Texas is at it again: textbooks to acquire a more conservative slant

Originally Posted by Beskar:
As Stephen Cobert said "Reality has a well known liberal bias.", this is actually supported by studies and claims where attempts to provide anything as neutral or objective automatically comes under attack by the right/conservative establishment. Also, the majority of the reason why this is the case, is that the conservative establishment is very often wrong, and it dislikes to be wrong. So instead of correcting themselves, they attack it.

Sorry Centurion, you are out of your depth, you simply do not know what you are talking about and sprouting rhetorical conservative propaganda. As summarised by this is phrase "The truth?! You cannot handle the truth. Welcome to the Fox News channel."

I, on the other hand, do know something about University politics; and I can tell you that many (most?) Universities do have a left leaning bias. So the problem for your studies is the reliability of the researchers. Further, your claim that the, "Right is often wrong" seems to me statistically unlikely, as it implies politics divides into the Right and the Wrong, instead of the Left and Right. Obviously, this corforms to your world view because of your politics, but it doesn't really stand up in the real world.

Originally Posted by Crazed Rabbit:
It doesn't matter. It's all used as a big slush fund by congress. There's no reason for payroll taxes to somehow 'not count' when looking at the size of the federal government.

CR

Size no, how they take in and spend money yes.

Wow, some of the additions to the curriculum are a little disturbing. The assault on the separation of church and state, for one.
"Cynthia Dunbar, a lawyer from Richmond who is a strict constitutionalist and thinks the nation was founded on Christian beliefs, managed to cut Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century, replacing him with St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone. (Jefferson is not well liked among conservatives on the board because he coined the term “separation between church and state.”)" :inquisitive:

"They also included a plank to ensure that students learn about “the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association.” " I have no problem with the NRA, but Phyllis Schlafly?! :wall: Also, I don't know if the Moral Majority movement has a place in public schools, since it's an evangelical-backed organization aimed at promoting fundamentalist Christian values. Hopefully, the book provides a survey of these movements, i.e. "these things exist" as opposed to "these beliefs are correct."

NYT article where the quotes are from.

Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla:
I, on the other hand, do know something about University politics; and I can tell you that many (most?) Universities do have a left leaning bias. So the problem for your studies is the reliability of the researchers. Further, your claim that the, "Right is often wrong" seems to me statistically unlikely, as it implies politics divides into the Right and the Wrong, instead of the Left and Right. Obviously, this corforms to your world view because of your politics, but it doesn't really stand up in the real world.

Left vs right contains mainly a "better or worse" scale, but also have a huge opinion on how humans are and act as a group. That nature and how to influence it, does have a scientiffic backround and therfore gets a right and wrong scale.

An example, there's plety of ideologies that contains the idea of hardworking citizen and the bloodsucking parasite. The variations on whom fits the categories are plentyful.

Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla:
I, on the other hand, do know something about University politics; and I can tell you that many (most?) Universities do have a left leaning bias. So the problem for your studies is the reliability of the researchers.

People say this, but you are on shaky ground with the use of the word bias. Statistically, there is a systematic bias in the political views of university professors. There is much evidence of this. But to say someone is biased implies lacking the ability to be impartial or objective. Can you show that?

Hockey teams have a caucasian bias, but that doesn't mean they are racist.

So when people say that universities have a left leaning bias they are taking a statistical fact, leaping to a conclusion based on the word "bias" having multiple definitions, and filling in the gap with some juicy anecdotes. There may be bias by both meanings of the word, but to believe it without solid evidence...means that you are biased ;)

That is when you begin to get dismissals of the "reliability of researchers". You can dismiss bad research on it's own terms, without resorting to assumptions about the author.

Originally Posted by :
"Right is often wrong" seems to me statistically unlikely, as it implies politics divides into the Right and the Wrong, instead of the Left and Right. Obviously, this corforms to your world view because of your politics, but it doesn't really stand up in the real world.

It's very probably that one side is right more than the other. That doesn't imply that one side is all right and the other is all wrong. They could both "often be wrong".

Right are generally against progress. Since the majority of academia is progress... there are often conflicts on those grounds as people won't move on from their old ways. There is also a long history spanning hundreds of years of the conservative establishment opposing academia.

If I remember correctly, I remember even you spoke of an incidence of this, Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla. Remember when we spoke about that French tribe who went to the America's before what we called the "Native Americans" ? It is the right-wing conservative establishment which is opposing this advancement, exploration and theory.

Academia isn't bias, it is overall pretty objective, but the problem is, the left is far more accomodating to it than those on the right, and because of this, the right feel it is bias, when it really isn't, they simply "I disagree, and I refuse to accept anything different!"

I'm amazed that Friedman wasn't already required reading along with the other economists. Aside from that, the textbook changes are almost complete garbage. Of course, textbooks have always been filled with more innacuracies, distortions, and outright lies than truths. In essence, not much has changed.

I wonder how civilization has constantly built upon and improved itself when our text books are obviously filled with so many lies, inaccuracies and bias.

Originally Posted by :
As Stephen Cobert said "Reality has a well known liberal bias.", this is actually supported by studies and claims where attempts to provide anything as neutral or objective automatically comes under attack by the right/conservative establishment. Also, the majority of the reason why this is the case, is that the conservative establishment is very often wrong, and it dislikes to be wrong. So instead of correcting themselves, they attack it.

Sorry Centurion, you are out of your depth, you simply do not know what you are talking about and sprouting rhetorical conservative propaganda. As summarised by this is phrase "The truth?! You cannot handle the truth. Welcome to the Fox News channel."

Your response is liberal rhetoric.

Point A. you made sure you mentioned Fox News.
Point B. you said right wing conservatism is always 100% wrong.
Point C. you said that the right wing always gets very very angry and can't admit they are wrong
Point D. you attempted to make me feel stupid by saying your premier knowledge is much more extensive than mine
Point E. you at no point said that liberals are ever wrong, becasue "progress" can't ever be wrong right?