The Civil Rights Act wasn't all that great. The TX School Board has voted

[Plan9]

I missed you, Bill.

[mixedmedia]

Can someone explain to me how a nation that is pretty much evenly split between political partisanship on the left and the right can have resulted from an educational curriculum that is plagued with 'liberal bias'? I went to school during the 1970s when all of this so-called 'brainwashing' was going on and I don't remember being taught any bias. All of my bias was taught to me by my parents - the way it should be.

I'm so tired of conservative namby-pambying. Tired and totally disillusioned by it. It's not scary or threatening at all, it's just silly. Let them run it into the ground, I say, because people who know better aren't affected by their stupid bullshit. And those that don't are beyond reason anyway. Fuck those guys.

[roachboy]

well there are moments when the ultra-right seems to merge into something bigger than itself and there are others, like this, when it becomes vanishingly small, mired in it's own collective stupidity and/or myopia.

it's like the texas board of education was drinking at a party and decided to push the auto-trivialization button, the kind of thing that at other moments lands you photocopying your ass or singing thirties songs with a lampshade on your head, except this time rather than just humiliate themselves and go sleep it off they had a meeting.

erasing thomas jefferson from the history of the declaration of independence and constitution and replacing him with thomas aquinas of all things is amazing to me. the summary of sociology as "something that blames society for things"...you cannot be fucking serious. these people had to have been drunk. i prefer to think they were, that they were joking, that they had votes and collapsed into laughter and are now hoisted by their own petard because the snippy teetotaler keeper of minutes did not approve of any of this carrying-on and the board forgot to vote itself out of being able to pass actual measures, which they often do before these har-de-har evenings.

thomas aquinas, american revolutionary...they musta been on the floor laughing once they looked up who aquinas was.

or maybe these are just really stupid people whose views are not worth taking seriously, not worth arguing against. it is a shame that they are in a position to damage other people's children with their idiocy. if i lived in texas, i would just move. let the place fall in.

[mixedmedia]

Damage other people's children. Not likely.
If ever there were a study done to examine the factors that damage our children, I think school textbooks would be down there with 'wearing their shoes too tight' or 'not getting proper dance lessons.'
I like your party scenario, though.
In my mind I was likening it to a bunch of adolescent mutineers who decided the theme for their junior prom should be 'Jerusalem in Jesus' Time' instead of 'Paradise Under the Sea.'

[Idyllic]

For every left there is a right, for every yen a yang, it’s all in the blub you wish to seek, read and believe.

[Texas Social Studies Curriculum Vote Brings Out Worst in AP Bias, Labeling, By Tom Blumer, Sat, 03/13/2010 - 00:16 ET

April Castro and the headline writers at the supposedly "objective" Associated Press are obviously not pleased with changes the Texas State Board of Education made to the Lone Star State's social studies curriculum.

Castro's report (HT to an NB e-mailer) makes almost no attempt to hide her clear disdain. She includes references to a "far-right faction" (a "faction" that happened to constitute a two-thirds majority!) and "ultraconservatives," while uniformly describing leftists as mere Democrats, and generally comes across as a sore loser in solidarity with the poor, outvoted libs.

You'll also see in the excerpt that follows that the story's headline is disgracefully over the top:

Texas ed board vote reflects far-right influences
AUSTIN, Texas — A far-right faction of the Texas State Board of Education succeeded Friday in injecting conservative ideals into social studies, history and economics lessons that will be taught to millions of students for the next decade.
Teachers in Texas will be required to cover the Judeo-Christian influences of the nation's Founding Fathers, but not highlight the philosophical rationale for the separation of church and state. Curriculum standards also will describe the U.S. government as a "constitutional republic," rather than "democratic," and students will be required to study the decline in value of the U.S. dollar, including the abandonment of the gold standard.
"We have been about conservatism versus liberalism," said Democrat Mavis Knight of Dallas, explaining her vote against the standards. "We have manipulated strands to insert what we want it to be in the document, regardless as to whether or not it's appropriate."

.... Ultraconservatives wielded their power over hundreds of subjects this week, introducing and rejecting amendments on everything from the civil rights movement to global politics. Hostilities flared and prompted a walkout Thursday by one of the board's most prominent Democrats, Mary Helen Berlanga of Corpus Christi, who accused her colleagues of "whitewashing" curriculum standards.

By late Thursday night, three other Democrats seemed to sense their futility and left, leaving Republicans to easily push through amendments heralding "American exceptionalism" and the U.S. free enterprise system, suggesting it thrives best absent excessive government intervention.

Castro should have been asking why the items described in the excerpt, plus the following cited by the AP writer in unexcerpted paragraphs, haven't been in the social studies curriculum all along:

"... the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its impact on global politics."
former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir.
"a reference to the Second Amendment right to bear arms in a section about citizenship in a U.S. government class."

Apparently the ultimate insult occurred when "Conservatives beat back multiple attempts to include hip-hop as an example of a significant cultural movement."
Oh the humanity.

