Members of the creationist bloc on the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) have mistated the truth so often that they can’t even keep their own distortions straight. Case in point: Speaking on Saturday at the “Texas Freedom Rally at the Alamo” in San Antonio, SBOE member Ken Mercer told Tea Party activists some real whoppers about the revision of social studies curriculum standards for Texas public schools two years ago. He claimed that education bureaucrats had been trying to use the standards to promote a far-left agenda. The Gonzales Cannon quoted Mercer’s comments:
“A parent came forward to me and showed me they had deleted the words ‘free enterprise’ and ‘free market’ from economics [standards]. They told me this was because those words were ‘too positive’ in describing the American economic system.”
BUT IT WAS MERCER WHO DELETED “FREE MARKET” FROM THE STANDARDS.
From the minutes of the March 2010 SBOE discussion of the social studies standards (page 16 of the meeting minutes):
“MOTION AND VOTE: It was moved by Mr. Mercer and seconded by Ms. Leo to recommend that the State Board of Education strike the parenthetical terms ‘(capitalist, free market)’ wherever they appear in the social studies TEKS [Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills] document. The motion carried.”
That’s true. Check this video clip from the meeting:
Here’s Mercer from the meeting:
“I’m going to offer this tomorrow for all items…. But we discussed about U.S. free enterprise. We had the parenthetical, it says ‘(capitalist, free market).’ I would like to strike, open paren, ‘capitalist, free market,’ open [sic] paren. I would strike that. It would just read, ‘Compare the role of government in the U.S. free enterprise system and other economic systems.”
That wasn’t Mercer’s only whopper on Saturday. The Gonzales Cannon also quotes him as saying:
“They wanted to delete Veteran’s Day and Independence Day from the history books. They had a problem with the Liberty Bell and the word “patriot,’ because they thought it sounded too much like the Tea Party.
Actually, the curriculum writers who crafted the initial drafts of the standards never said they wanted to delete Veteran’s Day, Independence Day and the Liberty Bell from history books. Moreover, we have never heard anyone even suggest — until now — that the curriculum writers thought “patriot” sounded too much like the Tea Party. Unless he can point to some evidence for his claims, it’s hard not to conclude that Mercer is simply making stuff up. Frankly, he owes an apology to the teachers and scholars who worked diligently (at no pay) to draft the standards that Mercer and other SBOE members then vandalized.
In fact, if anyone is wondering who really politicized the curriculum standards that are now guiding the education of millions of Texas students, the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute made that pretty clear:
“Texas’s heavily politicized 2010 revisions to its social studies curriculum have attracted massive national attention. Indeed, both in public hearings and press interviews, the leaders of the State Board of Education made no secret of their evangelical Christian right agenda, promising to inculcate biblical principles, patriotic values, and American exceptionalism. And politics do figure heavily in the resulting TEKS.”
We wonder: do Tea Party activists like being lied to? Pants on fire, Ken.