Student Busts Biased Textbook »
Posted By Neophile 1 year, 2 months ago in Arts & EntertainmentTalk about a civics lesson: A high-school senior has raised questions about political bias in a popular textbook on U.S. government, and legal scholars and top scientists say the teen's criticism is well-founded.
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sumptuousdigs1 year, 2 months ago
Good post neophile. Matt certainly has a gift for BS detection. Many might feel because he points out bias and errors in the text, that he is not a spiritual being. I would disagree. For a lie is a murderer. It murders the truth.
Those with neo (sorry) con agendas are sneaky weasels, who's ends, they think, justify the means. The means by which they reach their ends point up the fact that the ends can't stand on their own merits!
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Muleskinner1 year, 2 months ago
Neo(sorry)lib agendas are just as bad, and do exactly the same thing. They distort (or ignore) the truth to suit their agenda. Extremism is unacceptable in either direction.
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aceofspades11 year, 2 months ago
All history written after the fact is revisionist. It's like a Hollywood movie with the actors speaking in modern vernacular.
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Gransater1 year, 2 months ago
I agree. Bully for Matt.
I'm almost amazed that it took a young adult to bring this error to light.
Unfortunately this is nothing new, or particular to the U.S. I do wish however that the adults charged with verifying the content of text books given out to students would have the integrity to make sure the text in the various subject books is acurate, and not politicaly slanted. We can and should do better than what we are.
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MonkeyBiz1 year, 2 months ago
The Texas Board of Education selects the recommended texts for Texas schools. Since Texas is the largest text book market in the country, the publishers write their textbooks to please the Texas BOE. If anyone is not aware of it, the Texas BOE is full of right wing religious extremists that want evolution taught as an "unproven theory," and equal time given to teaching "intelligent design."
Bottom line? If the BOEs in other states aren't watching carefully, textbooks that have been vetted and tweaked by the right wing religiosos in Texas will be issued to students in their schools.
The Texas BOE would love this book. It may be that it is a standard Texas high school text.
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crespi1 year, 2 months ago
Dilulio served as Director of the White House Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives and became notorious propagating the inner city boy "super-predator" theory which led to his legislating racist criminalization and long sentences specifically for ghetto-ized black offenders. NOW he says he doesn't want to put boys in prison but in churches...
Wilson served on Bush's "Council of Bioethics" (don't laugh) and has argued repeatedly AGAINST hate-crime laws, and written, concerning abused, horribly disadvantaged children that become involved in criminal acts that "abuse is not an excuse."
They are both Neocon assh*les of the highest caliber that need to be outed.
Go Matt!
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billmc19541 year, 2 months ago
Perhaps the authors should be made to replace all the missguided books
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mesodude1 year, 2 months ago
"How did this get by all the left slantented academia?"
--Maybe because "the left slanted academia" (not unlike the ubiquitous "liberal media") is just another figment of right wing conjobs' wild imaginations.
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Tangent0011 year, 2 months ago
Pubishing companies do little more than a cursory review, relying on the authors themselves to self-check. Admittedly, it would be expensive for Houghton-Mifflin to employ a staff of SMEs to fact-check every single statement for every single subject. It's not surprising these things slip through.
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Endoscopy1 year, 2 months ago
It sounds good to me. But then you left wing types always prefer theory made into law but never correct the problem when its proved wrong. Freon was supposed to kill the ozone layer. Changed by law to other gases for air conditioners. The new ones are corrosive and less efficient.
Now it has been proved false is anybody asking to reverse that law?????
A lot of scientists say that Al Gores vision is a fantasy.
But you true believers just keep the faith even when evidence is to the contrary.
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mesodude1 year, 2 months ago
I loved this quote:
"The authors kept a phrase stating that global warming is 'enmeshed in scientific uncertainty'."
--I would have re-phrased the original sentence this way:
"A small but unbelievably shrill minority comprised of wingjob zealots from the religious right and some desperate corporatists are certainly enmeshed in denial." ;-P
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Muleskinner1 year, 2 months ago
Well, let's see, the earth has actually cooled (according to NOA and the world climatologists in the last 10 years by @ 1 deg F. Prior to that it was unchanged for 50 years. I'd say that there are a whole bunch of very competent climatologists (nearly half) who can demonstrate that GW is, at best, very arguable and probably a demonstrable fallacy. Including the founder of the Weather Channel and the head of the Canadian assn of Climatologists. Just because gore says it doesn't make it so. On the contary.. He learned well from his old boss how to ignore the truth LOL
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markmawn21 year, 2 months ago
Well, think about if the tables were turned. Imagine a day when science books are busted for showing that the earth is billions of years old, and not 6000, and Man did not spontaneously appear in a garden.