—Tom Blumer is president of a training and development company in Mason, Ohio, and is a contributing editor to NewsBusters]


There are just as many reports that applaud the work of the Texas Educational System as there are those that attempt to defame it. It just seems to me that the truth is boring and doesn’t grab the liberals for their all consuming “Call to Arms” so they piecemeal extreme negativity together and sell it as the golden standard, what a way to run a country, sound like fear mongering to me.

How on earth did it mean so much to the liberals that they just walked out? I would never do that on my kids watch, if it was that big, why did the libs just walk out, oh, that’s right, so they could get to news cameras first.

[mixedmedia]

say what?
yikes...

[Jinn]

You seem to be confusing objective fact with opinion, Idlyllic. In an ideal world, no history book should contain the latter. Your support of efforts to whitewash opinion into history is no different than a 'liberal' attempt to do the same.

The things being introduced are not objective fact. I'd be alright with subjective interpretation of what things are more important to cover, be rewriting history is another thing entirely.

[mixedmedia]

sorry, that was a one-line response
but I can't make heads or tails out of the post...I take it you don't like hip-hop and that somehow the lack of organized liberal response is out of step with the beneficent middle-of-the-road conservative agenda of the Texas Board of Education

[roachboy]

try as you might to obfuscate what's happened---and at this point that's all i think you're trying to do here---it's a kind of pathetic display on the part of the texas board of education to make reality more conservative friendly by imposing arbitrary edits on textbooks that are foisted upon kids.

in the end, i think it's probably an entirely self-defeating move though.
either these kids will be informed by their parents that the textbooks are full of far-right horsepuckey fobbed off as history or "sociology" or whatever; those whose parents won't tell them will probably find out from their peers; those who slip through will run into the extent to which they've been duped when they get to university. and this will have an effect similar to those adverts against drug use that featured eggs frying in a pan: they'll reduce Authority to even more a joke than it already is. and there's something almost satisfying about that as an outcome of actions undertaken by these ultra-right defenders of traditional authority.
they're kind of its worst enemy.
don't you find that funny?


i suppose a small percentage will go to some ultra-right bible college and neutralize themselves outside the communities that confuse this conservative horseshit for reality. what this will do it isolate conservative further. one thing the past decade has shown is that nothing more badly serves the right than the exercise of power. look at what the bush administration did to the conservative movement---look at what they're reduced to now. dissociative stuff.

frankly i think this a surreal little moment.

i particularly enjoy the new conservative contempt for notions of justice and democracy. makes you wonder what they're thinking, doesn't it?

[dippin]

Idlyllic,
Yeah, people reporting on the issue may have passion and biases of their own. But those issues outlined in the post you presented here are misleading at best.

The reference about the second amendment was introduced to a section on freedom of speech, not just "citizenship" in general (and one of the republican representatives actually suggested creating a new section to discuss the second amendment, but it was ignored and now the right to bear arms is discussed as part of the freedom of speech section).

And then the person nitpicks the more moderate points while completely ignoring the more egregious examples.

I'd still like to see the people who are so certain that the denouncing of the Tx school board is so unfair deal with the actual issues there.

Why should freedom of religion and separation of church and state not be taught? Why should the word capitalism be replaced by "free enterprise?" Why should Hayek feature prominently in economics? Why should more attention be paid to republicans who voted for the civil rights act than to Cesar Chaves and Marshall? Why should Jefferson be excluded and Aquinas included in the discussion of thinkers who influenced revolutions (including American independence)? Why is it ok for a school board to reduce sociology to "blaming society?" Why must a section include a discussion of how the free market led to Europe's success? One person even justified the removal of Oscar Romero from the list of people who fought against oppression because he didn't even have a movie made about him (which is actually false). Why should the words democracy and democratic be removed from all the texts?


And those members are called ultra right because most of them came to the school board after defeating moderate to conservative republicans.

[Idyllic]

Originally Posted by roachboy

well there are moments when the ultra-right seems to merge into something bigger than itself and there are others, like this, when it becomes vanishingly small, mired in it's own collective stupidity and/or myopia.

it's like the texas board of education was drinking at a party and decided to push the auto-trivialization button, the kind of thing that at other moments lands you photocopying your ass or singing thirties songs with a lampshade on your head, except this time rather than just humiliate themselves and go sleep it off they had a meeting.

erasing thomas jefferson from the history of the declaration of independence and constitution and replacing him with thomas aquinas of all things is amazing to me. the summary of sociology as "something that blames society for things"...you cannot be fucking serious. these people had to have been drunk. i prefer to think they were, that they were joking, that they had votes and collapsed into laughter and are now hoisted by their own petard because the snippy teetotaler keeper of minutes did not approve of any of this carrying-on and the board forgot to vote itself out of being able to pass actual measures, which they often do before these har-de-har evenings.

thomas aquinas, american revolutionary...they musta been on the floor laughing once they looked up who aquinas was.

or maybe these are just really stupid people whose views are not worth taking seriously, not worth arguing against. it is a shame that they are in a position to damage other people's children with their idiocy. if i lived in texas, i would just move. let the place fall in.

Holly Cow, Man, they ARE NOT REPLACING THOMAS JEFFERSON.

This is exactly my point; some liberal makes an inane remark and the lefties run with it above their heads like a burning bra. Everyone looks and screams, what are those conservatives making us do now….. They ARE NOT replacing Thomas Jefferson.

