In a drab hearing room in Austin, Tex., members of the State Board of Education, seated at small desks arranged in a broad, socially distanced circle, debated whether eighth grade science students should be required to “describe efforts to mitigate climate change.” One board member, a longtime public school science teacher, argued in favor of the proposed new requirement. Another, an in-house attorney for Shell Oil Company, argued to kill it.
The attorney won. In the end, the board voted to require that eighth grade science students “describe the carbon cycle” instead.Over the past two years school board meetings around the country have erupted into shout fests over face masks, reading lists and whether to ban education about structural racism in classrooms. In Texas, a quieter political agenda played out during the lightly attended process to set science education standards—guidelines for what students should learn in each subject and grade level. For the first time, the state board considered requiring that students learn something about human-caused climate change. That requirement came under tense dispute between industry representatives interested in encouraging positive goodwill about fossil fuels and education advocates who think students should learn the science underlying the climate crisis unfolding around them.In 2020 two major education advocacy groups—the National Center for Science Education and the Texas Freedom Network—hired experts to grade the science standards of all 50 states and Washington, D.C., based on how they covered the climate crisis. Thirty states and D.C. made As or Bs. Texas was one of six states that made an F. But because Texas is one of the largest textbook purchasers in the nation—and because its elected 15-member State Board of Education has a history of applying a conservative political lens to those textbooks—publishers pay close attention to Texas standards as they create materials they then sell to schools across America. As a former science textbook editor once told me, “I never heard anyone explicitly say, ‘We can't talk about environmentalism because of Texas.’ But we all kind of knew. Everybody kind of knows.” In this way, the proceedings in an Austin boardroom influence what millions of children nationwide are taught.
And yet, as I learned when I watched 40 hours of live and archived board hearings, reviewed scores of public records and interviewed 15 people involved in the standard-setting process, members of the fossil-fuel industry participated in each stage of the Texas science standards adoption process, working to influence what children learn in the industry's favor. Texas education officials convened teams of volunteers to rewrite the existing standards, and industry members volunteered for those writing teams and shaped the language around energy and climate. Industry members rallied to testify each time proposals to revise standards got a public hearing. When the board considered the rewritten standards for final approval, the industry appealed to members to advance their favored amendments, ensuring that the seemingly local drama in Austin will have outsized consequences.
Right, they all knew. Textbook publishers all knew. The oil companies deny it. But they know all about their own the lies of omission and subversion tactics, plausible deniability be damned. So do Republican politicians, their wealthy donors and the neo-fascist propaganda Leviathan, e.g., Faux News.
The public doesn't know it. Our children don't know it. They know, we don't.
Mushrooms:
Keep 'em in the dark and feed 'em bullshit
Profits from pollution go to the elites at the top, including textbook publishers, while damage caused by lies, ignorance, corruption and subversion flows directly to (i) democracy and transparency, (ii) respect for inconvenient truth, (iii) the environment, and (iv) the public interest. That's just what the marriage of laissez-faire capitalism with Republican Party neo-fascism looks like. It was made in hell and it operates from there with all the morality and social conscience that hell affords, i.e., essentially none at all.
A rant about America's subverted mainstream media (MSM)
Over the last 6 years or so, what appears to be a lethal flaw in the MSM has come into personal view. Other observers saw it before and voiced the concern.
Specifically, the MSM almost always treats corporate, religious and Republican Party lies, subversion, slanders, corruption and anti-democratic behaviors as just mere conservative politics or just expressing a conservative point of view. This article is a perfect example of excusing morally and socially inexcusable bad behavior with opiates like "its elected 15-member State Board of Education has a history of applying a conservative political lens to those textbooks."
A conservative lens my ass. It is undeniable subversion and corruption of public education for the benefit of everyone who privatizes and trickles up profits from pollution, while they gleefully socialize all the harm. To do that, neo-fascists and the corrupt capitalists have to keep us mushrooms as ignorant and disinformed as they possibly can. If the author of this article would have written something like "its elected 15-member State Board of Education has a history of applying subversion and a corrupt, radical conservative (or neo-fascist) political lens to those textbooks," that would have been accurate.
This rant is not just about how the MSM deals with climate change. In recent days, the same professional malpractice by the MSM hit a crescendo. MSM pablum and pap was flowing thick and constant in the wake of the Republican Christian nationalist Supreme Court decisions to (1) overturn Roe v. Wade, and (2) to give religious fanatics massive access to tax dollars. Christian nationalists who run the private religious schools are now taxpayer funded. Those religious schools openly discriminate against non-believers, the LGBQT community and anyone else their vengeful, bigoted God deems unworthy and in need of discrimination and oppression.
Now Christian nationalists have finally forced us idiot taxpayers to pay for their fortresses of hate they call schools. Those fortresses not only subvert children's education, e.g., downplaying climate change, but they also openly oppose civil liberties for all except themselves. This is not just about religious freedom, it is about anti-democratic subversion, lies, corruption and greed.
In recent months this tendency to soften the reality of what American political and religious and conservatism has become has been been constant. On NPR, grotesque MSM deference to concepts like corruption, subversion, conservatism and religious freedom was horrendous. It raises a question, why support something that is too much in opposition to democracy, truth, civil liberties, etc.? I see the same problem with the New York Times and Washington Post. They just don't get it.
Q: Does this rant articulate a reality that is as important and pervasive in the MSM as portrayed here, or is that perception more illusion than real? Or, should the MSM maintain respect for subversion, anti-democratic behaviors and corruption for some reason(s), e.g., to maintain (arguably non-existent) credibility with radical right Republicans, or to not offend advertisers, etc.?
