Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Dumb Like Mom and Dad

Honestly, I have always thought of the Texas GOP as the dregs of American society (and madly applauded any move on their part to secede from the Union), but Krugman points out that their ignorance-based ravings are now endorsed by the leadership in DC.

The Texas GOP, as WaPo blogger Valerie Strauss points out, opposes early childhood education, sex education, and multicultural education, but the part Krugman is pointing to is their dislike of "Knowledge-Based Education – 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." The Party has tried to backtrack from this position after being ridiculed, most notably by Stephen Colbert, but that's not even the dumbest part of their education platform.

As Colbert would say, "The minds of our young people are being poisoned by knowledge..."

2 comments:

Me and the Professor said...

It might be a sign of the times that I, at least, haven't worked on any separate Texas editions of textbooks in quite a while (or at least a sign that there are not many textbooks being produced). Maybe school publishing has decided Texas is just too idiotic to be worth it...?

KAZ said...

I see it mostly on Government/American History textbooks. Those Texans love to rewrite their history. See Prentice Hall's "Living Democracy," McGraw-Hill's "The American Democracy," Norton's "We the People," all with recent TX editions.