10 comments
January 11th, 2010 at 3:03pm
Garvin says:
Get rid of the evangelicals if you want your children to receive an unbiased education. Bible study is fine, just not in our Public Schools.
August 29th, 2009 at 7:42am
Rogo says:
This is just sad. Please stop electing evangelicals to these types of positions. That has to be the only motivation. I was considering traveling to Texas for the first time to visit and explore, now I feel that I don’t want to spend any of my money there. Between the current hypocritical and previous governor, this situation, and arrogant blowhard Jerry Jones, why would I want to contribute? Send us the music, the rest can seceed.
July 15th, 2009 at 5:07pm
Rachel says:
Texas Freedom Network is hosting a nonpartisan Candidate Training workshop for all those interested in running for a seat on the State Board of Education in 2010. The event is being held on Wednesday, July 22 in Austin. More details are available at tfn.org.
July 10th, 2009 at 7:56pm
Hanan Fares says:
I am a Montessori teacher in a charter school. I have been teaching for 18 years and I must say I am so disappointed in the "system".
I would truly appreciate advise and support on running for one of the Democratic spots on the Board of Education.
I live in Fort Worth. Thanks,
Hanan Fares
(817)946-3247
October 20th, 2008 at 7:49am
John Keohane says:
You forgot the 21st question for your quiz: With four-year terms on the State Board of Education, in which of these Texas cities did Democrats fail to pay the $300 filing fee, or get the requisite signatures, to file, and default the seats to right-wing Republicans?
1. Austin (seats 5 & 10)
2. Dallas (seat 12)
3. Houston (seats 6, 8, & 10)
4. San Antonio (seat 5)
5. All of the Above
Answer? You got it! Number 5, "All of the Above". In 2006, here in Austin, where one district extends toward Houston, and the other into San Antonio, right-wing Republicans won their primaries, then whipped Libertarians in the general election, while a right-wing Republican went free of any Democrats running in the district including north Dallas, Richardson, etc. This year, right-wing Republicans from Harris and Montgomery counties, have 4 more years, with no Democratic party opposition.
Why is the Democratic party less than a paper tiger when it comes to the State Board of Education?
--John Keohane
keohane@prodigy.net Austin, Texas
October 6th, 2008 at 12:06pm
david newman says:
The Texas State Board of Education has this year mandated that public schools across the state offer “Bible” courses. Other states, especially in the south, are following suit. Such courses, if designed intelligently, are clearly constitutional. Still, I think it’s critically important that Americans think through, and talk about, some of the potential problems that could arise if public school students are presented with Judaism and Christianity as singular objects of study. The people who have the power to make Bible courses the law of the land understand very well that they are not talking about comparative religion, or the Bible as literature, or even a "Sources of Western Culture" seminar.
No: they want, and will have, a course that focuses exclusively on the “Hebrew” and Christian Bible; to them, the Bible is like no other topic (students get full credit only when they take the part of the course that “completes” the Old Testament.) Because the Bible is presumed to speak infallibly when it speaks about itself and its God, the course exists in some graced space above and beyond the need for any historical or epistemological contextualization. The study of history or of literature usually does not begin with an axiom governing the limits if interpretation; such an axiom demands a leap of faith. Those who want all students to have a Bible course within reach really want all students to have a leap of faith in mind. At the very least, we ought to talk about the designs of Bible course advocates. The conversation needs to happen now.
I have the deepest respect for those who display true piety in their daily lives; it is they who show (not tell) their children how to live kind and thoughtful lives. But I've been disturbed by what seems a mad rush to insist upon Bible courses in all public schools. Why are such courses needed? Churches and synagogues exist in large part to provide Bible-based education tailored to the particular beliefs of families who join them. Anyone who supports “Bible” courses is likely to have had access to institutions that freely and fully nurture the beliefs that the courses are supposed to inculcate. How, then, is a Bible course in a public school not a superfluity? People who desire more Bible-study for their own children have had that desire bred and nurtured in precisely the place where it can best be fulfilled: their own religious institutions.
