We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Sunday, June 17, 2012

How Texas Inflicts Bad Textbooks on Us

Click here to access article by Gail Collins from The New York Review of Books. 
No matter where you live, if your children go to public schools, the textbooks they use were very possibly written under Texas influence. If they graduated with a reflexive suspicion of the concept of separation of church and state and an unexpected interest in the contributions of the National Rifle Association to American history, you know who to blame.
The author provides some information on one method used by the One Percent to dumb down public school education that children of the 99 Percent receive. Ideas and knowledge can be very powerful; thus the political operatives of the One Percent work hard to make sure that they control this "education" to serve their interests which broadly speaking is a public that is incapable of critical thinking.



Textbooks in US public schools are being screened by some of the most reactionary elements of the One Percent ruling class such as these three Texas State Board of Education members Cynthia Dunbar, Barbara Cargill, and Gail Lowe discussing curriculum standards, Austin, May 2008....

See also this and this.
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