Republican State Leaders Attempt to Change the Character of Texas Public Schools
Republican Governor Rick Perry, Republicans in the Texas Legislature, and
Republicans on the State Board of Education are currently attempting to completely reform
the character of Texas public education in far-reaching ways. Teacher qualifications have
already been weakened so that new teachers are no longer required to have the usual Education School
pedagogical training. School financing will be significantly changed, perhaps in ways that
inhibit communities from raising property taxes to adequately support their local schools,
and some districts may not be as well funded as in the past. More ominously, Republicans hope
to add vouchers for religious and private schools, and hope to create virtual charter schools
to support home schooling at state expense. These new state-funded vouchers and virtual schools would
not be subject to the same curriculum and instructional requirements as the public schools.
Since religious schools and home schools almost all intentionally use curricula that distort
modern science in favor of non-scientific religious beliefs such as creationism, intelligent design,
flood geology, and a young Earth, some of these proposals will greatly damage reliable
science education in Texas. If some of the attempted reforms pass, many thousands of Texas
students--who now receive an adequate if not exemplary science education--would find
themselves subject to inferior faith-based pseudoscientific instruction in their new sectarian
and virtual charter schools. This would be a major step backward for Texas science and Texas
business, both of which depend on employees who must possess the technical and critical thinking skills
that accurate and reliable science instruction provides.
Resources
James Leininger, Paymaster of the Radical
Republican Religious Right (4Rs*), is the major figure in the Republican effort to change the
character of Texas public schools in a direction that increases the exposure of students
to religious instruction, pseudoscience (creationism, intelligent design, flood
geology), misguided and counterproductive abstinence-only human sexuality education, and
a sectarian worldview that does not realistically prepare them for the modern world. Leiniger is one of the
major Republican proponents of religious school vouchers and for under-funding public schools and
teachers so as to weaken the public education system and make it more easily replaced by private religious schools.
Dr. Shirley Neeley, Texas Commissioner of Education,
will be an essential ally of Republican Governor Rick Perry is his attempt to change the character
of Texas public schools in ways that benefit the Radical Republican Religious Right. Without her
cooperation or complicity, the 4Rs will fail. Will she resist the attempt of the 4Rs to
destroy Texas public education, or will she cooperate in its destruction?
* The category of 4Rs--the Radical Republican Religious Right--requires some discussion and
qaulification. We readily exclude many individuals from this category. Not all Republicans
are members of the religious right; many--perhaps most Republicans--can be described as traditional or business
Republicans: pro-business, fiscally conservative, and possessing mainstream views with regard to
social policies--socially-conservative and traditional, but not authoritarian,
coercive, and religiously-motivated. Libertarian Republicans are well known: they are extremely pro-business, but
indistinguishable from liberals with regard to social policies; many libertarians are secular and
non-believers, naturalists rather than supernaturalists, and completely tolerant of
gays, abortion, evolution, and other right-wing evils. We also exclude Democrats who are very
religious, socially conservative, and even creationist, because when in power they have not tried to force
their extreme views on others using the power of the state. Right now, in Texas, religious and
socially-conservative Democrats are powerless and therefore blameless for the recent unprecedented
attempt by state officials--all Republicans--to change the character of public education, government,
and society.
The 4Rs are inspired and motivated by their extreme religious views; they are ideologues
who reject reason and evidence in favor of their beliefs; they have no scruples about forcing their
outrageous views and morals on other people using the power of the state. They are both radicals and
reactionaries: today, progressive ideas, freedoms, and liberties have become so popular, widespread,
and embedded in society that those who wish to return to socially-restrictive, authoritarian, puritanical,
patriarchal, and scientifically-backward beliefs (reactionaries) must resort to using politically-coercive,
mendacious, duplicitious, autocratic methods that are contemptuous of institutions, learning, reason, and
evidence (radical). The 4Rs are definitely not conservative, using their own self-description of
that word: to preserve what is most humanly ethical, honorable, and noble of the past. To the contrary, the
radical-reactionary 4Rs are willing to abandon treasured institutions such as the public education system, universities,
libraries, museums, public support of the arts, and destroy natural resources, biodiversity, landscapes,
the national park system, and ignore basic human needs such as justice, freedom from disease and hunger,
the right to vote and protest, the right not to have one's labor exploited, and other basic Constitutional
rights involving access to an attorney, habeas corpus, search and seizure, etc. Indeed, the 4Rs work against
all of these ideals and institutions that we now possess after decades of progressive political leadership
and hard-won social activism. The 4Rs are not conservatives, not moderate, certainly not liberal or
progressive; they are radical reactionaries whose belief systems are shaped by extreme religious beliefs
that propel them to act in irrational, superstitious, grotesque ways, to destroy socially-valuable, functioning
institutions, to promote willful ignorance among both themselves and their children, to publicly reject
reliable scientific knowledge and adopt weird and bizarre pseudoscientific beliefs, to openly deny reality
and hold fast instead to phantasms of faith-based magic, to promote excessive consumption and material greed
as worthy goals of a person's life, and to contemptuously ignore the traditions and
courtesies of our political system and instead indulge in character assassination, baiting and humiliation of
opponents, condemning others by guilt by association, and engaging in venality, deception, duplicity, and hypocrisy
in furtherance of their political goals. These are the characteristics of the most extreme public officials
in Texas today, of those who lead this state and represent us in the national government. They are all
radical-reactionary members of the Radical Republican Religious Right.
(Under Construction)