Wow, I can’t believe you just take the liberal talking points and spew them out like factual information. They are actually going back to the original way history was taught in this nation. They are not “revising’ history, they are correcting the liberal twist to the Christian-Judeo principles this nation was founded upon.

Get real. Racism is what you are spewing.

The preposterous decision made by the Texas Board of Education could, in part, be due to statements like:

“If people are too stupid or privileged to see that every single month, day, hour of the year is white male history time (how many Chicano leaders are school kids forced to memorize, ala the Presidents of the United States?), then I really don’t feel too much of a need to explain it.”

If you have not noticed(which you surely do by the expected response from a comment like this), Humans, regardless of whatever they are, do not respond to this sort of condescension. Change will not occur unless reason, as opposed to stagnated ideology, is used.

@ Bryan- do yo really think reason alone will make change, or even change the minds of folks who are too angry to listen? It’s an honest question, I’m not being sarcastic. Let’s ask Obama if “reason” helped him pass a public option. I always thought it took action and organizing. Go figure.

Jake- I won’t pretend I know who you are, and in return don’t pretend you know who I am, what freedoms I have, or what this wonderful country has given me. I am glad to see you have access to all that you need, you are among very few. But since that’s not the case for me no matter how hard I work, you will have to get used to my “banging” cuz it will only get louder. Many of us have given much more through our labor than what we have been given in return. We have a right to defend the history of the people who fought and died for us to have what we do have. No matter how it makes you feel. Since I don’t know you, I won’t tell you what you “need to do” as you told me. All I can say is you are very very very lucky that you posted this online and did not say it to my face.

I was wondering about that Noemi. Since Texas is such a big state, peeps who use the same publishers will get the same books.

Reason ain’t got shit to do with it bryan. When Latinos and all POC really raise issues about the very lives of our children we are told to watch our tone which is just coded language for, we will not acknowledge our own prejudices, especially when coming from the mouths of those in power.

And here’s the real scary thing about the state of education in general, most public schools have stopped teaching critical thinking skills in favor of test taking skills since No Child Left behind. I see students knowing less and less basic grammar and math and forget social studies and science. This is another part of that on a scarier level.

Not only critical thinking skills but the fundamentals and framework of this country’s founding should be taught accurately, and that’s what the Texas school board is trying to do. Some of you who have been accustomed to learning the “revisionism” of history don’t understand it and that’s why you’re bashing. We tend to destroy what we don’t know.

What do you think “progressives” are? (Another name for liberals), who want to change the fundamental structure of this country “little by little”.

Great blog and responses.

Quick note to Sabrina:

Sabrina, I just read your “in the face comment.” I encourage you to live above the victim mentality and the “poor me” syndrome. It wont’ do you or anyone else any good to live in anger and take it out on this country. Not all “white” people have done evil to others. Let’s not cluster only white people in the racism pool, every race is guilty of racism. As Latinos let’s not get in the habit of pointing the finger at others and not take a second look at ourselves; there are enough problems among our own kind that we need to rally around and solve first. Let’s start there, okay!

@jake–I would strongly *strongly* suggest reading Mark A. Noll’s “American Evangelical Christianity: An Introduction. It is written by a Christian and offers a very compelling argument about why the current historical trends among Christians to insist that the US was X “in the beginning” are actually deleterious to Christianity and Christians in the US. It’s a Very Good Book–and suggests that there are reasons that groups like the Texas Board of Education (etc) are attempting to write the US in a certain way (i.e. Christian based, no separation of Church and State, etc). It also questions why, if this is a Christian nation, there only seems to be a *certain* Christianity that is allowed to be understood as Christian–in other words, why isn’t the Christianity of slaves understood as our Christian based roots? Or the CHristianity of MLK? Why, for example, do we have to highlight the “Violence” of the black panthers–rather than the solid Christian roots that MLK came from?

It also questions whether Christians really *want* Christianity dictated to them from the nation/state–shouldn’t it be coming from GOd?

Anyway–I *know* that Sabina was NOT “feeling sorry for herself.” And I think it would be good to stay away from those sorts of arguments. As she stated, she does not know you and is staying away from making definitive statements about you–so lets give her the same credit.

Maybe instead of arguing over who is feeling what emotionally–we could discuss like–what are those problems that we need to rally around and solve? And if I, a radical, and you, a conservative, can’t agree on what history to teach our kids, can we agree on other things like teaching our kids critical thinking skills? Can we teach them that there is no one singular interpretation of history–and it’s their jobs as critical thinkers, to expose multiple views of history and support their opinions on those views with evidence and compelling arguments?