You CANNOT replace Thomas Jefferson, He wrote the Declaration of Independence, He was our Third President, He was the FIRST AMERICAN President to VOCALLY HATE SLAVERY…….. If this alone doesn’t scream of the blatant one-sided narrow perspective of some angry self-pitying liberal goon, well, I just can’t believe people could even imagine that they would remove a President from the history books, let alone Thomas Jefferson. How can you people believe this garbage?

I think some of you people just like to believe the doom and gloom, and I’m the one that’s a pessimist. It’s apparent to me, it really doesn’t matter what I have to say, you have all made your own decisions. It’s funny, all the sudden, I want to MOVE TO TEXAS.

[silent_jay]

Even as board members continued to demand that students learn about “American exceptionalism,” they stripped Thomas Jefferson from a world history standard about the influence of Enlightenment thinkers on political revolutions from the 1700s to today. In Jefferson’s place, the board’s religious conservatives inserted Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin. They also removed the reference to “Enlightenment ideas” from the standard, requiring that students simply learn about the “writings” of various thinkers (including Calvin and Aquinas). (3/11/10)

Seems they are replacing Jefferson from the world history standard. From the link dippin provided earlier
The List of Shame in Texas Texas Freedom Network
Or from the original article

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.”)

[dippin]

Originally Posted by Idyllic

Holly Cow, Man, they ARE NOT REPLACING THOMAS JEFFERSON.

This is exactly my point; some liberal makes an inane remark and the lefties run with it above their heads like a burning bra. Everyone looks and screams, what are those conservatives making us do now….. They ARE NOT replacing Thomas Jefferson.

You CANNOT replace Thomas Jefferson, He wrote the Declaration of Independence, He was our Third President, He was the FIRST AMERICAN President to VOCALLY HATE SLAVERY…….. If this alone doesn’t scream of the blatant one-sided narrow perspective of some angry self-pitying liberal goon, well, I just can’t believe people could even imagine that they would remove a President from the history books, let alone Thomas Jefferson. How can you people believe this garbage?

I think some of you people just like to believe the doom and gloom, and I’m the one that’s a pessimist. It’s apparent to me, it really doesn’t matter what I have to say, you have all made your own decisions. It’s funny, all the sudden, I want to MOVE TO TEXAS.

Here's the specific text they've changed:

it was:
“explain the impact of Enlightenment ideas from John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Thomas Jefferson on political revolutions from 1750 to the present.”

It became:

“explain the impact of the writings of John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and Sir William Blackstone.”

So they quite unambiguously dropped Jefferson from the history of Enlightenment and his impact on the revolutions from 1750 to the present. No one claimed that they dropped Jefferson entirely, so the description of what they did regarding him is fairly accurate.

[Idyllic]

Originally Posted by dippin

Here's the specific text they've changed:

it was:
“explain the impact of Enlightenment ideas from John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Thomas Jefferson on political revolutions from 1750 to the present.”

It became:

“explain the impact of the writings of John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and Sir William Blackstone.”

So they quite unambiguously dropped Jefferson from the history of Enlightenment and his impact on the revolutions from 1750 to the present. No one claimed that they dropped Jefferson entirely, so the description of what they did regarding him is fairly accurate.

Here s why:

The authors of the American Declaration of Independence, the United States Bill of Rights, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, and the Polish-Lithuanian Constitution of May 3, 1791, were motivated by Enlightenment principles.[1]

The terminology "Enlightenment" or "Age of Enlightenment" does not represent a single movement or school of thought, for these philosophies were often mutually contradictory or divergent. The Enlightenment was less a set of ideas than it was a set of values.

For as much as Thomas Jefferson WAS an Enlightened Man, he did not contribute to that which is coined "The Enlightenment" He learned from it, he learned from these great noted Philosophers and Writers. To say that Thomas Jefferson was Part of the Enlightenment would be inappropriate, as he was a slave owner. That is why, through his education and learning about the Enlightenment, he was so vocally against slavery.

---------- Post added at 05:54 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:28 PM ----------

Originally Posted by dippin

Idlyllic,
Yeah, people reporting on the issue may have passion and biases of their own. But those issues outlined in the post you presented here are misleading at best.

The reference about the second amendment was introduced to a section on freedom of speech, not just "citizenship" in general (and one of the republican representatives actually suggested creating a new section to discuss the second amendment, but it was ignored and now the right to bear arms is discussed as part of the freedom of speech section).

And then the person nitpicks the more moderate points while completely ignoring the more egregious examples.

I'd still like to see the people who are so certain that the denouncing of the Tx school board is so unfair deal with the actual issues there.

Why should freedom of religion and separation of church and state not be taught? Why should the word capitalism be replaced by "free enterprise?" Why should Hayek feature prominently in economics? Why should more attention be paid to republicans who voted for the civil rights act than to Cesar Chaves and Marshall? Why should Jefferson be excluded and Aquinas included in the discussion of thinkers who influenced revolutions (including American independence)? Why is it ok for a school board to reduce sociology to "blaming society?" Why must a section include a discussion of how the free market led to Europe's success? One person even justified the removal of Oscar Romero from the list of people who fought against oppression because he didn't even have a movie made about him (which is actually false). Why should the words democracy and democratic be removed from all the texts?


