ustxtxb_obs_1999_06_11_50_00005-00000_000.pdf

LEFT FIELD Last session, graphic designer Mark Loeffler printed up a few Texas Legislature movie posters; in the two years since he’s learned to use the web, and both his 1997 and his 1999 creations are now online \(www.onr. . In addition to the Rick Perry/Austin Powers poster shown here, he’s posted five others for this session, including “Saving Private Info,” starring Senator Jeff Wentworth, “There’s Something About Flo,” with Senator Florence Shapiro, and “Senate Wars, Vouchers I: The Phantom Menace,” with Governor George Bush and the Senate All Stars. The posters poke fun at Democrats and Republicans alike. + M a rk. Loeffler ; Owner \(512.There’s Senate Wars Senate Trek A Night At Yeah, Something Episode I Democrats The Capitol Baby About Ho Great Moments in Tex-Ed On May 7, the State Board of Education, in its considerable if not infinite wisdom, honored Mel and Norma Gabler of Longview for “38 years of sacrificial service” to the cause of Texas education. The Board, itself dedicated to the somewhat oxymoronic notion that “the primary purpose of the public school curriculum is to prepare thoughtful, active citizens who understand the importance of patriotism and can function productively in a free enterprise society,” praised the Gablers for helping “to reintroduce , more basic academic skills in textbooks, to permit more parental participation in the educational process, and to erect legal hedges against immorality, obscenity, the promotion of socialism, and shoddy teaching practices.” The vote was 9-5; voting Aye were new chairman Chase Untermeyer, David Bradley, Richard Neill, Richard Watson, Bob Offutt, Don McLeroy, Judy Strickland, Grace Shore, and Geraldine Miller \(Will Davis of The Gablers \(with the help of a cabal of other organizations equally devoted to textpolitical correctness, historical ignorance disguised as patriotism, and the general dumbing-down of several generations of state and national education. In light of this distinguished precedent, Left Field suggests that the Board of Ed consider honoring other great innovators in the field of education: Tomas de, Torquemada the uncompromising rigor of his methods in rooting out heresy., Sir William Berkeley, colonial Governor of Virginia, who thanked God in 1671 that Virginia did not have free schools or printing, “for learning has brought Disobedience and Heresy and Sects into the world.” Franz Joseph Gall as the key toward understanding human intelligence and personality. Thomas Bowdler, Victorian man of letters, famous for publishing an edition of Shake speare’s plays bereft of sexual ‘material thus rendering them incomprehensible to a mature audience but suitable to read aloud in a drawing room. George W. Bush, currently the Governor of Texas but rumored to have more lofty ambitions, who repeatedly declares his administration firmly in support of the most “up-to-date science” of reading: phonics. Left Field notes that when our Governor went to Midland elementary schools in the sixties, he studied textbooks that had been inspected for heresy by Mel and Norma Gabler, then judiciously approved by the State Board of Education. As a result, he has become a “thoughtful, active citizen who understands the importance of patriotism and can function productively in a free enterprise society.” + JUNE 11, 1999 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 5