On Friday, the Texas Board of Education did something you won’t believe they didn’t do a long time ago:

Among the changes approved Friday was a mandate that teachers or professors be given priority for serving on the textbook review panels for subjects in their areas of expertise. They also enable the board to appoint outside experts to check objections raised by review panels and ensure they are based on fact, not ideology. “It won’t eliminate politics, but it will make it where it’s a more informed process,” said Thomas Ratliff, a Republican board member who pushed for the changes, which he said “force us to find qualified people, leave them alone, and let them do their jobs.”

Wow! Giving teachers and other subject experts a say in which textbooks students should be using! That’s so… obviously the right thing to do.

Despite voting in favor of the new rules, one of the conservative board members, David Bradley (below), is still upset, calling the change anti-Christian:

[Bradley] said he did his best to insert language mitigating what was approved. But he said “liberals are really trying to make it difficult for Christians and conservatives to have a voice in public education.”

Bullshit. Christians, conservatives, liberals, and everyone else will still have a voice in public education. No one has taken that away. The difference now is curriculum decisions will have to be made based on the facts of each subject, not the religious ideologies of the decision-makers.

You would think a state that’s been a laughingstock for years because of the way it screwed up science and history curricula would fully embrace the new rules. Even if not everyone’s 100% on board with it, it’s the first step to fix a very, very broken system.

(via Religion Clause)



