Texas: We don't need academics to fact-check our textbooks

[Octafish]

Texas: We don't need academics to fact-check our textbooks

The latest controversy of Texas textbooks involved African slaves being described as 'workers.' Texas education officials rejected a proposal that would require university academics to fact-check the textbooks.

By Story Hinckley
Christian Science Monitor, Staff NOVEMBER 19, 2015

The Texas Board of Education rejected a measure Wednesday that would require university experts to fact-check the state’s textbooks in public schools.

The board rejected the measure 8-7, reaffirming the current fact-checking system that relies on citizen review panels made up of parents, teachers, and other members of the general public.

The measure was likely proposed in response to a complaint last month, when a Houston mother found her child’s newly approved geography textbook referred to African slaves shipped to plantations in the United States between the 1500s and 1800s as “workers.”

Instead of requesting academic consultation, the board voted unanimously to require that review panels be made up of “at least a majority” of people with “sufficient content expertise and experience,” at the discretion of the Texas education commissioner.

SNIP...

Republican board member Thomas Ratliff proposed the initial measure to reduce the national controversy over Texas’ textbooks

CONTINUED...

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2015/1119/Texas-We-don-t-need-academics-to-fact-check-our-textbooks

Remember: A conservative education is a miseducation.

[Gothmog]

1. It is tough living in Texas at times

[Avalux]

2. I'll second that.

I'm just glad I don't have school age children anymore.

[Octafish]

4. Please know, I think the world of Texas.

I've got family in Houston, San Antonio and a few other towns; so, you know, I love Texans.

The school book thing, though, is something else.

[world wide wally]

3. I just wish that Texas was not allowed to export their "stupid"

[Octafish]

5. Good teachers will know how to separate the wheat from the chaff.

The thing is, bad teachers may not know what chaff is.

[Go Vols]

7. +1

[JEB]

6. Institutional racism and corporate propaganda in text books.

What could go wrong?

[Octafish]

8. Not slaves. Millions of workers.

It pays everybody to have a non-union workforce. Consider the work of the great investor Jackson Stephens of Walmart fame:

His story goes from BCCI to AQ Khan to the heart of the military industrial complex, and back to Walmart.

Guess his lawyer?

[JEB]

9. Thanks for the revealing links.

Looks like we've been going down the money grubbing at any cost trail for a long time.