Wake School Board Rivaled in Incompetence

They're rewriting history, and trying to get rid of too much talk about liberals, you know, like Thomas Jefferson. It is sad that their state's size and buying power means this absurdity is going to get exported across the US.

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I thought this was pretty great, the conservatives didn't feel "capitalist" was PC enough, so they wanted something less offensive :D

CNN had pretty good coverage of this earlier today too, but they haven't posted the video online. So as not to be overwhelming long when posted in text format, here is a partial transcript:

"ROBERTS: Right now in Texas, they are writing their curriculum, and wherever you live, your student may learn their lesson plan or at least learn from it. That's because Texas is one of the largest buyers of textbooks. Joining me now is Dr. Don McElroy, he's pushed for many of the conservative changes, and Mary Helen Berlanga. She has voted against the changes.

Don, let's start with you. Why did you want to undertake the change there is in Texas when it comes to the curriculum?

DR. DON MCELROY, VOTED FOR TEXTBOOK CHANGES: Well, our main goal is to restore balance to the curriculum. If you look at the curriculum, a lot of times when it came to us from these review committees that were working on them, they had some liberal bias. They didn't have an accurate presentation of history. So we are trying to restore some balance.

ROBERTS: OK, let's take a look before we get to Mary Helen Berlanga at some of the changes that you're proposing here to the curriculum, things like excluding Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions, stressing the role of Christianity American history.

Topics of economics, "capitalism," the word replaced by "the free enterprise system." You want to study the unintended consequences of Great Society legislation, Affirmative Action, Title 9.

You have rejected a motion to include the names of Hispanics who died at the Alamo, rejected the inclusion of hip-hop in a list of influential and musical and culture movements, though you did keep country music.

You want to highlight leading conservative groups from the '80s and '90s but not liberal or minority groups, and highlight things like Republican support of the Civil Rights Act.

Mary Helen Berlanga, what are your problems with the changes?

MARY HELEN BERLANGA, VOTED AGAINST TEXTBOOK CHANGES: Well, the changes are not balanced. We had educators that came together and experts that came together with recommended -- with a recommended curriculum or standards. We looked at those and then Don McElroy and others began to make substantive changes according to their ideology."

I think this is a pretty solid reminder of why national elections aren't the only ones that people should pay attention to, and that electing imperfect democrats is often better than the alternative.