Alternatives To Current Texas SBOE Members

As you probably already know, the fundamentalist right-wingers on the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) has been busy re-writing American history. Last friday, they took their final vote and approved the propaganda they injected into the textbooks through their curriculum adjustments. This is not just a problem for Texas though, as these changes could well show up in textbooks across the nation. That's because Texas buys such a large number of textbooks that the books are written to comply with Texas curriculum standards, and then sold nationwide.

But all hope for real history being taught in Texas schools is not lost. There are a couple of candidates running for election to the SBOE in the November elections, and if they are elected, they will combine with the Democrats and Moderate Republicans on the Board to make a majority. That means the propaganda injected into the history curriculum can than be overturned, and sanity can be returned to the Board.

These two candidates are Rebecca Bell-Metereau (pictured) in Board District 5, and Judy Jennings in Board District 10. Both of these excellent candidates have a diary on the website Daily Kos. I thought you might like to know what these two candidates have to say, so I have reprinted their latest diary entries below for your edification. Here is what they have to say:

Rebecca Bell-Metereau

The May meeting provided a good blueprint of what is wrong with the current board. At the outset of the public testimony, Chair Gail Lowe stated that with 205 signed up to speak, it would take ten hours for all the participants to deliver their three-minute statements. Ha! By mid-afternoon, they had only made their way through about seventeen speakers. Instead of simply sticking to their stated rules and allowing all of those signed up a chance to say their piece, board members indulged themselves in the opportunity to speak and air their own views at every possible occasion. Meanwhile, people who had driven 800 miles from El Paso and other far corners of the state fretted over whether they would have a chance to speak at all.

The board demonstrated the same lack of discipline in their own editing process. At times people were mired in minutiae of language or "grammarical changes," as Terri Leo put it. On other occasions extremist board members soared with their intoxication over big ideas. Terri Leo struggled to keep John Calvin in the Enlightenment, completely failing to understand what the Enlightenment was all about.

After hearing again and again that they should delay their final vote and send the mangled curriculum back to the review committees to clean up the mess board members had made, the board trudged through hundreds of tiny revisions, with no method and no plan. Instead of grouping revisions into some reasonable categories, say, and voting on "grammarical" and non-substantive changes in large blocks, the extremists on the board worry over every item with mind-numbing thoroughness. They are not thorough, however, in checking what really counts, such as plagiarized passages in their own suggested revisions.

This board has exactly the same problems I recognize in my students: poor critical thinking, research, language, and problem-solving skills. They mix up big concepts with specific examples. Their method for making the curriculum "fair" is simply to throw in a name from "their side" every place they recognize someone from the "other side," thus muddying such concepts as the Enlightenment or reform and muckracker movements by trying to add in totally unrelated figures who represented completely different schools of thought.

One story from the day seems to sum up both the current board’s attitude and its incompetence: it appears that this board left a plagiarized section in the current version, but they did change the UCLA website’s phrase (http://gseis.ucla.edu/courses/ed253a/american-exceptionalism.htm) from "democratic" republic to "constitutional" republic.

May the board learn what plagiarism is and stop doing it.

So what are we going to do? Stop dithering, like the current SBOE, and put our time, donations, and energy into electing good people in November.

Please visit www.VoteRebecca.com and sign up for e-mail about the campaign. And pleasecontributenow to my campaign so that we can ensure that the extremists are not able to write the final chapter.

Judy Jennings

The SBOE voted Friday to adopt Texas social studies standards that include their extremist agenda. The next two years provide additional opportunities for the State Board to make decisions based on ideology or on sound educational practice: science textbooks are scheduled for approval and adoption in 2011, social studies textbooks in 2012, and Career and Technology standards as well as Technology Applications standards will be approved in 2011. With your support, I plan to win the election this November to add one more voice of reason to the Board on behalf of the 4.7 million school children of Texas.

When I am elected to the Board I will insist on accuracy in the science and social studies textbooks that will be approved. I will also work to rescind the standards approved Friday. That will delay the implementation of the new curriculum and textbooks for a year while we go back to the standards originally proposed by the curriculum teams, and hold new public hearings. The current standards have been in place for ten years, and while I hate to delay one more year, I cannot let the students of Texas be subjected to personal ideology in the place of real history. When Career and Technology and Technology Applications standards are written and approved in 2011, I will ensure that they are up to date and accurate, providing our students with the technology skills of the 21st, not the 19th, century.

My election depends on the support of thousands of people like you. My opponent spent over two hundred thousand dollars of her own money to win her primary election and showed her willingness to pander to the far right. We have the momentum, we have the advantage, the district is winnable, and the voters want change, but we have to keep building. Please make a contribution today. Your support will enable me to communicate with the more than 400,000 voters who are expected to cast a vote in the SBOE District 10 election this year. Thank you for your support!