WTF Texas?!?!?!? Plus, close encounters with Phyllis Scahffly!

[rm]

History is written by the winners, and, in case you weren't clear, you and I are losing.

New education standards adopted in Texas required the downplaying of the Civil Rights Movement, examination of how the UN is undermining America and education about good works of leaders of the conservative movement in the 1970s and 80s. Yes, the new guidelines cite Phyllis Schaffly by name, and, in case you didn't know, when it comes to education standards the nation goes with Texas, simply because they have the volume clout to dictate the content of textbooks. So regardless of where you live or what you believe, this is coming soon to a classroom near you.

Which brings me to a random story from my strange and murky past.

I was a contestant in the Miss New York National Teenager Pageant 1987, and I had no idea what I was doing. I thought if I could get an award for being a girl, then it meant I was one, maybe even a good one. I also thought this would mean I was normal, like Brady Bunch normal, despite coming from a place without football teams or cheerleaders or homecoming dances.

Anyway, one of the areas of competition was a speech on "What's Right About America" that we had to give while wearing our Red, White and Blue Outfit.

Now, I give good speech. Always have. I can write 'em and I can knock 'em out of the park, so I figured this, if nothing else, would be mine. So what did I decide was right about America? That we can protest, that we can tell her she's wrong, because hey, free speech is cool, they told me so at school.

You can imagine how this went.

Yeah, didn't win.

Did get a sort of stunned audience just staring blankly at me. Which, you know, went nicely with how they put me in the back of all the dance numbers (short hair, no visible tits, you know?) and looked shocked when I said I was from Manhattan, were all uncomfortable with me doing modern dance for my talent (to, btw, Pat Benetar's version of "Forever Young"), and, you know, probably saw me look at them with incredulity when they asked "if you were a fruit, what type of fruit would you be?" (The correct answer to that, btw, is "An orange, because their shape indicates balance; their color is bright and happy, and because I hope I can contribute to the world as positively as an orange's nutrients contribute to good health.")

Years later, when going through things at my parents' apartment I discovered my old pageant program books and started flipping through. And then I discovered that Phyllis Schaffly was a sponsor or director or something of the national pageant system (I think I still have all this stuff at my parents' house. I'll grab it next time and scan it in for you for laughs).

This didn't, actually, make a lot more things make sense. But it did make it even harder to enjoy being a girl.

And right about now? It adds to my desire to punch Texas in the face.

Comments

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

I can't even begin to express my outrage and shame at my home currently.

[delchi.livejournal.com]

That is truly scary. Do you think this will lead to some kind of 'underground' or alternative educational movement? Maybe an interesting contrast with private / religious schools?

[rm.livejournal.com]

It may help strengthen the non-religiously based home schooling movement, but private school or home school costs money or time. Most people, if they are even aware of this, will cross their fingers and said their kids to public school because that's all they have the resources to do.

[weirdquark]

If we're still in Texas when we have kids old enough to go to school, we'll be considering all of our options. But one of the schools in the area has a lot of the kids of the mostly liberal professors at the university, so that school might not follow the conservative guidelines as strictly as other schools might.

But really, I'm already worried about an educational system that puts out students who get to be college seniors who can't write a paper with a thesis statement.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Sadly, the thesis statement issue ain't just Texas. I'm super close to a ton of professors, and it's bleak out there.

[weirdquark]

Yeah, I believe that. It makes me sad, because college students are having trouble with things that I remember learning in (a public) junior high, and what are they being taught in these schools anyway?

Oh yeah, they teach students how to take the standardized tests. Except I should think some of those would have a writing section. They can't all be multiple choice, can they?

[rm.livejournal.com]

This. I had two hour essay examinations in every subject from sixth grade on. People who have less communications skills than I had at age 11 should not be in college. Period. Sadly, that seems to be all we're producing anymore.

[marcmagus]

Speculation: multiple choice goes well with the word standardized. Grades on essays are prone to variance among graders.

[weirdquark]

My mother had to grade one of the standardized tests for a few years. They do have a standardized list of things they're looking for in essays that determine what score you get. Each test gets two graders and they take the average of the scores. So there isn't much variance.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Private education doesn't have to be full-time.

I went to Hebrew school for about 4 1/2 hours a week for 8 years-- I don't know what it cost my parents, but it's got to be cheaper than a 30 hours a week of private school and less time-consuming than home schooling.

Everyone still couldn't afford it (though I bet people would put together online curricula and materials for fee), but it would be more families than you're thinking.

I'm not sure what an alternative to Texas textbooks school should be called-- I'm thinking "Welcome to the World" school.

