Why Care About The Weirdness In Texas?

The weirdness in question is the behavior of the Texas School Board, which has been in the news lately regarding it's curriculum adoptions.   The Board has been controlled by a group of what many refer to as extremist evangelicals who have determined that all school textbooks in Texas must follow their agenda, which apparently is not primarily based on facts, but on their beliefs.   Case in point: Texas textbooks must teach that the US was founded as a "Christian nation."   The historical evidence is quite the contrary, as this article in the Chicago Tribune points out in some detail.  The list of historical distortion and rewriting is long; read the NY Times article for the gory details.

Why care about what some goofballs in Texas are doing?   Because Texas is so large, and because it purchases so many school textbooks, what it says must be in those textbooks is closely followed by publishers.  The result is that those same books are used in most schools around the country, regardless of whether those other schools subscribe to the one-sided and less-than-factual "curriculum."   

What can you do about it?   Hope that most schools ditch large purchases of textbooks in favor of electronic media sooner rather than later.

Loose Cannon On Campus?

A local story here involves a now former school board member who had been arrested for battery involving a group of students outside their high school. The full story is here. In brief, when he saw a group of students attempting to enter the school through a "restricted" door, he "ordered" them to follow him to the Dean's office. Along the way, he grabbed another student by the arm and ordered him to come along also. That student refused and filed a battery complaint against the school board member. Prosecutors eventually dropped the charge and the board member resigned from the board because he moved out of the district. He also took the opportunity to declare he'd done nothing wrong and that his actions made him a "hero."

The story is troubling for several reasons. My first concern is that comments on the newspaper story clearly indicate that many people have no clue what school board members are or what their job is. Many commenters lauded him for "doing the job he was hired for" and wondered why the prosecutors filed charges against him for "doing his job." He is not a "staff member." He was a school board member which is an elective office, not an employee of the District. He was totally out of line to attempt to herd a bunch of students to "the office."

Another issue is that school board members as individuals have no particular authority over students or even staff members of a school, or to enforce rules on campus. In fact, in Illinois, the oath of office for school board members states "...a Board member has no legal authority as an individual and that decisions can be made only by a majority vote at a public Board meeting." One school board member equals one citizen, nothing more, nothing less.

This guy is not a hero (since when do people get to declare themselves heroes?). If he thought the students were "behaving suspiciously," he should have called police, not intervene personally. His wife, who was with him in the car, and is a teacher at the high school, might have legitimately gotten involved. His claim that he was concerned about security at the high school rings hollow and sounds more like someone searching for a campaign slogan.

He is nothing more than a bully and the District is better off that he's now resigned. He clearly had no clue what the role of a school board member is and apparently didn't care very much about that small detail. For those who are petrified about students bringing guns or bombs to school, it can happen, but it doesn't get prevented by a board member who happens to be sitting in his car. It's prevented by adoption of procedures and rules by school boards and administrators, not by loose cannons on campus.