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joeeddie1 year, 2 months ago
Not that I think the earth is not billions of years old, but where did man spontaneously appear? Piltdown? I think the lack of a true missing link points to the premise that it may have been more spontaneous (in earth years, not man years) than you think. Otherwise the fossil records would be more complete for man.
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MonkeyBiz1 year, 2 months ago
Ummm... the article is about blatant (and busted!) CONSERVATIVE indoctrination in a high school text book. If you think that the items shown to be incorrect are liberal, you must be so far right wing, the very thought of anything but a fascist government must make you apoplectic. Do you wear a swastika armband and think we fought on the wrong side in WWII?
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jordan111 year, 2 months ago
Yeah! Those damn liberals want to indoctrinate us on the facts! We can't allow that!
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Tangent0011 year, 2 months ago
Hate to break it to ya, but teaching and research is simply mot a priority for most conservatives, who tend to prefer more profit-centered careers.
I might as well whine that the upper echelons of corporations are full of the 'Rapist Right' that are (more arguably) destroying America. It's the nature of the ideologies.
How would a conservative professor teach a Liberal Arts class in the first place? "Class, Sociology is Liberal BS. See ya."
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Muleskinner1 year, 2 months ago
While I disagree with the conservative slant to this (or any) textbook, I found in HS & College that the vast majority of them are slanted to the left, as is academia as a whole. Get them young & indoctrinate them to the left wing thought process... Maybe these authors were just trying to balance things out, a tiny bit :o).
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MonkeyBiz1 year, 2 months ago
You are right!! You are ABSOLUTELY right!! We shouldn't be teaching our children thought processes, there's no telling what THAT would cause. Thought processing is a left wing conspiracy!!!
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sonofjohn1 year, 2 months ago
With the wrong facts? Well, yeah, I guess you balance a fact with a fallacy.
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Tangent0011 year, 2 months ago
I agree, there is a certain amount of left-leaning authorship. Again, those who choose careers in research and instruction in general tend to be of a liberal bent. Simply put: there are precious little conservative scientific authors. This is not by censorship, simply by choices dictated by the ideology.
People are entitled to their own opinions, they are NOT entitled to their own facts.
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jordan111 year, 2 months ago
"All the statements for the most part were trying to lead the reader in one direction and not giving a fair account of everything," he said.>>>>
Yep. That's what conservatives do best. No room for critical analysis.
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joeeddie1 year, 2 months ago
Textbooks should never be trusted whenever editorial is given. I wish that all slanted language could be left out of all textbooks. It used to be more pathetically pervasive than now. How many American's here can remember reading a History textbook that labeled Native Americans "savages" in their pages? America has mislead it's youth for far too long with the use of biased commentary. The Secretary of Education should appoint a watchdog group for this practice.
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Itachirumon1 year, 2 months ago
You mean rather than the more likely alternative? That he'll be murdered and beaten brutally to become a product of neocon revenge based solely upon the fact that he chose to open his mouth and expose their lies? I pray for this child-man's safety because you KNOW he's in line to be killed -especially because this has become a habit of his. Good man I hope he makes it out of that place someday
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david_nwpa1 year, 2 months ago
I am intrigued by the nonsense about gay marriage in this textbook. How on Earth did the authors make the leap from the Texas s0domy case to gay marriage. I suppose they ignored the fact that Massachusetts has gay marriage. I wonder if that is a part of newer editions. Perhaps too, they included civil unions and the marriage equality movement. Oh right, those are lib items. Incidentally, why do gay people have an agenda but straight people have a vision?
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Endoscopy1 year, 2 months ago
LOL
"I suppose they ignored the fact that Massachusetts has gay marriage."
That proved them right.
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Ruggaboo1 year, 2 months ago
This article fails a common litmus test for biased journalism in itself.
Every issue raised, in fact is straight from the libertine handbook of flagship causes.
Hmmm...Global warming the multi-billion dollar business employing Scam-bots like Gore...is in fact largely unproven. Especially in light of 2007 horrendous winter storms; some the coldest ever.
Not to go astray, the article also mentions a struck down Texas law that used to prohibit same sex action. We can't have that...nothing to speak out against common perversions.
Prayer in school is also well mentioned and rounds out Junior's liberal indoctrination on some college campus perhaps by the stereo typical long hair, burned-out, pseudo-intellectual whinger that all to often preach from bully pulpits their sick agendas.
This article is garbage plain and simple and the kid is probably a twisted little sicko with homo tendencies...
albeit this is a guess and is... as always good for a real chortle.
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bluenote15221 year, 2 months ago
Global Warming is the distraction that a magician uses. While he waves his left hand he removes your wristwatch with his right.
Can we say solar activity causes global warming? No because that won't allow the politicians to fleece us as the bad guys.
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