[weirdquark]

I'm thinking "Welcome to the World" school.

You mean there's a world outside of Texas?

[rm.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting point, and one that makes sense. I too had friends who went to that sort of religious schooling, and certainly supplemental non-religious schooling is common in many other parts of the world. It would be fascinating and valuable to see parts of the US embrace due to these circumstances.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I've heard about Russian immigrants to the US having supplemental school for math because they didn't like the way it was taught in the US.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

It's actually well less of a big deal than it was in previous decades - California also votes on textbooks (with results that are very different from Texas) and IIRC, those are picked up by most of the states run by moderately sane people. What this does mean is that the red state/blue state divide is going to get even deeper, but short of something really impressive happening, that was going to be true anyway. These days, I'd vote for dividing the US into 2 parts in a heartbeat.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I'm appalled this atrocity went through. It isn't balance, it's propaganda and dogma.

[weirdquark]

You can email the Board at sboeteks@tea.state.tx.us -- I'm not sure how much good this will do -- the head of the board was voted out in the last election*, but it's not like he's going to change his mind about what he wants to get done before he leaves.

* I am now registered as a Republican here in Texas because Don McLeroy was running in my district and that was the only way I could vote for the guy running against him. Which feels really weird. Not that I ever was a registered Democrat, because I'm not best pleased with a lot of the things they're doing/not doing either, but I'm on the Republican mailing lists now, so people keep sending me things telling me how they're the most conservative candidate ever, and this is just not how to get my vote.

[weirdquark]

Oh wait, posted this before reading the link, and the vote is over.

Yeah, that's pretty much how I expected that to go. See above re: people who are pushing their agenda not changing their minds.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

I was just telling my dad today that I don't want to leave my country because where the hell is anywhere actually better.

Wow, this proves me right.

Jeezus.

[bethynyc.livejournal.com]

I wish big name universities, the Ivies and so forth, would make a point of *not* accepting students from Texas for a certain amount of time. They could cite that the Texas standards aren't up to snuff, unless the kids pass an accreditation test or something. Make it clear that Texas standards are not reality based.

I'm busy being ashamed of living in Staten Island right now.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

UC is already doing that with some of the religiously-based homeschooling courses, esp. the ones out of A Beka. They don't accept them as academic credits.

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

One ray of hope is that apparently textbook companies are rapidly exploring how new advances in printing technology allow them to produce custom editions for, say, various states with outlandish requirements.

But yeah, homeschooling suddenly looks really attractive right now. I was leaning that way re: history *before* all this...

[dkompare.livejournal.com]

As a Texas resident (and parent of two school-age kids), I'm appalled, but this is sadly par the course down here. That said, there is a concerted effort going to get reality-based BOE members. Better late than never, and I'm optimistic in the long run that the wingnuts will be in the board minority by next year.

For the record, we're committed to public schools in principle, and thankfully our son (who's 6) is bright enough to get into the public Montessori/talented & gifted school here in Dallas, which is one of the best in the country. His sister is only in pre-school, but she's going to a science-heavy (as in real science, not creationist BS) school this fall that was excellent with our son a couple of years back.

[bodlon.livejournal.com]

As others so far have said, homeschooling: suddenly it's not just for wingnuts anymore.

Stupid Texas.

On the other hand, I hope you made Phyllis Schlafly deeply uncomfortable.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Or rather, the stuff the wingnuts were teaching in their homeschool "education"? Is now for everyone!

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

I have read about this over and over in so many placfes and I keep reading it again in the vague, desperate hope that the last source got it wrong. That it's all a dream. That this unbelievably awful shit cannot be happening

[rm.livejournal.com]

This, I think it's why it took me so long to post about it or something.

[lefaym.livejournal.com]

Whenever I read about this, I'm just struck by a dull feeling of horror, because I could easily see something like this happening in Australia if conservatives get into power (especially Tony Abbott -- do you remember him from your time here?) -- they already talk about how our education system is so biased against white settlement (ie, INVASION), but even now, our curricula white-wash out the worst of the geoncide against Australia's Indigenous peoples.

Regarding Texas though, I guess the one hope to cling onto is that there ARE a lot of brilliant progressive people living there, and perhaps this will spur a lot of people into action.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I do remember Tony Abbott! Ugh. I final Australia's racial politics and history really interesting because there are ways in which they are so much less toxic than in the US and ways in which I'm like WAIT, WHAT JUST HAPPENED THERE?

