Reading Katherine Stewart’s The Good News Club. In chapter 7 she goes to Austin to sit in on Texas Board of Education hearings in March 2010. Many astonishing things were said there.
The conservatives on the board want to make clear that the free enterprise system that makes America great has nothing to do with a universal concern for public policy and the common good – a concern they believe carries the dreaded taint of socialism. On a list of characteristics of good citizenship for grades 1 through 3, the board majority decided to expunge references to “justice” and “responsibility for the common good.”
That one makes me feel something very like nausea of the brain.
Another part of making America great involves eliminating all forms of the word “democratic,” which in the majority’s view might suggest a link between American history and the political party where all of America’s haters end up, namely, the Democratic Party. Thus, at [Cynthia] Dunbar’s insistence, the board replaces “democratic” and “representative democracy” with “constitutional republic,” and “democratic societies” with “societies with representative government.” [p 166-7]
And then there’s that word “slavery”…
At the behest of board conservatives, the word “slavery” is removed from the standards, replace by the awkwardly euphemistic term, “Atlantic triangular trade.” [p 167]
Not so much euphemistic as completely opaque.
This shit is terrible.