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

[Centurion1]

lol, most textbooks, especially history books, are left. I haven't opened one since freshmen year so i dont even know. not to mention your mostly left educators even before the brainwashing that is often college. That being said i dislike this for one reason, school, especially history, should be in a totally neutral light so the students can make their own decisions. yes, Yes i know ill go move to the real world now.

for example PC has reached MATH. When you open up to a word problem you get three students, Taquisha, Shaniqua, and Consuela. These kids can barely read and now your throwing that **** at them.

Not a very creative thread title, but come on; what else can be said at this point?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/ed...n/13texas.html

The short of it is that Texas is going to make school textbooks that paint Republican ideology in a more positive light, with topics like the separation of church and state being sold short. Meanwhile, topics like the conservative backlash of the 70's, the free market, personal responisbility and, perhaps most terrifyingly of all, McCarthyism will be portrayed more positively.

So, I mean, there's a lot that could be said about this. The conservative movement of the 70's that I mentioned left us saddled with a debt we're still paying off. The free market has been disastrous in it's implementation far more often than not. Personal responsibilty is pretty much code for "I hate the disadvantaged". All of those things are fairly negative, and it's hard to describe them any other way. But it's the McCarthy bit that honestly freaks me out. The man was completely deranged and it boggles my mind how anyone can honestly defend him.

Oh, and I nearly forgot; Texas produces a huge percentage of the nations textbooks; this isn't just confined to their state. I shudder to think of what the next generation will be like if this keeps up...

I'll stop haranguing you guys now and simply say it once more; Texas sucks.

Ahem, Texas is amazing and i want to move back there. Second off Liberals with their entitlements saddled us with a huge debt that can't be solved, you can cut defense spending quite easily, how about you try cutting social security or medicaid. Third, Your entire post is "code" for far left fringe rambling and misplaced ideology. Fourth, california produces even more books and that populist utopia isnt exactly pumping out the Einsteins are they not to mention the revenue, either. finally, you are reading the new york times which i trust about as much as the National Enquirer regarding anything remotely related to the Republican party. And i have truly felt that way since they allowed a large ad from moveon.bull called General Betrayeus.

[CountArach]

lol, most textbooks, especially history books, are left. I haven't opened one since freshmen year so i dont even know.

Hahaha... sorry but these two sentences are so incongruous.

not to mention your mostly left educators even before the brainwashing that is often college.

Who is placed in charge of these institutions? Professors, academics, etc. Who is pushing them where they want to go? No one at all - they have reached the views they teach through rational thought, long-term study and their own inquiries. To claim that they are thus "brainwashing" anyone is utterly ludicrous because it implies someone is standing behind them pulling the strings. There is no way that any of my lecturers have ever been like this.

That being said i dislike this for one reason, school, especially history, should be in a totally neutral light so the students can make their own decisions. yes, Yes i know ill go move to the real world now.

There is no neutral light on history. Everything is so dependent on our context unless you look at history as simply a list of dates. Of course, even then you will naturally have to pick which events are worth writing about, which in turn is based on some ideology or episteme and we are back where we started.

Your entire post is "code" for far left fringe rambling and misplaced ideology.

Your entire post is "code" for far right fringe rambling and misplaced ideology.

[Beskar]

lol, most textbooks, especially history books, are left. I haven't opened one since freshmen year so i dont even know.

Yes, you don't know.

not to mention your mostly left educators even before the brainwashing that is often college. That being said i dislike this for one reason, school, especially history, should be in a totally neutral light so the students can make their own decisions. yes, Yes i know ill go move to the real world now.

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."

[Furunculus]

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."

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.

so are you.

sure it does...... to those already slurping down the kool-aid, others have a different opinion.

[Beskar]

so are you.

sure it does...... to those already slurping down the kool-aid, others have a different opinion.

If you think there is a total consensous within Science or even within my own department, you are very mistaken indeed. Even I could even have different opinions to the person next to me, but even then, we can work together to work out the results of an experiment and both objectively come out with the same results. That is the beauty of Science. It is objective and neutral in its pure form.

While there are some really broad/general concepts which are accepted if taken on as a "whole" simply because the evidence is there for it to be that way and the challenge is "conduct the same experiment and do see your own results", this happens, it gets peer-reviewed to make sure it follows the academic guidelines, etc, and most likely, they end up that way. Then the person will give their opinion on why that is, and if they are simply point blank ignorant about it, it shows they are actually a pretty bad academic.

So ultimately, your statement is a sign of your ignorance and not of mine. It isn't about slurping"cool-aid", Science is a bunch of drinks, but you won't make many friends by giving people bad drinks (in otherwords, bad Science). Also, unlike Centurion1 who is in High School and doesn't even read the material, I have peer-reviewed work, review journals, and conduct my own experiments, so I have theoretical and real practicable experience.

[drone]

I have a relative that works for a textbook publishing company in Texas. Business has been bad lately, I think they had finished a round of editions a few years back and were basically twiddling their thumbs waiting for new work. Which was not forthcoming because most states are bankrupt. It wouldn't surprise me if this is partly a handout to the publishing firms, a justification for new editions.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

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.

[Ironside]

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.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

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.

"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".

[Beskar]

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!"

[woad&fangs]

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.

[a completely inoffensive name]

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.