The documentary The Revisionaries exposes the outrageous amount of power the Texas State Board of Education has. But this is a symptom, not the cause, of a broken system.

Image: “Noah and His Ark” by Charles Wilson Peale (Wikimedia Commons)

America’s culture wars are sustained in no small part by the narrative power of outrage. The Revisionaries, a 2012 documentary released last week on VOD, deftly capitalizes on that fact. Focusing on the revisions to the Texas state K-12 textbook standards pushed through by right-wing members of the 15-member elected Texas State Board of Education, the film is both riveting and infuriating.

Don McLeroy, a dentist who was elected by voters in his local district and then appointed to be chairman of the board by Governor Rick Perry, is the leader of the radical right members. He’s also a young-earth creationist who believes that there was enough room on the ark for all the dinosaurs — at the end of the film he’s walking off the cubits for his Sunday school class to show them how all the creatures would fit. For the science standards, he and his allies include language questioning evolution. In social studies, they try to downplay deist Thomas Jefferson’s role in influencing American government in favor of Christian theologian Thomas Aquinas, cut out references to women and minorities, and glorify the sainted Ronald Reagan.

More from Noah Berlatsky @ The Atlantic

Posted by Libergirl