With the long-running Texas history textbooks standards fight scheduled to end with a final vote by the State Board of Education Friday, arch-conservative board member Don McLeroy is proposing a new set of changes that read like a tea party manifesto.
The new amendment (.pdf), which is expected to get a vote on Thursday, would require high school history students to “discuss alternatives regarding long term entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare, given the decreasing worker to retiree ratio” and also “evaluate efforts by global organizations to undermine U. S. sovereignty.”
McLeroy, who will leave the board at the end of the year after a primary election loss, says the first provision “is a critical thinking skills item, and it is also relevant to assessing the policies of the various ideologies that have shaped where we are as Americans.”
As justification for that second item, McLeroy writes: “Threats of global government to individual freedom and liberty include the votes of the U. N. General Assembly, the International Criminal Court, the U. N. Gun Ban proposal, forced redistribution of American wealth to third world countries, and global environmental initiatives.”
Check out all the proposed changes here (.pdf).
And stay tuned, TPMmuckraker will have more coverage later this week.