Separation of Church and State

I have written before about the sway Texas holds in the development of public School curriculum: Why Does Texas get to Pick Textbooks and the controversy continues. Before I go on I have to disclose that I lived in Dallas for 3 years while in grad school. I attended the University of Dallas, voted the most conservative college in America, but that's a different story. Every night the local new would highlight some row at the school board. Black, White, Hispanic... All fighting and even throwing furniture. It was quite bizarre.

But I digress, according to the AP this morning, A far-right faction of the Texas State Board of Education succeeded Friday in injecting conservative ideals into social studies, history and economics lessons that will be taught to millions of students for the next decade.

Teachers in Texas will be required to cover the Judeo-Christian influences of the nation's Founding Fathers, but not highlight the philosophical rationale for the separation of church and state. Curriculum standards also will describe the U.S. government as a "constitutional republic," rather than "democratic..." The Judeo part of Judeo Christian cracks me up because the colonist really hated Jews. Many colonies were set up to promote one protestant religion excluding Catholics, Jews, and differing sects of protestantism. Quakers were particularly singled out and were even executed for their beliefs in Pre-Revolutionary America.

Republicans easily pushed through amendments heralding "American exceptionalism" and the U.S. free enterprise system, suggesting it thrives best absent excessive government intervention. Also Board members argued about the classification of historic periods (still B.C. and A.D., rather than the more academically adopted B.C.E. and C.E. If you have not seen C.E. it is a numbering system that splits between the Common Era and Before the Common Era and is widely used everywhere except Texas)

To me this is the most telling statement: Democrats did score a victory by deleting a portion of an amendment by Republican Don McLeroy suggesting that the civil rights movement led to "unrealistic expectations for equal outcomes." Wow! McLeroy was the character who wanted classic myths and fables rather than newly written stories whose messages they didn’t agree with... He has been in charge of changing textbooks for years and still wants apocryphal stories such as Washington and the cherry tree to be taught versus real history. Here is Mcleroy's rational for evaluating history books:

“… we are a Christian nation founded on Christian principles. The way I evaluate history textbooks is first I see how they cover Christianity and Israel. Then I see how they treat Ronald Reagan — he needs to get credit for saving the world from communism and for the good economy over the last 20 years because he lowered taxes.”

Hopefully McLeroy's tenure on the Texas Board will be ending soon. He was removed as the chairman by the Texas Senate because of his religious views; he believes in a literal reading of Genesis... He faces a tough re-election. He is in a neck and neck race for the GOP primary. There is not a Democratic challenger so if he squeaks out a primary victory he will still hold sway over the next generation of textbooks. Maybe it's time to pray.