The inmates are running the asylum, as has been the case here in Texas at least since George W. Bush was elected Governor. But that doesn’t mean civilized people have to stand helplessly aside watching crazy become the new norm.

As most people have learned by now, the Texas Board of Education is successfully injecting religious fundamentalist ideology into history textbooks – including such gems as reducing Thomas Jefferson’s role in founding the nation, elevating Confederate President Jefferson Davis’ inaugural address to equal footing with Abraham Lincoln’s, legitimizing the destructive paranoia of Joseph McCarthy’s commie witch hunt, and questioning the separation of church and state as a founding tenet of the Constitution. Such dumbing-down of our school children has nationwide relevance as Texas’ substantial buying power influences the content of books sold to school districts in other states. As Texas resolutely marches back into the Dark Ages, it threatens to drag the rest of the country with it.

Out

In

But those of you who don’t want your kids indoctrinated by new-earth extremists and think your kids should learn history from actual historians can fight back. Here are 3 proposals:

1. Textbook Publishers – Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw-Hill, Pearson, et al. – Stand Firm. You have a reputation to maintain, and it will be undermined if you give in to the extremists. You must absolutely refuse to follow any guidelines that have been drawn up by religious ideology instead of by accredited history experts. If you publish their revisionist drivel under the guise of objective academic discourse, you destroy your own credibility as well as become complicit in the miseducation of the very children you are supposed to be serving. Stand firm, refuse to participate in the charade, and the State of Texas will back down.

Yes, I know there are fundamentalist-leaning publishers out there that would jump at the opportunity to fill the gap and print whatever the Texas Board wants. But this is an entire state we’re talking about, not some local Pentecostal charter school. The State of Texas will not blow off every major mainstream textbook publisher and subject their children to the overt propaganda of some creationist publisher. They’re crazy, but they’re not (quite) that stupid. Call their bluff.

2. Other State Legislatures Should Back Them Up. The legislatures of every other large state – California, New York, Pennsylvania, Florida, Massachusetts, and any others that want to join in – should pass a resolution refusing to purchase for their school systems any textbook corrupted by extremist religious ideology. Stand up for the legitimate publishers, and don’t reward those that cave in to Texas blackmail. And stand up for your children. Do not just stand idly by while Texas dumbs down your kids.

3. The Texas Legislature Must Disavow the TBE Decision. The Texas legislature has already censored previous Board Chairman Don McLeroy over his manipulation of science texts. Now they must go on record and rescind the Board’s extremist, ideologically based revisions of our nation’s history. I realize that there are a lot of crazies in Texas, and they vote. But there is too much at stake here to dally in partisan politics or prostitute for votes. Texas cannot and will not thrive with a Third World mentality. The children of Texas must be taught science, not religion as science, and history, not propaganda – no matter how closely that propaganda may reflect your own conservative views. This is not a liberal versus conservative issue. This is about the proper and ethical way to create an accurate and legitimate history curriculum. You do it through objective research and consultation with professional historians. You do not rewrite history by personal opinion as you may have wished it to have happened. Now one may argue (and has) that every historian has his own biases and opinions that inform his work, and conservatives injecting their opinions are simply providing “balance.” However, professional historians are aware of the dangers of personal bias and are trained to minimize the often subtle intrusion of their own personal opinions. Most are reasonably conscientious and effective at doing so. In stark contrast, the TBE conservatives openly admit that their decisions are based not on historical research but solely on their opinions. And since when have opinions been allowed to pass for history?