For those who felt confident that Texas holds a comfortable lead in dumbest assaults on education, the news out of California that a school board in Los Alamitos will mandate political influence into science topics will come as worrisome. Teachers in Texas remain convinced that the Lone Star State's hilariously-named Texas State Board of Education will fight back and call for even more interference by politicians in the teaching of Texas school children and thus re-establish Texas' firm lead as the laughing-stock of education.
Teachers in the Los Angeles-area town will force teachers to give presentations on how they present their course on environmental science. One school board member, more concerned about political positions than in allowing the teachers to deal with the actual science of global climate change, has been quoted as saying "I believe my role in the board is to represent the conservative voice of the community, and I'm not a big fan of global warming." This tells teachers, "Well, so much for dealing with actual scientific data and conclusions by competent scientists in teaching children about the world. Just make sure to let my political position dictate what you teach regardless of how unsupported it is by evidence."
Given the history of the Texas State Board of Education, conservatives in Texas shouldn't worry about holding onto their well-earned title of Dumbest Interference in Education by Politicians.
After all, this is the State where that political board proposed, among other things:
1. To rename the "slave trade" the "Atlantic triangular trade";
2. To replace all references to "capitalism" with "free enterprise";
3. To soften descriptions of Joseph McCarthy's communist witch hunt;
4. To downplay the Founding Fathers' rationale for the separation of church and state;
5. To reduce references to Thomas Jefferson's political philosophy;
And their ace-in-the-hole:
6. To mandate that teachers give the religious-based, factually-bereft fiction of creationism equal footing with evolution, the basic organizing principle of all modern biology.
The whole United States is watching, Texas. With just a small effort you can claw your way back to the top and leave California, Kansas and South Dakota far behind in the stupidity quotient displayed by your alleged guardians of students' education.