Click on image, I haven't the slightest idea what will happen.
Meanwhile, Agence-Vleeptron Presse brings you the latest news from the 52nd Crusade.
We are happy to report that the 52nd Crusade seems not to be very violent, and no Muslims were physically harmed in this latest attack by Christians.
The Christian camp of the 52nd Crusade is located in the USA state of Texas.
The School Board vote, while having no legal or actual effect, is quite important. Texas public schools are the largest single purchaser of textbooks, so the USA textbook industry ... well, if Texas wants its textbooks to say the Moon is made of Limburger Cheese, the textbook industry will publish science textbooks that say the Moon is made of Limburger Cheese.
Most of the time this loony School Board crap specifically attacks textbooks which mention Natural Selection, but don't give Equal Time to alternative theories, like Intelligent Design, or Creationism, or Creation Science, or the theory I believe in: Flying Spaghetti Monster.
To try to be fair to Texas -- though not by my choice, I lived in Texas for a year -- it is not ENTIRELY populated by Intellectually Challenged Short Bus people. The University of Texas at Austin (Texas' capital city) is a world-class brain place, and as Lefty Whoopie Nudie Freaky as any USA university gets.
This story gives the impression that the overwhelming majority religion of Texas is Christianity. This is incorrect. 94 percent of Texans worship and sacrifice virgins to High School Football. Texas public schools' emphasis on football is so overwhelming that decade after decade, it has poisoned academic standards and made Texas high school graduates a joke among USA colleges and universities. (There aren't very many questions about USA football on the university and college application tests.)
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CBS News (USA television network)
Associated Press (USA newswire)
Thursday 23 September 2010
Texas Board of Education:
Textbooks Are Anti-Christian
Conservative Activist School Board
Declares History Books Pro-Islam,
"Very, Very, Very, Very Biased";
Vote Friday
(CBS/AP) Texas' State Board of Education -- following a long history of throwing itself into "culture war" issues -- is set to vote Friday on a resolution calling on textbook publishers to limit what they print about Islam in world history books.
The resolution cites world history books no longer used in Texas schools that it says devoted more lines of text to Islamic beliefs and practices than Christian beliefs and practices.
"Diverse reviewers have repeatedly documented gross pro-Islamic, anti-Christian distortions in social studies texts," reads a draft of the resolution, which would not be binding on future boards that will choose the state's next generation of social studies texts.
The measure was first suggested to the board this summer by Odessa businessman Randy Rives, who lost his Republican primary bid for a seat on the panel earlier this year.
The conservative-leaning and heavily evangelical Christian board pushed the item to a vote.
Board member Pat Hardy, R-Fort Worth, suggested the issue may be moot because none of the books cited by Rives still are being used in Texas, having been replaced in 2003, and said Rives "might want to go back and get newer copies of the books."
Don McLeroy, who is serving the final months of his term after also losing in the GOP primary, said he believes even current textbooks still reflect an anti-Christian bias.
"The biggest problem I saw was their overreach not to be 'ethnocentric,"' McLeroy said of an Advanced Placement world history book approved in 2003 and still in use. "It's a very, very, very, very biased book. Christianity didn't even make it in the table of contents."
McLeroy is one of the most outspoken of a group of board members who have pushed several conservative requirements for social study textbooks used in Texas, including that teachers cover the Judeo-Christian influences of the nation's Founding Fathers.
"It’s that great idea. That radical idea of Judeo-Christianity, that man is created in the image of God. So if you have world history books that downplay Christianity -- Judeo-Christianity -- and it doesn’t even make it in the table of contents, I think there’s a great concern," McLeroy said.
Some educators fear the debate might lead to a revision of history. "I was a social studies teacher, and, I’m sorry. History is what it is. It happened," Gayle Fallon of the Houston Federation of Teachers told CBS affiliate KHOU.
Fallon said the claim that books devote more lines to Islam that Christianity is baseless anyway.
"I’ve talked to the history teachers. They say there’s nothing there," Fallon said. "A textbook should not proselytize for any side. It should present fact. And, from what we’ve seen of the text, they present fact."
In the board’s official resolution, members cite textbook passages that call Christian Crusaders "invaders" and "violent attackers," while claiming Muslims were "empire builders."
Kathy Miller, spokeswoman for the Texas Freedom Network, a religious freedom group, called the resolution "another example of board members putting politics ahead of just educating our kids."
"Once again, without consulting any real experts, the board's politicians are manufacturing a bogus controversy," Miller said. No textbooks cited in the resolution are still being used in Texas schools, she told The Dallas Morning news for a Wednesday story.
The resolution concludes by warning publishers the "State Board of Education will look to reject future prejudicial social studies submissions that continue to offend Texas law with respect to treatment of the world's major religious groups by significant inequalities of coverage space-wise and by demonizing or lionizing one or more of them over others."
© MMX, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Quick Poll
Do you agree with Texas Board of Education members, who say that history textbooks are pro-Islam and anti-Christian?
* Yes, the books are clearly biased
* No, the BOE members are expressing bigotry
7 comments:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5q0MHQQFzoo
for further details please consult The Crusades by Prof Stephen Runcinan who can also be seen in this series.Or The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, forgot author's name. Biased ? I don't think so.
i would lend my suggestion in reading 'the history of the saracens' by simon ockley. it talks of the succession of mohammad and all the way through to islam and europe. quite the read.
Hi Abbas
I'll try that. Wanted to do some medieval reading anyway. Legend has it that our family coat of arms contains a thing called The Sword of Jerusalem, so one of my ancestors actually fought in one of the Crusaeds and came back to tell the tale.
The Crusades Through Arab Eyes is by Amin Maalouf btw. Great read. Now if those loonies in Texas think that the accounts of the Crusades are biased then they are definetly wrong. "We" invaded a quite stable region, brought death, despair, trouble and destruction, took philosophy, mathematics, history and a a bunch of new worlds. The arab world never recovered from that mess we left there within 200 years during the existance of Outremere. Abbas, correct me if I am wrong but I think that the arab word for wester foreigner is still franj, right ? Originates from the times of the Crusades. Can you imagine the impression "we" dirty, uncivilized, unwashed and rude barbarians must have left on people who had mathematics and public bathouses ? We all never recovered from the aftermath of these 200 years of madness. And those people in Texas think medieval historians are biased..... Leaves the question wether History can repeat itself or if we are just too stupid to learn from it.
Greetings to Bob and all the other fellow pastafarians here!
It feels like Texas and Kansas have been in a heated race for the most embarrassingly ass-backwards public education system. As hard as both these states try, there is no winner here. That is unless someday they both get kicked off the Union to rot in their own ignorance. To those who live in these Iran-wannabes and don't like having to debate the merits of an information-based society, I'd like to point out there are many homes for sale here in the 21st century. Move and save your kids!
hiya hiya ozzi(r?)e --
A few states have tried to break away from the Union, but the Union wouldn't let them. I myself am an activist for New England seeking independence from the 44 Dumb States, I think Burlington Vermont would make a lovely new capital of The Yankee Federation.
They Might Be Giants or the B52s could write our new national anthem.
It will not succeed in reality, that's exactly what I think.
This text can be read for a long time.
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