And those members are called ultra right because most of them came to the school board after defeating moderate to conservative republicans.

Because our kids growing up as capitalist “PIGS” sounds a whole lot worse than that of a “Free Enterprising” Nation, which is what we are, we are not capitalists, at least I’m not, I do not capitalize on weakness.

They aren’t saying NOT to teach freedom of religion and separation of state and church, they are saying let’s not spend a month interpreting what that means, or where it came from, or why they said it, it simply IS, FREEDOM OF SPEECH and SEPARATION OF STATE AND CHURCH.

You know, the mention of Easter does not exist in a Texas school book, kids don’t hear the word Christmas, in text, until the 6th grade. I’m sure if the hard core conservatives had their way we would have heard about mangers in the gyms by now. Some you people sound so left; it seems to me you’ll never be right.

The whole, “TX is changing all the nations’ schoolbooks.” More garbage, each state has its own board that determines what books they will use and what will be in them. I’m sure that will make you all feel a little better, God forbid you all get Texas’ cooties….. aarrgg.

Well, all I can think about as to why they may try to be reducing the whole democrat/republican jargon is because the base definition of these fine words are simply put to better use in saying that we as a nation, ARE a Republic. We voted that democratically.

The new sociology will express “the importance of personal responsibility for life choices” the exact opposite of the cop-out, blame society for all my problems.

I’m getting to the rest, but I think I’ve ignored my kids enough for a while. Thanks for the great conversation. I’LL BE BACK.

p.s. after reading my post, it appears to me I may be coming across as name calling or judgmental, that is not my intent. I mean no personal attacks on anyone or their beliefs, I just get a little heated, and bitchy.

No jokes about heated and bitchy, I think the last "We've already established" blah blah blah, joke was sufficient, albeit old as Hefner himself.

[snowy]

Originally Posted by Idyllic

The whole, “TX is changing all the nations’ schoolbooks.” More garbage, each state has its own board that determines what books they will use and what will be in them. I’m sure that will make you all feel a little better, God forbid you all get Texas’ cooties….. aarrgg.

Textbook publishers use the TX recommendations to shape what goes in the nation's textbooks, as Texas is the largest purchaser of social studies textbooks in the nation (or any textbook,for that matter). Basically, what other states say doesn't really matter because Texas is the 2-ton gorilla that must be catered to.

[roachboy]

For as much as Thomas Jefferson WAS an Enlightened Man, he did not contribute to that which is coined "The Enlightenment" He learned from it, he learned from these great noted Philosophers and Writers. To say that Thomas Jefferson was Part of the Enlightenment would be inappropriate, as he was a slave owner. That is why, through his education and learning about the Enlightenment, he was so vocally against slavery.

this is both historically wrong and logically incoherent. as a major force in articulating the goals of the american revolution, jefferson is both a figure of the enlightenment, whatever that ultimately means (it's usually synonymous with secularization, which is obviously why the texas school board wants to erase it, replace it with absurdities like calvin and aquinas) AND a significant figure within it. the question of slavery is not a defining feature of enlightenment figures. if it had been, you wouldn't have seen...o i dunno....the european reaction to the haitian revolution when the slave population of haiti had the audacity to imagine that ideas like the universal equality of man referred to them. you don't have the facts straight.

you don't know what sociology is.

you imagine that up to now there are no debates within a school cirriculum about separation of church and state? quite the contrary. what the ultra-right wants is to undermine the idea that there should be such a separation. that's the clear interpretation that one can arrive at simply by juxtaposing information *about which there is no dispute across reports** about what the texas school board did.

like i say, i find most of these moves to be the stuff undertaken by buffoons and because that's the case expect that it'll backfire pretty roundly on not only the school board but on the right in general. knowing that this is coming, it's convenient for the right to begin playing the victim now...o boo hoo poor us we're getting hostile press from these articles that say what the school board actually did.

[dippin]

I think it is very interesting that the biggest proponents of an idea of American exceptionalism want to remove the writer of the declaration of independence from a discussion on the Enlightenment.

And considering that conservative movements and even Gingrich and Schlafly became topics, I think it is pretty significant that a discussion on the separation of church and state was deemed not worthy of similar treatment.

And please, point to me the texts in "old sociology" where it is stated that people aren't responsible for their life choices.

The debate over "republic/democracy" and the ban on the word democracy is laughable at best.

Finally, the whole "free enterprise" vs "capitalism" debate is too Orwellian to take seriously.

[Idyllic]

Originally Posted by snowy

Textbook publishers use the TX recommendations to shape what goes in the nation's textbooks, as Texas is the largest purchaser of social studies textbooks in the nation (or any textbook,for that matter). Basically, what other states say doesn't really matter because Texas is the 2-ton gorilla that must be catered to.

You must have missed this;

Fox inaccurately reporting State Board of Education action

Fox: Textbooks adopted in Texas will be used classrooms across the country.

The truth: Each state has its own textbook selection process. Publishers may offer other states the Texas edition of a book but they are not required to select it.

