current mental status: sense of doom

some people are saying that conservatives, "emboldened" by their win on tuesday, are going to start coming on even stronger in trying to push the country in a direction they like. who knows if that will be true, but this story certainly seems help make that case.

we know that, as the second-largest purchaser of textbooks (california being the first), the texas board of education has a lot of influence over what gets into (and what is left out of) textbooks. in this case, apparently, the publisher will not be changing the wording of references to marriage in books sold outside of texas. still, it's cause for concern.

textbooks are always a politically explosive topic, and kids get caught in the crossfire. what's the agenda behind this decision? today's cohort of middle-schoolers is going to grow up and refuse to allow the rights of gay people to be taken away, if it even lasts that long. i think the conservatives on the texas school board want to indoctrinate the kiddies so that it might take a little longer for them to start making things happen. so that's not really my concern.

my concern is that this might be the first of many attempts to try to promote a conservative agenda using kids as pawns. no, i'm not just talking about vouchers; i'm also talking about "intelligent design," abstinence-only, banned books, and an erosion of multi-culturalism and multi-lingualism in public schools.