Jake,

I don’t classify myself as a progressive or liberal even but rather radical and that is the guiding background of this site, by the way.

Then don’t read those blogs anymore Bryan. Respect the fact that they are run by writers, media makers and activists who have been doing this for years, not as part of a career but because our lives depend on it.

It’s still entertaining and thought provoking. Thus, I continue.

@noemi-thank you SO much for the link–that is beyond fuckedupdisturbing. You can’t tell me that the School Board wasn’t perfectly aware of that–and it makes me wonder who is in each of the board member’s back pockets, if you catch my drift. As somebody who works in public education, I know that public education has been the underside of the right wing movement for decades–simple things like “learning how to write” have faced tremendously state legistlature show downs in my state–and of course, at universities, the English dept.s are stereotyped as “liberal”–and have seen the most invasive and intensive of all funding cuts….I really really need to know who all the board members are connected to. I wish rachel maddow would get on this, she’s really good at finding where the money starts…

YES! I like the idea of teaching kids critical thinking skills, they might come up with even better ideas than we do. I’m amazed each time I talk to my high school aged cousins. That way when a teacher tells them something they won’t have to just buy it, or even worse ditch school altogether becasue it has no connection to their reality.
@Jake- I didn’t mention race or anyone’s whiteness in my post, so not sure if you really read it. Maybe you’re confusing me for another Latina. Why does one even bother.. Oh, and please JAKE, I spelled your name right, at least return that favor if you can’t talk to me like a real person. It’s S-A-B-I-N-A as in Maria Sabina, a namesake I could never live up to.

Re: ” I’m one of those fundatmental Christians who understand the importance of reflecting and not “minimizing” or “forgetting” about our founders, even though they were white, Christian males, unlike me (the white part of course).”

The Founding Fathers were not Christian. They were Deists. Have you ever read “The Age of Reason” by Thomas Paine? He thought the whole story of the resurrection was a scam.

Quotes from Thomas Paine:

“I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.”

And notice how he uses parallel sentence contruction to demonstrate an equivalence betwen all the faiths. Chritianity is no better or worse than any other faith.

This is what he says about the resurrection of Jesus:

“The story, so far as it relates to the supernatural part, has every mark of fraud and imposition stamped upon it.”

Here is what he says about revelation:

“Revelation, when applied to religion, means something communicated immediately from God to man. No one will deny or dispute that power of the Almighty to make such a communication if he pleases. But admitting, for the sake of a case, that something has been revealed to a certain person, and not revealed to any other person, it is revelation to that person only. When he tells it to a second person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth, and so on, it ceases to be a revelation to all those persons. It is revelation to the first person only and HEARSAY to every other; and consequently, they are not obliged to believe it.”

You can believe whayever you want, but don’t say that the Founding Fathers were Christians who wanted America to be a Christian theocracy because it’s a lie.

Why have liberals allowed the right ring wackos to co-opt the Founding Fathers? They give their groups names like “Tea Party,” and “Minutemen, ” when in reality they have more in common with the Confederates.

Bubbles,

You have hit the nail on the head when it comes to linking the Tea Party peeps to confederates, however it would even be more accurate to link them to disgruntled confederates during reconstruction, who tried their hardest to make sure that slavery and segregation continue. That’s why in my video con Cuentame, I say that the Tea Party peeps aren’t representing a new movement, just taking advantage of demographic shifts

I bet I could do some connecting of the dots…

That sounds really great.

UPDATE:

currently conducting research on this: 8 out of the 15 members of the Tex. State Board have never taught a class in their life.

Hey Macha,
Don’t know if you’ll read this, but I checked out the book you mentioned from the library. I’m intrigued by how much trouble I’m having getting into it. I’m pretty sure the source of that trouble is how strongly I disagree with a lot of the ideas that the author describes as shared among evangelical Christians.

(The idea that there’s no “wrong” information in the Bible, for example.)

I mean, not only do I not identify w/ believing several of these ideas, but I was raised by people who actively talked about why they thought they were incorrect.

What’s funny is that I agree w/ some other ideas a certain sub-set hold strongly. (“Strongly agree that defense spending should be cut,” for example.)

But the ones they all pretty much share…not much in there that I’ve seen yet that I strongly, strongly agree w/. I think I’ve gotten so used to reading books & blogs nowadays where I agree w/ the stuff they have in common w/ similar books/blogs–or that have writing on a topic I was JUST wanting to hear some affirming opinion about–that this is really a challenge for me.