[Uncivil] Texas approves textbooks with Moses as Founding Father

[kentonio]

Once again, fringe people are everywhere.
You make yourself look just as stupid by making a statement that it's ALL textbooks in ALL schools.
Get a grip.

Setting aside for a moment that Texas schoolbooks actually have a knock-on effect nationwide due to their size and purchasing power (I'm sure this has been discussed here previously), would it actually be that much better if it was just Texan kids who were having their educations ruined?

[C0ckney]

interesting, thanks loin.

[giblets]

If Ben is teaching them, he tells them the United States liberated the natives from the evil British.

[loinburger]

interesting, thanks loin.

It was never explicitly stated by my teachers or textbooks, but it was strongly implied that the American Revolution was ultimately a good thing but happened mostly for the wrong reasons (initially we just replaced a monarchy with an oligarchy, since for the most part only white male property owners could vote).

[SlowwHand]

It's not Texas public schools, is the point.
Should I draw you a picture?

[loinburger]

It's not Texas public schools, is the point.
Should I draw you a picture?

Texas textbooks will teach public school students that the Founding Fathers based the Constitution on the Bible, and the American system of democracy was inspired by Moses.

Please draw us a picture - which textbooks are Texas public schools using if they're not using Texas texbooks?

[Kidlicious]

Guess what? All 50 states teach crap in high school. All the textbooks are crap.

[kentonio]

Not enough casual sexism in there for you?

[C0ckney]

If Ben is teaching them, he tells them the United States liberated the natives from the evil British.

and since they didn't own the land, nor even have title documents, it was right and proper to take it!

It was never explicitly stated by my teachers or textbooks, but it was strongly implied that the American Revolution was ultimately a good thing but happened mostly for the wrong reasons (initially we just replaced a monarchy with an oligarchy, since for the most part only white male property owners could vote).

according to my wife, who's a teacher and interested in this sort of thing, here the story starts with the discovery of brazil by the portuguese. the indians were lazy and unsuitable for work (this idea persists until the present day) so the portuguese had to import black slaves, and then the story of independence is told the interactions between the whites and indians (things like língua geral) are rarely mentioned. interactions between the blacks and indians are only mentioned in terms of explaining how there many people with black and indian ancestry; next to nothing is said about the communities they formed and the cultures that emerged.

there were laws passed in recent years that allow for the teaching of african and indigenous culture (during the dictatorship, when land theft and massacres of indigenous people were carried out, they didn't want teachers talking about such things), but as they optional and attitudes take a long time to change, i doubt things will progress much in the near future.

[Elok]

The brits were unreasonable. They had a ****ing king. Royalty

Not sure why you feel differently.

Briefly: our settler-types out west kept stealing land from the Indians, in spite of endless treaties by the Brits that we would stop. This irritated the Indians and led to wars and massacres, which in turn irked the Brits. Said Brits lacked the manpower to police such an enormous frontier, but they repeatedly ordered the bumpkins to knock it off with the land theft. This merely made the locals ornery, and defense costs for the colonies kept rising.

So they tried to recoup their losses on the colonies by raising taxes, which made smuggling more profitable. Most of the northern FFs had at least partial ownership in smuggling schemes, and got mad when the Brits cracked down on their activities. These taxes were "without representation," but that is irrelevant since our population was too low for any fair representation to make a difference. Anyway, lots of angry northern smugglers. Unrest grew quite violent in the north, especially in Boston; many of the "outrages" cited in the DoI refer to purely local issues there, brought on by royal attempts to restore law and order.

Southern planters were also resentful of the Brits, but in a passive way. They thought of themselves as aristocrats, but their slave estates weren't profitable enough to let them live that way, so folks like Washington and Jefferson always thought their British purchase agents were cheating them on all the fancy imported crap they bought. This got generalized into a dislike of all things British. But they didn't get rowdy until the idiot governor of VA, Lord Dunmore, threatened to arm their slaves against them if they didn't cut out the seditious talk. That drew them into the fight.

The war itself was prosecuted with great ineptness. The British took over a couple of Northern cities, then hung around scratching their balls. At one point we had the opportunity to kidnap an enemy general--I think it was Howe, not sure. Washington and his men conferred over whether to try it, but Hamilton said no, on the grounds that, if we took that general out of the picture, the king would have great difficulty finding someone equally incompetent to replace him. That's almost verbatim what he said, we have the original letter.

It lasted about five years anyway because we were hampered by the same revolutionary ideals we now celebrate. The colonists were too leery of authority to allow any government to tax them, so everything was funded by endlessly printed money. Cue hyperinflation. Our troops were paid in Monopoly money, when they were paid at all. Said troops were mostly militia, because we were also reluctant to have a standing army. Our experienced soldiers kept leaving once their twelve months were up. It drove Washington nuts. Good thing we were endlessly bankrolled by the French government, huh?

Basically, our whole concept of our founding is preposterously whitewashed. I don't see the point of getting angry because Texas replaced our stupid secular myth with a stupid religious myth. We had something that served to flatter us one way; they made it into a different kind of lie. Big deal.

[ZEE]

Elok is a nerd.

[pchang]

For evil to win, it is only necessary for good men to stand by and do nothing.

[Kidlicious]

Moses never even entered into the Promised Land.

[Uncle Sparky]

For evil to win, it is only necessary for good men to stand by and do nothing.

Edmund Burke was a Founding Father, or a pilgrim? I'm losing track. Which state claims that?

[Dinner]

If you dare to argue against their fiction then they just claim it is an example of left wing bias in the media. The American right wing has always been a joke like that.