I didn't make this up, Fox News did, which surprises me, kinda. But, either way, it's not true that other states are REQUIRED to teach from the same textbooks.

[Charlatan]

Idyllic, the point isn't that they are require to do so but that many states find it economical sound (i.e. they are small states and can't afford to producer their own text books) to use the Texas textbooks. Their share of the textbook in the free market is large enough that it influences the many other states.

[Pearl Trade]

There is a ray of hope for our kids: NO ONE EVEN READS THE TEXTBOOK.

Seriously. When they read it, it goes in one ear and out the other. Most of these kids won't even care what changes they made. I believe it's wrong what they're doing, but come on, this isn't a reason to think our youth are in a world of hurt.

[SecretMethod70]

Pearl Trade: You're right, but the sad fact is most of the teachers use the textbook to tell them what to teach. I was lucky enough to have some very good teachers in school, but a lot of kids aren't so lucky. It was really sad to see some of the people that were going to become teachers when I was in college.

[snowy]

Originally Posted by SecretMethod70

Pearl Trade: You're right, but the sad fact is most of the teachers use the textbook to tell them what to teach. I was lucky enough to have some very good teachers in school, but a lot of kids aren't so lucky. It was really sad to see some of the people that were going to become teachers when I was in college.

Ugh, yes. I have worked as a substitute educational aide in the past. While subbing during the 3rd week of the school year, I met a 6th grade social studies teacher who refused to teach her class because the teacher's edition hadn't arrived yet. The class had been a study hall for three weeks. That is seriously disturbing.

[dippin]

Originally Posted by Pearl Trade

There is a ray of hope for our kids: NO ONE EVEN READS THE TEXTBOOK.

Seriously. When they read it, it goes in one ear and out the other. Most of these kids won't even care what changes they made. I believe it's wrong what they're doing, but come on, this isn't a reason to think our youth are in a world of hurt.

It is true that the state of education is pitiful even before these changes. Heck, I know plenty of schools that showed "The Patriot" as an accurate depiction of the revolutionary war, or "far and away" as an accurate depiction of Irish immigration. Still, changes like these have weird ways of becoming institutionalized that make this noteworthy.

[Idyllic]

Originally Posted by roachboy

this is both historically wrong and logically incoherent. as a major force in articulating the goals of the american revolution, jefferson is both a figure of the enlightenment, whatever that ultimately means (it's usually synonymous with secularization, which is obviously why the texas school board wants to erase it, replace it with absurdities like calvin and aquinas) AND a significant figure within it. the question of slavery is not a defining feature of enlightenment figures. if it had been, you wouldn't have seen...o i dunno....the european reaction to the haitian revolution when the slave population of haiti had the audacity to imagine that ideas like the universal equality of man referred to them. you don't have the facts straight.

you don't know what sociology is.

you imagine that up to now there are no debates within a school cirriculum about separation of church and state? quite the contrary. what the ultra-right wants is to undermine the idea that there should be such a separation. that's the clear interpretation that one can arrive at simply by juxtaposing information *about which there is no dispute across reports** about what the texas school board did.

like i say, i find most of these moves to be the stuff undertaken by buffoons and because that's the case expect that it'll backfire pretty roundly on not only the school board but on the right in general. knowing that this is coming, it's convenient for the right to begin playing the victim now...o boo hoo poor us we're getting hostile press from these articles that say what the school board actually did.

Voltaire, François-Marie Arouet 1694 – 1778
Voltaire is one of, if not the, most dominant Enlightenment figures, and his death is sometimes cited as the end of the period. Voltaire was one of several Enlightenment figures (along with Montesquieu, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau) whose works and ideas influenced important thinkers of both the American and French Revolutions.

Jefferson passed down his ideas, many of them still fresh and controversial (the complete separation of church and state, the suspicion that money would conspire with power to establish a sinister homegrown aristocracy), a few of them outlandish and fanciful (his suggestion that the Constitution be revisited every 19 years so that each generation could establish its own government) and a couple of them that were repugnant even to some folks in his day (for example, his pseudoscientific notion that blacks are the mental inferiors of whites). All of them are impossible to ignore, though, because of the care he took in writing them down.

Yeah, that’s what a great philosopher of the enlightenment would think….

The Enlightenment stressed reason, logic, criticism and freedom of thought over dogma, blind faith and superstition.

Logic wasn’t a new invention, having been used by the ancient Greeks, but it was now included in a worldview which argued that empirical observation and the examination of human life could reveal the truth behind human society and self, as well as the universe.

All were deemed to be rational and understandable.

The Enlightenment held that there could be a science of man, and that the history of mankind was one of progress, which could be continued with the right thinking.

Consequently, the Enlightenment also argued that human life and character could be improved through the use of education and reason.

How reasonable is it to think someone was inferior “mentally” merely because of their skin color, to hate slavery and yet own slaves, to be an opponent of a permanent standing military, and yet development the U.S. Marines.

Jefferson was an amazing man, but in no way does he rank in the leagues of someone like Voltaire. Jefferson was an enigma, contradictory and fabulous at the same time. He was a very learned man.

All the great things we can wish upon this incredible man still don’t add up to placing him with someone like Voltaire and other fundamental concept developers of “The Enlightenment”. He did learn a lot from it though, and I would agree that he should be placed in the “Political Enlightenment” ranks.

Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science (with which it is informally synonymous) that uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop and refine a body of knowledge and theory about human social activity, often with the goal of applying such knowledge to the pursuit of social welfare.

Sociology is both topically and methodologically a very broad discipline. Its traditional focuses have included social stratification (i.e., class relations), religion, secularization, modernity, culture and deviance, and its approaches have included both qualitative and quantitative research techniques.

As much of what humans do fits under the category of social structure and agency, sociology has gradually expanded its focus to further subjects, such as medical, military and penal institutions, the internet, and even the role of social activity in the development of scientific knowledge.

As much of what humans DO fits under the category of social structure, this reality of ones social responsibility in their decisions falls under the umbrella of Sociology.

All they are trying to say is that we need to stop blaming society when we make the wrong decisions. Taking responsibility for our actions, regardless of external bullshit from our society, how is that not sociology, read a dictionary.

It is the Science of Social relations. Like, well, I played those videos games that where all about killing, so I killed. Or I heard that music that said life sucks, so I shot my teacher. This would fall under the study of sociology, this is the study of society and why we make the decisions we do.

Wow, I can’t believe your being so petty in your feeble attempt of making me appear ignorant.

---------- Post added at 10:50 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:47 PM ----------

Originally Posted by dippin

I think it is very interesting that the biggest proponents of an idea of American exceptionalism want to remove the writer of the declaration of independence from a discussion on the Enlightenment.

And considering that conservative movements and even Gingrich and Schlafly became topics, I think it is pretty significant that a discussion on the separation of church and state was deemed not worthy of similar treatment.

And please, point to me the texts in "old sociology" where it is stated that people aren't responsible for their life choices.

The debate over "republic/democracy" and the ban on the word democracy is laughable at best.

Finally, the whole "free enterprise" vs "capitalism" debate is too Orwellian to take seriously.

What’s with the hating Clérel de Tocqueville. His concept of American Exceptionalism had nothing to do with superiority, more along the lines of unique qualities that had not been so prolific in other parts of the world, that he had known of anyway. He was a liberal; do you lefties not like anyone. He was on you alls side.

Is anybody out there proud of whom we are as a nation anymore or what we have done as a people, and I mean all Americans?

I think I will find a topic with less tyrannical “opponents.”

It amazes me that liberals think conservatives are trying to take over when the loudest voices always seem to be the lefties screaming how WRONG everything is and yet do nothing to make it right but continuing to complain, and point fingers at those trying to get things done. I’m going to go do something more constructive than continue this verbal ping pong game, like wash my dog.

---------- Post added at 10:51 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:50 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Charlatan

Idyllic, the point isn't that they are require to do so but that many states find it economical sound (i.e. they are small states and can't afford to producer their own text books) to use the Texas textbooks. Their share of the textbook in the free market is large enough that it influences the many other states.

True.

[dippin]

talk about strawmen...

How did this become a discussion over American pride or what the "lefties" complain about? How are any of those things related to the topic at hand?

[Charlatan]

It's funny. What many conservatives see as negativity, I see as putting thing in a proper context.

A conservative would see something like the School of Americas as an attempt to bring higher education and develop strong ties with America's southern neighbours, I would see it as an attempt to subvert existing governments through external influence, ultimately supporting military dictatorships.

It's something of the past. It was, in my opinion a horrible thing for the US to have done. From the conservative world view, we should not talk about these sorts of things. They are too negative. I think we should talk about them so we don't do them again... or can at least recognize them when they reoccur, for what they are.

It isn't about America bashing per se. I simply feel you need the whole, accurate picture in order to move forward and build a better way.

[roachboy]

idyllic...you can believe whatever you like. it's fine. this is a debate.

but i don't think you know what the enlighenment was beyond a wikipedia level. for example, there's a long debate about how to position the french revolution with respect to it. if you position the french revolution as coming out of enlightenment ideas---even as there is a real problem with this notion of the enlightenment being one thing, such that some fine morning in the early 18th century a couple dudes in scotland woke up thinking "you know, maybe there is no need for this god character to explain natural phenomena" and suddenly everything changed, a kind of mobile facepalm moment having been set abroad in the land---anyway, if you position the french revolution as an expression of enlightenment ideas, then you have to put the american revolution in line with all of them and not make some silly distinction between what thinkin fellers like voltaire said (dont get me wrong, i like voltaire) and what "men of action" like jefferson said or did. the american revolution was both a cause (in triggering the bond default that triggered the aristocratic revolt that set things into motion in 1787) and an inspiration (for things like the revolutionaries themselves, for the declaration of the rights of man, for the way they proceeded)....

which means that you cannot simply erase jefferson.
and you really cannot erase him and replace him with a string of reactionaries.
not if coherence is a criterion.
but hey, this is texas and these are conservatives. so who really cares?


i'm not debating your kinda arbitrary notion of what sociology is. it's early in the morning, the sun is out and i'm in a decent mood. kinda like what happened with those scottich dudes that explains how Enlightenment suddenly appeared as a Thing. whatever.


and this is a textbook bidness. the extent to which a textbook gets caught is probably a function of the budget of the school district which would determine what real information can be procured for the students to read. textbooks are best as expensive coasters and doorstops.

so naturally this disinformation will probably disproportionately be inflicted on kids in poorer school districts. it's the conservative way.