But perhaps we need to ask for whom such courses really are intended. The folks who call for such courses, and the politicians who hearken the call, have presumably already arranged for appropriate religious education for their own children. Such courses, then, must be designed to reach out to people who have not sought them. And why should people who have not sought a particular religious schooling be subjected to it? Is it because some of us believe that all of us should share a particular set of core values -- and that only a particular Bible can teach such values? Be honest; who needs the course? Is it the Muslims on the next block, whose salvation might be in jeopardy? Is it promiscuous teens who, although already educated in faith-based abstinence only programs, still won't quiet the rush of desire -- and so will only do so if they are exposed to even more faith-based education (and make no mistake: to study the Christian Bible, absent the context of truly different points of view, is to conduct faith-based education.)
Why do our communities need to know one group's interpretation of the origin, purpose, and destiny of human life? If it's because America is primarily a Christian country, then the course is, as I said, superfluous. If it's because America is not as Christian as some would like to see it become, then the course does serve an evangelical purpose. It comes to this: we have two choices. Either we must accept the notion that no separation of church and state was ever written into the Bill of Rights (a notion openly endorsed by one of the major producers of public school Bible curricula,) or we are perfectly comfortable violating the Constitution...when it suits.
The most damning element of this new urge to teach the Bible by itself is that we teach our students a lie about the very heart of our history and our literature, when we excise the conflict-saturated historical and literary contexts in which discussions of the Bible have always emerged in our culture. We are not now, and we have never been, of a piece when it comes precisely to the question of how the Bible should be woven into our nation's larger story of origin.
No subject arouses more passion than religion; few books are as shrouded in controversy as the Bible. Course guidelines that willfully ignore these truths about scripture create administrative chaos and invite an unending apocalypse of lawsuits, raw and festering expressions of bigotry, classrooms used openly as platforms for preachers -- all because some people cannot resist using public spaces, like State Boards of Education, as platforms from which they insist on saving others from the peculiar evil of not agreeing on what constitutes salvation.
October 5th, 2008 at 8:23pm
Amy, Pearland TX says:
I cannot even begin to thank you enough for publishing this article. I am an educator whose held different positions as well as a mom to two little ones. I have sat for years listening to parents and educators complain about the system without not really knowing what was going on with the State Board, how it's organized, etc. I have been assiting in campaigning for a fellow educator of 37 years for a position on the Board and I have to say that until your article was published, I had very few people take an interest that there was even an election. I now use your article as a 'foot in the door' and I have to say that people are now reacting much like they are in the presidential race. Thank you for giving us a voice and helping us put into words in a way that everyone can understand!! We have to shape our future in a manner that we can all be proud of and I have to say, we're not doing that great of a job.....speak up Texans!!
October 4th, 2008 at 8:12am
Jennifer says:
Thank you for publishing this article and reminding the public that the SBOE are ELECTED officials. It's heart-sickening to hear such ignorance among those who are supposed to help uphold high educational standards in our state. Such ignorance makes Texans appear ignorant--and even more importantly--their decisions affect the futures of not only the children of the state of Texas, but those other states who try to align their curriculum (and textbooks) with ours because of Texas' "high" standards of education. How sad and frightening! When we head to the polls, instead of voting straight ticket, we need to look past those party lines to see which SBOE members need to be replaced with board members who are intelligent decision-makers that respect the other members of the education community and don't use their positions as platforms for their personal beliefs.
October 1st, 2008 at 3:21pm
Tyler Brooks says:
Ouch. Texas BOE just got owned.
October 1st, 2008 at 11:37am
Dave Bowman says:
I have 4 years experience as a classroom teacher, 37 years experience as a parent, and 26 years experience in educational publishing at both the college level and the K-12 level. I have been a publisher and avid salesman of some of a wide variety of curricula. I have contended with the Texas BOE and any other adoption processes. Your article seems to me to highlight the continuing potitical and economic disinterest of parents and business leaders in developing children as competent individuals, able to think and work in an increasing complex social, political and economic world. I belive this abrogation of responsibility is the most fundamental threat to our future in any context, by any definition.
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