Thomas Jefferson kicked out of Texas schools

[Telarus]

Just realized the irony of using those three in that statue.  George Washington never went to church. He'd shove Martha out of the carriage and then ride around for a couple of hours.

That's what he TOLD everyone.

But we know the truth about those missing hours, don't we?

He was an blunt puffin' OG axe murderer of cherry trees.

[Requia ☣]

Just realized the irony of using those three in that statue.  George Washington never went to church. He'd shove Martha out of the carriage and then ride around for a couple of hours. Jefferson wasn't a fan of modern Christianity as that letter and the Jefferson Bible shows. And Franklin... well, he farts in God's general direction!

He went to church, at least for a while.

Then he got up in the middle of service and declared the communion blasphemy.  I don't think he'd have been allowed back in after that.

[Juana]

Just realized the irony of using those three in that statue.  George Washington never went to church. He'd shove Martha out of the carriage and then ride around for a couple of hours. Jefferson wasn't a fan of modern Christianity as that letter and the Jefferson Bible shows. And Franklin... well, he farts in God's general direction!

He went to church, at least for a while.

Then he got up in the middle of service and declared the communion blasphemy.  I don't think he'd have been allowed back in after that.

Link? This is too epic not to be used as ammunition.

I dunno about Texas determining 80% of the text book market--California is damn big too, and we're a little bit more liberal than the other guys for all that's it's worth.

[Elder Iptuous]

Just realized the irony of using those three in that statue.  George Washington never went to church. He'd shove Martha out of the carriage and then ride around for a couple of hours. Jefferson wasn't a fan of modern Christianity as that letter and the Jefferson Bible shows. And Franklin... well, he farts in God's general direction!

He went to church, at least for a while.

Then he got up in the middle of service and declared the communion blasphemy.  I don't think he'd have been allowed back in after that.

Link? This is too epic not to be used as ammunition.

I dunno about Texas determining 80% of the text book market--California is damn big too, and we're a little bit more liberal than the other guys for all that's it's worth.

yeah, i was under the impression that TX came a close second to CA in determining national curriculum....

[Juana]

Just did some research, and while California and Florida are also major players, Texas is king.

...These states are Texas, California, and Florida.

Clearly, publishers cannot afford to produce a textbook for every state and its unique criteria; so each publisher must create a book that meets the criteria of the majority of its clients. So the publishers attempt to meet the combined curricular requirements of the three key adoption states. As a result, the curriculum guidelines for California, Texas, and Florida dominate the scope and sequence of nearly all textbooks published by the four main publishers.

Texas has even more clout among the three dominant states because it allots a certain amount of money per year per student, and by law it must spend all of the allotted money. Publishers desperately want that guaranteed money, so they cater particularly to the Texas curriculum guide, known as Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS). In fact, Tamim Ansary, an editor for nine years at one publishing house and a writer for the others at various times, claims that "TEKS describes what Texas wants and what the entire nation will get."

So the publishers want to satisfy Texas first, but they also need to meet the diverse requirements of Florida and California. Of course, it is also financially important to gain the market of New York and the other states with large populations. So the publishers seek to align the textbooks with the curricular requirements of all of these states. To evaluate their success, they use correlational analysis, computerized key-word searches, and sometimes untrained reviewers to determine how well they comply with these state standards. Harriet Tyson, an education writer, researcher, and consultant, argues that these methods are "superficial," "dysfunctional," and even "destructive" methods of judging the legitimacy of textbooks.

http://www.bjupress.com/resources/articles/t2t/market-driven-textbooks.php

Jesus. Note to PD parents: AP is the way to go, imo. Classes are designed to meet AP standards, which are outside what the states want your kids to know and damn good. They'll learn way more anyway, but I would argue it's closer to what they ought to be learning.

[Requia ☣]

Just realized the irony of using those three in that statue.  George Washington never went to church. He'd shove Martha out of the carriage and then ride around for a couple of hours. Jefferson wasn't a fan of modern Christianity as that letter and the Jefferson Bible shows. And Franklin... well, he farts in God's general direction!

He went to church, at least for a while.

Then he got up in the middle of service and declared the communion blasphemy.  I don't think he'd have been allowed back in after that.