[Idyllic]

Originally Posted by roachboy

idyllic...you can believe whatever you like. it's fine. this is a debate.

but i don't think you know what the enlighenment was beyond a wikipedia level. for example, there's a long debate about how to position the french revolution with respect to it. if you position the french revolution as coming out of enlightenment ideas---even as there is a real problem with this notion of the enlightenment being one thing, such that some fine morning in the early 18th century a couple dudes in scotland woke up thinking "you know, maybe there is no need for this god character to explain natural phenomena" and suddenly everything changed, a kind of mobile facepalm moment having been set abroad in the land---anyway, if you position the french revolution as an expression of enlightenment ideas, then you have to put the american revolution in line with all of them and not make some silly distinction between what thinkin fellers like voltaire said (dont get me wrong, i like voltaire) and what "men of action" like jefferson said or did. the american revolution was both a cause (in triggering the bond default that triggered the aristocratic revolt that set things into motion in 1787) and an inspiration (for things like the revolutionaries themselves, for the declaration of the rights of man, for the way they proceeded)....

which means that you cannot simply erase jefferson.
and you really cannot erase him and replace him with a string of reactionaries.
not if coherence is a criterion.
but hey, this is texas and these are conservatives. so who really cares?


i'm not debating your kinda arbitrary notion of what sociology is. it's early in the morning, the sun is out and i'm in a decent mood. kinda like what happened with those scottich dudes that explains how Enlightenment suddenly appeared as a Thing. whatever.


and this is a textbook bidness. the extent to which a textbook gets caught is probably a function of the budget of the school district which would determine what real information can be procured for the students to read. textbooks are best as expensive coasters and doorstops.

so naturally this disinformation will probably disproportionately be inflicted on kids in poorer school districts. it's the conservative way.

Dogs Clean.

America had nothing to do with “The Enlightenment” that was all the U.K.s’ baggage. Coming out of the middle ages, monarchy, religion, all the trappings that held people back, pegged them in a hole. It was a time of great thinkers taking stair steps from the time of Fancis Bacon and his Scientific method(thank-you God) to Descartes and his critical rationalism to Locke and his tabula rasa to Hume and his “A Treatise of Human Nature” to D'Holbach and his “Systèm de la natureto” All of which from around Lockes’ time had the advancements of Newton and his, well you know that one. All this to find God, amazing how faith has driven so many so far, and yet man still continues to try and deny something bigger than ourselves, how egotistical is that.

Ah, yes, I remember now, their was Diderot the Imperialist, Voltaire the Anti-Christian, (conformed religion I’m sure) and Rousseau the Musician and Political Economist and their collective works which became the first 11 volumes of the Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences, the first “real” textbooks, as they were pretty much excepted by “everybody” as educational. Bet those 11 books weren’t skewed…. even if later Rousseau came to regard the Encyclopédie as the work of the devil. By the way I don’t believe in the devil, just God.

Anyway, it wasn’t like Kant just woke up one day in Germany and decided the Enlightenment had arrived, it had been building and singing its way throughout the land. Kant’s Categorical Imperative:

("Act only on that maxim (intention) whereby at the same time you can will that it shall become a universal law" Another formulation is: "Always act to treat humanity, whether in yourself or in others, as an end in itself, never merely as a means." What Kant means by this is that a rational being should not be used as a means to another person's happiness; if we use another person as a means to our ends then we have removed that person's autonomy.)

This thinking was a culmination of his elders and his own perceptions of the world and his own attempts to find and to prove Gods’ existence, especially after reading the 11 volumes of the encyclopedia, lord help us all (yes tongue in cheek). Alas he couldn’t prove God existed, no one can, that’s why it’s called faith, and it’s only blind if you are. And, no, faith doesn’t make you a conservative either.

Kant attempted to show how philosophy could prove the existence of God. Unfortunately, for him his previous work showed that we could not know reality directly as thing-in-itself. What is real in itself is beyond our experience. Even if God exists, we can not know God as he really is.
For Kant the Christian could have faith in God, and this faith would be consonant with reason and the categorical imperative. Given that human beings have the autonomy to create moral values, it would not be irrational to believe in a God who gives purpose to the moral realm.

By now almost all literate and affluent man had read those damned books, shit, and that was it we were ready to acknowledge science and our new place within our scientific world, religion was no longer the chains that would bind humans to their king. Hell, religion would no longer even bind us together anymore, as it once did; now it would tear us apart. But faith remained.

Faith, and hard core religion, (gotta love those protestants’ with a nod to you Martin Luther) who would eventually get the nerve up to leave that catholic/monarcy and sail away with their fabulous books, not really, to the New World eventually to tell the Tories and their kind to kindly “kiss their asses” we don’t want you stinkin tea, we got Indians to kill, your no help, this slavery shit you keep sending us is rotten, get the fuck out, oh by the way, we quit. Have you met George……And American was on her way, God I love that. Anyway, back to Tom. You intentionally drag me off-track so my post is so damn long that nobody will read, I got your number roachboy.

