Texas Schools Caught Manipulating Quotes to Push Christianity on Students

[Judi Lynn]

Texas Schools Caught Manipulating Quotes to Push Christianity on Students

Carey Wedler
August 5, 2015

(ANTIMEDIA) A public school district in Eastern Texas is under fire amid allegations it made up quotes by famous figures in order to promote Christianity to its students, posting them to the walls of the four schools in the district. The Mount Vernon Independent School District is accused of misattributing quotes to George Washington and Ronald Reagan among others and faces demands to remove the false statements from its walls.


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“It is impossible to govern a nation without God and the Bible,” George Washington said—according to the district. “Within the covers of the Bible are the answers for all the problems men face,” it claims Ronald Reagan opined.

The Freedom from Religion Foundation, a non-profit organization, says these quotes are false. It recently wrote a letter to the school district asking that they correct their misattributions. Staff Attorney Sam Grover called the alleged Reagan quote “dubious, and, incidentally, intellectually lazy since that is not a direct quotation.” In a letter to the district, he alleged it, along with other quotes, had been taken out of context to promote Christianity specifically.

“When MIVSD manipulates historical quotes by removing context and isolating lines that promote Christianity and religion in general, it violates the right of conscience of its students,” Grover wrote. He accused the school of misquoting (or using quotes misattributed to) John Adams and Thomas Jefferson (in addition to George Washington and Ronald Reagan).

More:
http://theantimedia.org/texas-schools-caught-manipulating-quotes-to-push-christianity-on-students/

[msongs]

1. terrorists run the schools there nt

[Igel]

2. Well, that first sentence is disengenuous.

"A public school district in Eastern Texas is under fire amid allegations it made up quotes by famous figures in order to promote Christianity to its students, posting them to the walls of the four schools in the district. The Mount Vernon Independent School District is accused of misattributing quotes to George Washington and Ronald Reagan among others and faces demands to remove the false statements from its walls."

I'd suspect that they Googled and found the out-of-context or non-quotes attributed to Reagan, Washington, etc., and just trusted the source.

Then again, I rather like Hanlon's razor: Don't attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.

It's far easier to talk to somebody and get a correction just showing them where they made a stupid mistake than it is to accuse them of intentional malice and for something akin to repentance. Even if it were malice--and, again, that's unclear--it's often better to go for winning the battle than waging total war and insisting on humiliation and a pound of flesh. Not only is it easier, but often enough it really is just stupidity and that whole attribution of malice thing, well, that is itself malice and by rights we should require humiliation and a pound of flesh from ourselves, or acknowledge that our cologne is Eau d'hypocrite.

[Ford_Prefect]

3. A Riot is an Ugly thing...

There's a Balrog in the woodpile!

Who's sorry now, eh?

It is long since past time to play nice with these religious zealots. Why does the MSM treat them as harmless and misguided? Just as they do the dangerous ravings of the Lunatic right wing would be presidents.
If they murder truth and free thinking what won't they do next?
Build detention camps for the non-believers?
Starve those who don't measure up to their version of Christian Purity?
Oops, too late!

I'm reasonably sure they did it under guidance from outside. It would not be the first time the Koch and their ilk bent the truth to suit their ends. If fox news can spew complete and felonious falsehoods without consequence so can these bigots. I have seen this before when Darwin was falsely characterized as the dialectical source of Hitler's cultural purity program by a speaker from Liberty University.

They are every bit as disingenuous about it as Jindal and the others who knowingly cut off funds to Planned Parenthood; or the GOP Governors and legislators who refuse to expand medicaid with the full knowledge they are denying medical aid to hundreds of thousands of democratic voters in the hope that they will die off. Genocide is the correct name for this policy.

The people who put those quotes up on the walls have only one view of the world in mind, and they expect the rest of us to submit to it. Their actions are not harmless nor is their intent. You may turn this foolish act back on them by ridicule. But how will you un-write the textbooks and curriculum they put in place to support the messages on those walls? They Know what they mean to do by these acts. Why do you underestimate them so?

[Angry Dragon]

4. "Meet my son, Satan." said god