Texas Removes Thomas Jefferson from Textbooks

This comes down to a few narrow minded individuals that want there picture of the past to be put forward. The only trouble with doing this is you are destined to repeat the same mistakes if you do not learn from them. The born again christian crowd needs to see that if they silence rather than debate they lose any footing they have. It may work in the short term but the long term is not looking good for them with this attitude.

reply to post by cenpuppie


This and many of the other things about budget cuts are the reason I am a FORMER educator. Case and point: We had a principal that recently received her administrators license from an on-line academy. She had been an elementary school teacher, no administrative experience, but the idiots in this LEA(local education agency) decided she was worth $80,000/year, when cutting her salary in half would have allowed for 1 more full time instuctor and one part time assistant (crucial for the Self-Contained class). After paying an inflated salary to her and other newbie principals the LEA lost 8 full-time teaching positions and 12 part-time positions.

If you know anything about the campaign of the NC govenor, then you know she promised she would protect the schools from loss. Within her first year she raided the "Education Lottery" to balance the budget(a yearly balanced budget is in NC's constitution), which is illegal. Then she appointed a her lackey as an over-site to a board elected State Superintendant, so her budget cuts would be followed. All of which smacks of horrible leadership and terrible decision making.

By the way, the teachers were hurt, but I think everyone knows the students were the ones who were punished.

reply to post by Smell The Roses


reptilians at work

xeeatwelve.net

This is so similar to George Orwell's "1984" in regards to "rewriting history to better fit with established ideals" It's scary...

(All the more reason to home school children impo)

reply to post by Dookie Master

If you know anything about the campaign of the NC govenor, then you know she promised she would protect the schools from loss. Within her first year she raided the "Education Lottery" to balance the budget(a yearly balanced budget is in NC's constitution), which is illegal. Then she appointed a her lackey as an over-site to a board elected State Superintendant, so her budget cuts would be followed. All of which smacks of horrible leadership and terrible decision making.

I remember that. If i'm not mistaken she was also backed by the teachers union as well. The education lottery was passed in a shady way anyways, i noticed nc is dipping into that money for everything EXCEPT paying for education. Even road way construction, terrible.

Of course they don't want to teach about the founding fathers in Texas or anywhere else. I would think that Texas is just the beginning.

If they were to teach about the founding fathers, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, then people might discover things about guaranteed rights and freedoms that they never knew.

It's similar in school in Britain. When I was in school, nothing at all was taught about the Magna Carta, other than the fact that it was signed by King John in 1215. Nothing about the content or why it was signed.

When you start looking into these documents, you really discover your rights, but you also discover your responsibilities, and most people want to ignore these.

If the population was to be educated about their history, they would REALLY start questioning what was going on today.

[edit on 15-3-2010 by babybunnies]

Originally posted by guillotinegleam
I searched and could not find any post relating to this, however if i missed one, MODS please feel free to remove this.

(March 12) -- Widely regarded as one of the most important of all the founding fathers of the United States, Thomas Jefferson received a demotion of sorts Friday thanks to the Texas Board of Education. The board voted to enact new teaching standards for history and social studies that will alter which material gets included in school textbooks. It decided to drop Jefferson from a world history section devoted to great political thinkers.

Texas has decided that Thomas Jefferson, one of the most important men in American history, is no longer considered a great political thinker. Gotta love Texas, eh?

Source

A "demotion" is not the same as "deleting".

If Jefferson previously had more space than Washington, the Adams brothers, Hamilton, and Madison, then demoting him was probably appropriate. Yes, Jefferson draft the Declaration of Independence, but he did not have as much influence over the Constitution. Sometimes Jefferson is given the amount of preeminence that one would expect if he would have drafted both documents and had been elected the first President, which did not happen.

How much was he demoted? Did he go from 75% coverage to 30% coverage? If so, that would probably be appropriate. If he were removed, I would object, too.

Lack of details in the original can be lying by omission.

Originally posted by babybunnies
Of course they don't want to teach about the founding fathers in Texas or anywhere else. I would think that Texas is just the beginning.

If they were to teach about the founding fathers, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, then people might discover things about guaranteed rights and freedoms that they never knew.

It's similar in school in Britain. When I was in school, nothing at all was taught about the Magna Carta, other than the fact that it was signed by King John in 1215. Nothing about the content or why it was signed.

When you start looking into these documents, you really discover your rights, but you also discover your responsibilities, and most people want to ignore these.

If the population was to be educated about their history, they would REALLY start questioning what was going on today.

[edit on 15-3-2010 by babybunnies]

Another post of ignorance. They are teaching about all the founding fathers. This Thomas Jefferson thing was just removing him from one lesson, not from the curriculum all together.

Also, while you are lecturing people about the rights and freedoms we don't know about, why don't you tell us? What are we guaranteed in the constitution that we don't know?

reply to post by johnny2127


Yeah, johnny, I should have read more into this story before going all Jefferson on the thread. But boy did it get people going.

Gotta love that.

History is great, it shows us where we were and where we can be.

Thanks for keeping us grounded.

Since I was little, I always heard that any laws passed and things going on in California, it went all over this nation....could it be that Texas is trying to get bigger as usual and brain-wash their baby confederates? As well as the rest of the nation.... (Yeah, I got some relatives there. Don't tell nobody....it wasn't the side of family that was a Texas Martial.)