Thomas Jefferson WAS a reactionary.

The Revolution was a reaction of the teachings from “The Enlightenment.”

Thomas Jefferson resides within the realms of one of the first Political Enlightenment thinkers, but he was not a card carrying member of “The Enlightenment.”

“The Enlightenment” was a specific time when mankind FIRST realized his place within the world, his moral place, his “natural” place, as regarding science and nature, i.e. gravity, solar system, encyclopedias, etc. Thomas Jefferson KNEW his place in that world, it was as an American President.

“The Enlightenment” was considered over when Jefferson was only 16 years old, perhaps this is why his thinking was so developed by the enlightenment thinkers, but it doesn’t change the fact that he just doesn’t fit there, nor does he belong their.

He was his OWN MAN, A NEW THINKER IN A NEW WORLD. HE WAS AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM AT WORK, in its purest meaning. He may have been contradictory, even controversial in his time and ours. But I still think he was one of the greatest Americans to walk these grounds. Still, not a member of “The Enlightenment.”

Purest meaning of American Exceptionalism, taking into account Tocquevilles’ development and definition of the term:

Born out of revolution, the United States is a country organized around an ideology which includes a set of dogmas about the nature of a good society. Americanism, as different people have pointed out, is an "ism" or ideology in the same way that communism or fascism or liberalism are isms. As G. K. Chesterton put it: "America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed.

That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence. . . ." As noted in the Introduction, the nation's ideology can be described in five words: liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, populism, and laissezfaire.

The revolutionary ideology which became the American Creed is liberalism in its eighteenth- and nineteenth-century meanings, as distinct from conservative Toryism, statist communitarianism, mercantilism, and noblesse oblige dominant in monarchical, state-church-formed cultures.
Other countries' senses of themselves are derived from a common history. Winston Churchill once gave vivid evidence to the difference between a national identity rooted in history and one defined by ideology in objecting to a proposal in 1940 to outlaw the anti-war Communist Party. In a speech in the House of Commons, Churchill said that as far as he knew, the Communist Party was composed of Englishmen and he did not fear an Englishman.
In Europe, nationality is related to community, and thus one cannot become un-English or un-Swedish. Being an American, however, is an ideological commitment. It is not a matter of birth. Those who reject American values are un-American.

The American Revolution sharply weakened the noblesse oblige, hierarchically rooted, organic community values which had been linked to Tory sentiments, and enormously strengthened the individualistic, egalitarian, and anti-statist ones which had been present in the settler and religious background of the colonies.

These values were evident in the twentieth-century fact that, as H. G. Wells pointed out close to ninety years ago, the United States not only has lacked a viable socialist party, but also has never developed a British or European-type Conservative or Tory party. Rather, America has been dominated by pure bourgeois, middle-class individualistic values.
As Wells put it: "Essentially America is a middle-class [which has] become a community and so its essential problems are the problems of a modern individualistic society, stark and clear." He enunciated a theory of America as a liberal society, in the classic anti-statist meaning of the term:

It is not difficult to show for example, that the two great political parties in America represent only one English party, the middle-class Liberal party. . . . There are no Tories . . . and no Labor Party. . . . [T]he new world [was left] to the Whigs and Nonconformists and to those less constructive, less logical, more popular and liberating thinkers who became Radicals in England, and Jeffersonians and then Democrats in America.

All Americans are, from the English point of view, Liberals of one sort or another. . . . The liberalism of the eighteenth century was essentially the rebellion . . . against the monarchical and aristocratic state--against hereditary privilege, against restrictions on bargains. Its spirit was essentially anarchistic--the antithesis of Socialism. It was anti-State.

Hell, he had his OWN MOVEMENT, JEFFERSONIANS, o.k. followers, still, I kind of like that. He was beyond “The Enlightenment.” He had learned from it, moved past it, taken from it what he needed and made it his own.
HE Was An Enlightened Man, educated by those who taught him. Stop holding him back with those/his intellectual elders. Let him be his own man, he deserves it.

I wonder, did anyone every read textbooks. It would seem that we have all learned in one way or another from a textbook, and I would believe that somehow we have all made it to this point, regardless of or because of that education. We all have different opinions taken from different perspectives, but unless you just didn’t go to school, or your parents home schooled you with books they wrote themselves, you read textbooks that were created by “Professionals” as best they could, and I would like to think, as crazy as we all are, we turned out all right. And their was some crazy shit in our textbooks, talk about skewed, and even crazier in our parents, let alone our grandparents’, have you every read that shit. Remember when the best education a woman could get was a Secretarial Degree; don’t forget how to make the coffee. Jiminy Cricket.

I know, that was a lot, I’d been saving it up. I haven’t felt this intellectually alive in years, oh doggy this is fun. AND NO I’M NOT BEING SARCASTIC, this is fun, but that’s just my perspective.

Bus. Damn it, I'm never gonna get those dishes clean.

[SecretMethod70]

Video: Don't Mess With Textbooks | The Daily Show | Comedy Central

[GreyWolf]

An interesting (horribly depressing??) account of the meeting can be found at:

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