Twittering Textbooks
Good morning, and I do hope you remembered to set your clocks back 1 hour.*
As is often the case in times of rapid momentous change, Twitter has stepped up to the mark in the face of these developments you may already have heard about:
It’s been a brawl for years, this education culture war that seems to take on a particularly vicious turn in the heart of Texas. The latest and most important round, a drastic revision of the social studies curriculum standards to put a conservative spin on history and economics textbooks, was given preliminary approval after a series of heated meetings of the Texas Board of Education that didn’t do much to improve the image of the nation’s second largest state as a sometimes small-minded political and educational backwater.
In a matter of days last week in Austin, the majority of the 15-member board, insisting they were only trying to offset liberal bias in textbooks, questioned Darwin’s theory of evolution and the constitutional principle of separation of church and state; debated hip-hop and genocide in Darfur; deleted Albert Einstein and Thomas Alva Edison from textbooks; emphasized Christian teachings and fundamentalist values; adopted conservative articles of faith like American exceptionalism; promoted right-wing leaders and organizations like Phyllis Schlafly and the National Rifle Association; and refused to give adequate attention to Hispanic and African American contributions to U.S. and Texas history.
Mining a rich vein of comedy that stretches back beyond the work of humorist Gerard Hoffnung, whose famous “Advice to Tourists” visiting London included
All London brothels display a blue lamp.
It’s customary to shake hands with everyone on entering a Tube carriage.
and
Do try the famous echo in the Reading Room of the British Museum.
Twitter now offers the trending hashtag texastextbookfact.
Random samples of the newly uncensored knowledge on offer at time of posting include:
The Vagina Monologues was a show about patriotism performed by Ronald Reagan and Señor Wences.
Recycling is when you make clothes out of bed sheets.
After agreeing to help build America, Africans were flown here first class.
If God wanted Mexicans in America He wouldn’t have invented the Rio Grande.
The best way to teach killing is wrong is to sentence people to death.
Anything can be deep-fried. Even air.
God bless Barry Goldwater 4 keeping Arizona off of this blasphemous socialist time scheme.
Maybe you can add your own.
* Jk. Or indeed, 300 years if you’re on the Texas Board of Education.
Posted by YAFB on 03/14/10 at 05:56 AM • Permalink
Categories: Politics • Nutters • Polisnark • Relijun • Skull Hampers •
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