Keep Your Hands Off My History (and Science Too)

**WARNING** This post is not about fun stuff like misfits, running or Lumpy. I have always wanted this blog to stay a little bit on the lighter side, but after hearing a story on the radio this morning (and since this IS my blog), I feel the need to release some anger and frustration. I'm not incredibly proficient at staying on topic, so I apologize now if this post offends or bores anyone. Also, it's long.

It all started this morning while I was listening to NPR. I heard this story in our local news section of Morning Edition (here's a WSJ article on the same topic). I know that I'm becoming more and more like my father with every passing minute. Like him, I get enraged at hearing the news. He usually gets all worked up while watching Fox (boo-hiss), and while we certainly do not agree on every issue - I think that he'd agree with me on this one ,especially considering how he values education and was a history major.

The basic gist of this story revolves around the Texas Board of Education and the appointed reviewers of the history curriculum taught in Texas schools. From the WSJ article:

Three reviewers, appointed by social conservatives (on the board), have recommended revamping the K-12 curriculum to emphasize the roles of the Bible, the Christian faith and the civic virtue of religion in the study of American history. Two of them want to remove or de-emphasize references to several historical figures who have become liberal icons, such as César Chávez and Thurgood Marshall.

Oh by all means, let's remove the first African-American supreme court justice and a Mexican-American civil rights leader from history. Does this mean we're not going to discuss Brown v. Board of Education??! This makes me so proud to be a Texan. I can't wait for Lumpy to become an uneducated bigot who thinks the only important people in American history are white and "Christian". (I put Christian in quotes because I find most people, including those in this article, who claim to be Christian are quite the opposite of the loving, forgiving and tolerate person who they pretend to follow, Christ.)

One of the three reviewers appointed by the conservatives (there were also three reviewers appointed by liberal or moderate members of the board) is Rev. Peter Marshall. Rev. Marshal is . . how do I say this nicely? The man is a dick hole who preaches in his sermons that Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment for our nation's sexual immorality. Wrong-O Sir! Hurricane Katrina was the result of a natural occurring phenomenon that happens when warm tropical ocean waters quickly warm the air, but as you no doubt have dismissed all the evidence of global warming and are clearly uneducated in the the area of science, I wouldn't expect you to know this information.

Now, the catastrophic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, man made. The aftermath was a direct result of our governments lack of concern for the poor, more specifically the African-American poor. I can guarantee you, had Hurricane Katrina hit Houston - good ole President George Bush would have been down there pledging federal dollars faster than you can say "nuclear".

Ok, so back to Rev. Marshal (who by the way has no expertise in history or education - in fact, I couldn't even find out if he graduated from high school, but he probably has some degree in racism from Liberty University - I also think is so fitting that it's located in a city call Lynchburg) and his push to teach our children that America's founding principals are Biblical. Also from the WSJ article:

The curriculum, they say, should clearly present Christianity as an overall force for good -- and a key reason for American exceptionalism, the notion that the country stands above and apart.

I'm all for teaching children about the diverse religions that have shaped our country and make it interesting, but if we're going to focus on Christianity - let's be honest, shall we? Some of our early "Christian" settlers were murderous bigots. If Christians want to take responsibility for the founding principles of the country are they also going to take responsibility for genocide of the American Indians? Also, many of the original colonies were divided by different religious sects, but pretty much unified on their hatred of Catholicism. We also have a history of religious persecution in the U.S. as some "Christians" executed other "Christians".

This is all very well described in a book I listened to (on my ipod, while running) titled "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything". This is an excellent book, that I highly recommend if you want to learn more about the historical man-made nature of religion, and quite frankly - as it's title implies, how it poisons everything.

To bolster his argument of the Bible's importance to American History, Rev. Bigot likes to use a quote from Andrew Jackson:

"The Bible is the rock on which this republic rests."

What?? Are you freaking kidding me??! Andrew Jackson owned slaves for the love of all things cookie dough! Just because a president says something, doesn't make it true (ah, hello? weapons of mass destruction anyone?). While we're on the subject of presidents, allow me (or don't - I don't care, as I mentioned before, this is MY blog) to digress for a minute. President Bush is/was stupid. I firmly believe that our President should be smarter than me. To be clear, I'm not that smart. I think (just like my high school class rank) that I fall somewhere in the lower first quarter or upper second quarter of the population when it comes to intelligence (certainly the top 5 percent when it comes to napping and cookie dough eating). That leaves plenty of people qualified to be president. One of those people is not Sarah Palin - I've taken dumps with more smarts than she has. And just to show that I'm fair, I think I'm smarter than Joe Biden (the man says some truly dunder-headed things). Although, I do believe Vice President Biden has done far better things for our country than Sarah Palin or George Bush combined. I also think that John McCain is smarter than I am and would have probably been more supportive of him had he not shown such stupidity when picking Sarah Palin as his running mate (I thought Lieberman would have made a good choice).

So back to the Texas Board of Education and the three conservative reviewers (two of which run conservative Christian organizations and one professor of public affairs at American University) who want to eliminate all diversity and promote only the Christian philosophy in social studies.

Here are some of their proposed changes:

• As previously mentioned, remove Thurgood Marshall from history books and possibly replace him with Sam Houston. Yeah - that makes sense, let's remove the first African American supreme court justice with a white slave owner. They also mention possibly adding Harriet Tubman, siting that Thurgood Marshall is a weak example. How about adding Harriet Tubman and leaving Sam Houston in the Texas History books, huh?
• Also as previously mentioned, remove Cesar Chavez. Apparently the conservative reviewers think organizing boycotts and strikes for the rights of farm workers (along with any other demonstration aimed at questioning of the government, I'm sure) is a poor example of citizenship. I'm sure these same lame-a-tards think the "Tea Parties" held this past April 15th were examples of being good citizens (I for one am just happy that people choose to get passionate about anything - part of being a good American citizen is questioning the decisions our government makes and showing our displeasure by demonstrating peacefully), but poor farm laborers, demonstrating? - that's just un-American.
  
• They would also like (and this is one of my favorites) to replace all references to "democratic" values with "republican" values. The justification for which is explained by the fact that we don't pledge allegiance to the "democracy" for which it stands. Seriously? I hope none of my tax dollars are going to these nimrods and their suggestions. This is perhaps the stupidest things I've ever heard. Why not just be honest - most social conservatives (no doubt, including these three reviewers) are Republicans and they would like our children to read that word as many times as possible.
  

In contrast, the three reviewers appointed by moderate or liberal board members are all professors of history or education. Wow! What a fabulous idea - let's have those people determining what our children learn about history actually know a thing or two about history or education!

Here are some of the things that they propose:

• Tone down the emphasis of the Cold War and add the study of Arab Nations and Islam. Sounds reasonable, right?
• Add more Latino historical figures. Again, sounds good - especially considering this is Texas.
  
• Remove references about minorities participation in American history "contributions to society". I really like this one, they say " . . .that it marginalizes women and people of color to talk about their "contributions to society," as though they are standing outside and only offering a few crumbs of value."
  

I can only hope that when Lumpy goes to school, the curriculum aims to teach children tolerance of all people, that being a good citizen means questioning authority and that all religions play a role in American History.

OK, I'm finished - I got all my frustration out of my system - for now, at least.

In other news, I had to Febreeze my ipod running holder thing this morning because it smelt so bad.