But let's talk about this book list even though no one will be able to read the books on it. When teachers skipped school on Wednesday to come to Austin to testify in opposition to the new plan to dumb down our kids, certain members of the board made it really clear that there was no problem with this list even though it is almost completely void of contemporary authors and books that might be remotely multi-cultural in nature. Of course, it isn't a surprise that the SBOE would think that the required reading list should be completely white bread in nature. These are the same people that believe that evolution is a myth and that “embarrassing” illustrations of breast and testicular self-exams for cancer detection should be deleted from health textbooks. They also approved math books that had 109,263 errors. In 2003, the SBOE declared the history books they approved to be error free and yet there were still 243 errors. And even if you don't live in Texas, you should be worried. Because we purchase so many textbooks, our decisions dictate what books are sold to the schools in your state.
But none of this to do about the stupid book list is a surprise especially when you have a board chairman like like Don McLeroy. When discussing the state approved book list he said the following:
"What good does it do to put a Chinese story in an English book?" he said. "You learn all these Chinese words, OK. That's not going to help you master ... English. So you really don't want Chinese books with a bunch of crazy Chinese words in them. Why should you take a child's time trying to learn a word that they'll never ever use again?"
He added that some words — such as chow mein — might be useful.
No wonder the kids in this state are fucking stupid.
