Dear Daniel, On Friday, People For the American Way Foundation, CREDO, and Brave New Foundation delivered over 131,000 petition signatures to the offices of McGraw-Hill in New York City, urging the publisher to reject Texas' right-wing curriculum standards and publish textbooks free of political ideology or bias. Delivering the petitions, the organizations were joined by tenants of Kittay House, Jewish Home Lifecare's independent senior-living apartment residence in the Bronx. Signatures from ninety-one Kittay seniors were among those delivered. In adopting its latest revisions to state textbook standards, the Texas State Board of Education tossed aside recommendations of historians and educational professionals in favor of an overtly ideological approach to history. Materials were added to vindicate the tactics of disgraced Senator Joseph McCarthy while the contributions of the Civil Rights movement and progressive historical figures (including many minority groundbreakers) were downplayed. Labor and civil rights leader Dolores Huerta -- a PFAW board member -- was removed from the curriculum, while conservative icons like Phyllis Schlafly, Newt Gingrich and the Heritage Foundation were added. Because Texas is one of the largest textbook markets in the country, its curriculum standards often are incorporated into textbooks distributed throughout the country. You can read our entire press release here > And check out some more great photos from the petition drop on our Flickr page here > People For the American Way Foundation, along with PFAW and our allies, will continue to work vigorously to ensure that right-wing attempts to indoctrinate America's students with revisionist history are kept out of our nation's textbooks. We thank you for your ongoing support in this fight. -- Ben Betz, Online Communications Manager
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The original personal blog of a graying (mostly Anglo with light African-American roots) leftist leaning progressive gay married Buddhist former Bahá'í raised Presbyterian fanatical BBC/NPR-listening Professor Emeritus who immigrated from his beloved California and now follows the Dharma in Minas Gerais.
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