This story just points up the main reason we need separation of church and state at all levels. When evangelicals get their paws on things they know nothing about they immediately go about rewriting history to suit their own warped view points.The sad thing is that these text books are used by many states outside of Texas, probably even in Indiana. The kids get robbed of a real education on a daily basis and these people want to make it worse. Leftists do a bad enough job, but the far right evangelicals are even worse.
via The Guardian
via The Guardian
Several changes include sidelining Thomas Jefferson, who favoured separation of church and state, while introducing a new focus on the "significant contributions" of pro-slavery Confederate leaders during the civil war.
The new curriculum asserts that "the right to keep and bear arms" is an important element of a democratic society. Study of Sir Isaac Newton is dropped in favour of examining scientific advances through military technology.
There is also a suggestion that the anti-communist witch-hunt by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s may have been justified.
The education board has dropped references to the slave trade in favour of calling it the more innocuous "Atlantic triangular trade", and recasts the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as driven by Islamic fundamentalism.