Conservative Correctness Agenda in Public Schools

by Red Wolf

United States: The loony fundies are rampant in Texas again. This time they're throwing a hissy fit over textbooks and, surprisingly enough, winning the fight to force their narrow minded, bigotted beliefs on the rest of the country.

Christian Conservatives on the Texas state Board of Education are rewriting textbooks to bring them in line with their neo-conservative social agenda. These are the same kinds of people who have been insisting for years that the liberals are driving their agenda in schools... but that seems to have been a case of Freudian Projection all along.

Where a textbook says something that doesn't agree with their warped take on reality, these people simply change the textbook. Here are some examples of changes proposed and changes in the past:

• References to marriage must be defined as a lifelong union between a husband and a wife (not between two people, because that would imply that gays and lesbians married in Massachusetts, Canada or many parts of Western Europe actually exist).
• References to partners become husbands and wives.
• Adolescence brings about an attraction to the opposite sex" not attraction to others (even though adolescence plainly does bring about attraction to others of the same sex for gay youths, it isn't part of the universe that these conservatives accept, therefore it must be written out of the book.)
• The last ice age took place in the distant past not millions of years ago (because the earth is only 6000 years old).

Unfortunately, because textbook publishers don't want to create separate editions of their books for the red states versus the blue states, large red states like Texas often end up getting their way, and religious and conservative convictions become hardwired into textbooks to promote a Conservative Correctness agenda in our public schools.

Revision Marches to Social Agenda - Los Angeles Times, 22th November 2004 (via Morons.org).