confederacy might not have been a noble enterprise led by lofty-minded statesmen “is to invite not only criticism but enforced resignation.”

Well, there is the curriculum, and then there is what teachers actually teach. ;-)

Rabid conservatives will never control what teachers teach (at least in the way the article suggests) because they don't tend to go into teaching as a line of work. It doesn't pay enough for them. They tend to work in the private sector.

The article is correct, however, that large public school districts such as Texas and California do have an inordinate say over what goes into the nation's textbooks.

Over the years, textbooks have been "influenced" (actually, IMO, censored!) in order to be sold in the biggest textbook market, Texas. This has been widely reported for years.

No, they don't usually baldly state the views reported by the OP. What they do is slant some information and suppress other information. In this way, they make the impression they want.

In anthologies, they leave out the more provocative and controversial stories and opt for bland, inoffensive (to them) material.

Sometimes they use the "false equivalency" tactic. Well, X group did this (something horrendous, like the holocaust), but what Y group did was negative as well. So, it's really a draw, and they get away with it.

It is a technique that works well for them and does not serve the truth at all.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/26/2013 05:46PM by bordergirl.

"Bob Jones University Press claims that “scientists” found “dinosaur skulls” that the book suggests are actually dragons. “The large skull chambers could have contained special chemical-producing glands. When the animal forced the chemicals out of its mouth or nose, these substances may have combined and produced fire and smoke,” the book claims."

Wow, my (very fundie Baptist) grandma had a book about Dinosaurs that made this same argument about dragons! I just realized it was biblically motivated. That's weird, though, because she still had to give me a disclaimer that any time it said "millions of years ago", it was wrong. I assumed it was a real science book. (I was pretty young, forgive me!)

Is Salon.com what passes for journalism and/or credible commentary? And this article...straw man fallacy anyone?

#2 and #11 speak more towards Salon's own ignorance rather than that of the nonextant target of this hack job. Google: "Venona Project" and "most influential books of all time" or "list of best selling books of all time."

Lono Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Is Salon.com what passes for journalism and/or
> credible commentary? And this article...straw man
> fallacy anyone?
>
> #2 and #11 speak more towards Salon's own
> ignorance rather than that of the nonextant target
> of this hack job. Google: "Venona Project" and
> "most influential books of all time" or "list of
> best selling books of all time."

Joe McCarthy was a drunken idiot.

20 years ago I had a friend whose husband was transferred to Atlanta and she told me you don't discuss the civil war (she was from the northeast).

My feelings are that southerners are just a bunch of whiners with their head in the sand and they should f-ing get the hell over it. They fought over slavery not state's rights. Well, they fought over the state's right to own another person.

From the Salon article on the south-

In December 2008, Pitcaithley gave a talk to public school educators in Mississippi, and used as part of his presentation this quote from the Mississippi Declaration of Secession: “Our cause is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery, the greatest material interest of the world.” That sentence is now prominently displayed on the wall of the National Park Service visitors’ center in Corinth, Mississippi, near the site of the battle of Shiloh. Pitcaithley took a picture of the display and used it in his presentation. After his talk, he was chatting with a thirty-four-year-old black school principal who had grown up in Mississippi, attended its public schools, and received his university education there. “I asked him if he’d ever seen that [quote] and he said no—he’d never even heard of that