Link? This is too epic not to be used as ammunition.

Don't have one I'm afraid, this tidbit is from a lecture I attended on US religious history.  If I ever see a decent online source I'll try to remember to post it here.

[the last yatto]

Have I mentioned how much I hate it when you're right?   

BAN HISTORY?

[Iason Ouabache]

Just realized the irony of using those three in that statue.  George Washington never went to church. He'd shove Martha out of the carriage and then ride around for a couple of hours. Jefferson wasn't a fan of modern Christianity as that letter and the Jefferson Bible shows. And Franklin... well, he farts in God's general direction!

He went to church, at least for a while.

Then he got up in the middle of service and declared the communion blasphemy.  I don't think he'd have been allowed back in after that.

The links I've found say that we were both wrong. He attended church but refused to stay for the communion. I can't find any quotes about him blaspheming the communion.

[Jenne]

Mandated textbook money + large student population means a lot of textbook buying.

TX also has the distinction of 1) being one of the places that produces not only the damned textbooks but also 2) the TESTS that are WRITTEN that get USED for all the funding...so yeah...that ups the ante quite a bit.

[Iason Ouabache]

What I would like to know is if the textbook writers take one look at these standards and say "No fucking way" or will there be a publisher out there greedy/conservative enough to step up to the plate? How binding are their standards anyways?

[Remington]

What I would like to know is if the textbook writers take one look at these standards and say "No fucking way" or will there be a publisher out there greedy/conservative enough to step up to the plate? How binding are their standards anyways?

Let's face it: there's always going to be someone willing to dumb things down and meet those standards.

[the last yatto]

just as there will be books published saying this book is banned from texas

question is...which will sell more

[Cramulus]

What I would like to know is if the textbook writers take one look at these standards and say "No fucking way" or will there be a publisher out there greedy/conservative enough to step up to the plate? How binding are their standards anyways?

The textbook publishers need to adhere to the standards in order for their books to qualify for sale in that state.

As a publisher, we have to provide the TX review board with a list of all the state standards and on what textbook pages they are covered. They'll go through each reference and squint at it and go "Mmm, they forgot to include a classroom activity about prepositions." They give us a list of all the standards we failed to cover. Then we have 24 hours (which is fucking ABSURD, people stay all night to work on this) to correct the errors, turn it over to production, print out some glossy pages, and overnight them to the TX review board.

If the TX review board thinks we covered all the standards, and there's nothing fucking crazy in there, our book is Listed. When schools are creating their curriculum, they can only pick textbooks which are Listed.



How do the TX standards affect the rest of us?


Textbook publishers create their books based on market size. I work in ESL publishing (we make English as a Second Language books), and the states with the biggest ESL budget/markets are California, Florida, and Texas (or Caflexas, as we call it). So we basically make our books to all three of those states' tastes. There are specific versions of the book made for each of those states, and then everybody else in the country gets the "national version". (which is basically just the california version - shh!)

There are certain issues which we don't touch, simply because they're controversial and would limit where we could sell our books. This includes evolution, Halloween, and anything even remotely religious.

Texas is famous for being really anal about their standards, and many of their standards are just about state pride.

For example, in our last publication cycle, the things we had to correct for Texas were a bunch of garbage. Texas wanted us to mention Texas more explicitly. A few of the readings in the book were changed so that they take place in Texas. In one case we had to change a dog's name from Rex to Tex. (This also meant we needed an artist to shop up the dogs' name tag) In another reading, a nonfictional one about wild horses, Texas told us we should rewrite it about "Wild horses IN TEXAS". Which is silly because there haven't been any wild horses in Texas for 50 years.

FUCK the Texas standards!

[Elder Iptuous]

interesting info, Cram....

to be honest though, we should have simply required you to provide a herd of wild horses FOR TEXAS, in order to make the sale.  Couldn't take more than 24 hours to arrange something like that, right?  isn't there some pissant little state on the east coast that has a bunch you could rustle some from?

seriously, though...  do you know whether it is common for books outside of the ESL market to have a 'national version', and is it often a CA version frequently?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Wow.

So, how did Texas manage to garner this amount of power?