Not only in Texas

Try searching "Texas school textbooks" on the Internet...    This is really hard to believe. 

The Texas school board, for the entire state, has just made something like 100 amendments to the school curriculum, mostly to history and biology.  They have, for example, removed the word "democrat" entirely from the curriculum (most of the board are republicans), they make sure that  people such as Newt Gingrich (Spelling?) are seen a heroes and anyone with book learnin' are vilified. It goes on and on like that.  They got in "experts" to help them make decisions on the history curriculum, experts such as a minister who's hobby is Texas history. One of the key people that I heard discussing it was a republican who believes in "intelligent design".

The thing is that Texas is one of the biggest textbook users in the US (California uses more but can't afford to buy any for  the next few years), and they actually sit down with the publishers to lay out what they want.... so you can imagine that negotiations go even beyond what the new curriculum will lay out.

Now, this shouldn't affect us, much.  But, we have Harper.  On CBC radio today they interviewed a woman who was born in the US, went to a lot of schools there, and is now a Canadian and somehow involved with education in Ontario.  She pointed out that (as others have) that since Texas uses so many books, the publishers tend to produce for them and use the same books for all of the US (this apparently isn't quite so much of an issue these days with digital publishing techniques).  As she pointed out, the christian right is moving more and more to the right in the US and getting bigger. The effect this has on us is that people who claim to be moderate conservatives (like Harper) can easily move more to the right and still claim to be moderate because they are not like "those crazies down south".  One other thing she pointed out is that school may not be the only, or even the major, influence influence on the youth. The media is also a big influence.... but, as she said, it is just as bad, or worse. But, she said that even as a 10 year old in school in the US, she remembers wondering where they got all the crazy ideas she found in the school textbooks.

Anyway, if you'd like to know more check out these sites, or just do a search..... scary stuff really.