Texas Creationism: Cynthia Dunbar And Her Friends

WILL Cynthia Dunbar be appointed to be the next chairman of the Texas Board of Education? Does it matter? It does indeed. The indented paragraphs which follow are for background, which most of you can skip because you’ve seen it before:

Don McLeroy is the creationist dentist whom Texas Governor Rick Perry had appointed as chairman of the Texas Board of Education (BOE), but the Texas senate recently voted to reject that nomination. The disgrace of rejection was largely because McLeroy — a young-earth creationist — had presided over the Texas Science Chainsaw Massacre.

Perry must now appoint another chairman of the BOE. Rumored choices are discussed here.

Cynthia Dunbar is probably the worst of the possible choices for chairman of the BOE, but at the moment she seems to be the Governor’s favorite. It may affect things, however, as we reported here, that Dunbar has drawn an opponent in next year’s election.

There’s a good editorial in the Star-Telegram of Fort Worth, Texas: Texas governor must keep students in mind when naming head of State Board of Education. Here are some excerpts, with bold added by us:

With a protracted fight over evolution and the science curriculum barely behind it, the State Board of Education looks poised for yet another tug-of-war that uses the Texas public schools as a stage for battles between competing views of the world.

Schoolchildren and taxpayers should not be pawns in the crusades of cultural conservatives. Gov. Rick Perry could slow that trend — and should, with his next choice for board president.

That’s a good introduction, although instead of “cultural conservatives” we’d prefer to use a more descriptive term, something like “pre-Enlightenment fanatics.” Let’s read on:

The Legislature declined to confirm Perry’s last appointee, Don McLeroy, a self-described creationist who’s part of a faction intent on injecting more religious influence into schools. Now comes word that Perry might name board member Cynthia Dunbar, whose views might be to the political right of McLeroy’s.

“Might be” to the right of McLeroy? She’s at least as big a creationist, and she’s far more of a theocrat, but we don’t think there’s a left-right way to view this situation — except in the old European sense where the right was the faction favoring the crown, the nobility, and the state-supported clergy. Constitutionally speaking, there’s no such faction in the US, although, alas, that mindset is making a comeback. We continue:

That’s not to say social or political conservatism are unacceptable. However, could Dunbar really be the voice of reason to lead the board through more curriculum revisions …

[...]

The better choice would be board member Bob Craig, a Lubbock lawyer who served 14 years as a Lubbock school trustee, four of them as president.

Here comes something really interesting:

Craig and Dunbar are Republicans. She’s a lawyer, too, with a degree from Pat Robertson’s Regent University. His law degree is from Southern Methodist University.

That little fact somehow escaped our notice before. The editorial has yet another interesting tidbit:

Here’s a telling difference. When board members appointed panelists to review social studies curriculum standards in anticipation of revising them next year, Craig joined Pat Hardy of Fort Worth to name Jim Kracht, an associate dean from Texas A&M University. Dunbar, who’s from Richmond, helped name Peter Marshall, president of Peter Marshall Ministries in Massachusetts.

Marshall’s not a historian by formal training; neither is WallBuilders founder David Barton, another member of the panel, which includes three other professors.

David Barton … where have we seen that name before? Oh yes, here, at the excellent website run by Dr. Barbara Forrest, in this revealing article: Governor Jindal’s Friends in Low Places. You can learn quite a bit about David Barton by reading Dr. Forrest’s article. Hint: you won’t like him, unless — like Dunbar — you’re a member of the inlitterati. (We dug deep into our long-ago high school Latin for that one.) Forrest also informs us:

According to his Wallbuilders.com website, Barton leads private “Spiritual Heritage” tours of the United States Capitol in Washington, DC, exclusively for “pastors and ministry leaders,” arranging “exclusive briefing sessions with some of the top Christian Senators and Representatives now serving in Congress.” He also promotes creationism on his website. But he has no credentials in either history or science …

[...]

But it gets worse — Barton himself is among the most extreme members of the Religious Right. He is on the Board of Directors of the Providence Foundation, which, Boston [Rob Boston of Americans United for Separation of Church and State] says, “poses as a benign group dedicated to promoting a ‘biblical worldview.’ In fact, the organization seems to be aligned with Christian Reconstructionism, an ultra-fundamentalist theology that seeks to scrap democracy and impose a harsh Old Testament regime on modern-day America.” Christian Reconstructionists seek to impose a strict “biblical worldview” on all aspects of American life — whether their fellow Americans like or it not.

[...]

But now the story gets much worse — Barton has been appointed by his supporters on the Texas Board of Education to serve on a panel of expert reviewers charged with reviewing the Texas social studies standards.

Dunbar certainly moves in interesting circles. Here’s the conclusion of the Star-Telegram editorial:

Texas needs to continue improving the way it prepares its students. Inviting more ideological skirmishing will not advance that goal.

That’s far too mild.

Update: A few hours after we posted this item we learned that the Governor had surprised us: Lowe Named Chairman of BOE.

Copyright © 2009. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

• • • • • • • • • • •

. . Permalink for this article