[lefaym.livejournal.com]

Well, Abbott is the leader of the opposition now, and has spent his time doing things like telling women that virginity is a "precious gift" (excuse me while I go vomit), and spouting his believe that Indigenous Australians are less and less likely these days to view Australia Day as Invasion Day -- evidently, there are a lot of Indigenous Australians who live only in Abbott's imagination. Anyway, I don't THINK he'll win our election this year, but even the possibility of that is scary.

I wouldn't say that our race relations are necessarily less toxic than US race relations, except insofar as our European invasion took place much later, which means we've had less time for the toxicity to fester. From what I can gather, I think that Australians are generally less aware of race (especially white Australians, who have the privilege that means they don't have to be aware), but also less aware of racism and how pervasive it is.

There are also a lot of weird racist elements of US culture that Australian culture absorbed pre-civil rights movement, but that we didn't get rid of because we don't have the context of African-American history -- so, for instance, we only recently got rid of biscuits called "golliwogs", we still have "chicos" (which are chocolate jelly-babies, marketed in a definitely racist way), people don't understand why blackface is so hideously offensive, nor do people get why it's wrong to have an imitation Oreo with the name "Creole Cream" (given that most people are unaware both of the way in which "Oreo" has been used as a racial slur AND most people here just think that "creole" is a style of cooking).

[lilacsigil.livejournal.com]

It was actually happening in Australia - remember John Howard's "black armband history"? He was slowly putting more and more not particularly qualified super-conservative (and often openly racist) people like Keith Windschuttle and Janet Albrechtson into positions of power over education and the ABC (which is a great alternative education in itself). I'm terrified that Abbott might get in, but even more terrified that - to try to win over those voters - Rudd is going to keep sliiiiiiiiding to the right, as his disgusting treatment of refugees is showing. And then there will be no alternative at all.

[lefaym.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, I'm not forgotten John Howard's attempts to revise history either, but it feels like much more of a threat now that we're going to have a national curriculum. Not that I'm opposed to the national curriculum, but I'm absolutely terrified of what Abbott could do with that. Howard's approach was, as you note, a slow one -- whereas I could see Abbott really doing something huge and sudden, like this Texas change.

[lilacsigil.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the national curriculum is worrying for exactly this reason - but at least we have a strong teachers' union who tend to automatically oppose whatever the Liberals try to impose.

[lovefromgirl.livejournal.com]

Sometimes, I wish Texas would just secede and be done with it. Their America isn't my America. I think theirs is only really close to being Arizona's America. *sigh* I've lived there, and it's pretty, but damn, let's just give it back to Mexico.

[graene.livejournal.com]

Why saddle Mexico with them? They're so proud of being an independent country before becoming a state, let them go back to that and see how well they do. Really, we should dig out the paperwork from their joining and find a way to break it.

[humascot97.livejournal.com]

The sad thing is that hubby and I are actually considering a move to AZ in the next year or so.

[weirdquark]

Except Texas can't actually secede; it can become five smaller states. Which would do interesting things to the politics.

[matthewwdaly.livejournal.com]

Except that it already has been divided into parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming. And it was a right granted in the original annexation in 1845 and not in their re-admittance into the Union in 1870, so you could say that this coupon is long since expired and maybe it was already redeemed anyways.

[lllvis.livejournal.com]

Amen on the Texas schoolbook reform bit. It got passed by a bunch of politicians who have already been voted out of office, but their current term isn't finished yet. And the way it is written, nobody can do anything about for the next 10 years. As a friend of mine put it, it stopped just short of omitting the holocaust as actually having happened. Oh, and referring to the US Presidents by all three of their names is the only amendment I am aware of that didn't pass. Sheesh.

However, having attended Texas' public schools and if they still teach the way they did when I was there, it won't matter much as we never seemed to get into the 20th century in history. Ever. We barely ever made it beyond the War Between The States.

[weirdquark]

They'll still be portraying the founding fathers as men who wanted to make the US a Christian nation and that calling them deists is liberal propaganda rather than how most of them self-identified.

[labellerose.livejournal.com]

Ugh. I am planning a critical thinking unit on 'propaganda', myself. But I'm a humble SPED teacher, what do I know?

<sigh>

[the-ogre.livejournal.com]

You know. Texas has wanted to be their own country for a such a long time... can't we just let them go?

[don-negro.livejournal.com]

I just moved back to Texas today, and I'm seriously considering running for the State Board of Education at the next election. Not 2010, because the filing deadline has passed, but the one after that.

Seriously, at this point, having moved back here from San Francisco, I can't pretend it's just that I was born here. I've actively chosen it now. I have to take responsibility for that.