The Republican Party of Texas recently adopted their 2012 platform (PDF)… it’s full of all sorts of horrible ideas (faith-based drug rehab, repealing the minimum wage, no gay people in the military), but one portion of it really sticks out if you care about educating children:

“We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.”

That just happened. Seriously.

Republicans are against critical thinking because it could challenge what parents teach their kids, even when they’re wrong.

But what if the kids want to believe Creationism? Doesn’t matter! We can’t have them challenging their parents’ faith.

But what about teaching them to question what pseudo-historians like David Barton say? Nope! Just believe what you’re told. You’re too young to be asking questions.

But what about teaching kids to discern truth from fiction? Blasphemy! Whatever Republicans tell you is truth. Why question that?

Cenk Uygur summarizes the GOP thought-process perfectly: “Wouldn’t it be great if everybody in Texas was as dumb as we are, and then everybody would be Republicans?”

Meanwhile, the word “God” appears 12 times in the GOP Platform.

If you’re an atheist, the Republican Party isn’t even trying to reach out to you. Don’t give the satisfaction of your votes.

(Thanks to Don for the link!)



