Is It Too Late To Stop The Nonsense?

The Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) finished revising social studies standards for Texas public education for the next decade. After this rewrite of history by these elected non-historians, Texas schoolchildren are now going to be taught that maybe Thomas Jefferson was factually incorrect when he described the First Amendment as "building a wall of separation between church and state," that Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address needs to be balanced by the speeches of Jefferson Davis, and that Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy, who found a red under every bed, didn't have much to be ashamed of after all.

Our children will have to endure a decade of this. Or will they? After the jump, is it too late to stop the nonsense?

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The Dallas Morning News, in an editorial, suggests that a new SBOE that takes office in January, with more moderates and fewer radicals, can revisit these standards and restore some sense and balance. Unfortunately, The Dallas Morning News fails to identify a key barrier. The SBOE's agenda is set by its chairman, who is appointed by the Governor. Unless Texans vote to change the governor, Texans won't get a new SBOE chairman, and the rest of the SBOE will not be able to do anything to correct those egregious standards.

One of the conservative radicals behind the new standards, Cynthia Dunbar, once called public education a "subtly deceptive tool of perversion." In a bitter irony, with her votes for the new SBOE standards, she has brought public education a step closer to matching her own opinion of it.