From now until February 27, you can watch an abbreviated version of The Revisionaries (92 minutes down to 60) on the PBS site for free! (Note that I’m not sure if people outside the USA can see it or not. Update: US-only. Sorry!) The Revisionaries is about the terrifying conservative fundamentalists on the Texas State Board of Education and how they tried to revise science and history in order to push their theology on students in the US. The star is definitely dentist Don McLeroy, who is famous for arguing that someone has to stand up to the experts.
Enjoy your rage:
Watch The Revisionaries on PBS. See more from Independent Lens.
If you want to release a little bit of that anger, here’s Stephen Colbert giving McLeroy a bit of heat:
Just for the record no joy for this canadian.
Nor Australia, sadly.
Damn! Sorry, guys.
I still find it bizzarre that one backward thinking State can impose its science textbooks on the whole USA and by proxy, on us!
I weep when I think of the great Biology textbooks we had in year 12 at school and first year university – both from the USA, although the former was rewritten for Australian conditions and published by the Australian Academy of Sciences for the whole country. I don’t know whether that printing press still exists, though.
It strikes me that science textbooks in some cases ought to be Federally mandated.
Rebecca Watson,
Thanks for telling us about this. I’ve been wanting to see this documentary for a long time now. I’m sorry that it sounds like some Skepchick readers won’t be able to watch it.
If you’re outside the US and want to watch this, it is possible. If you use Firefox, get the Modify Headers add-on, then add the following action to it:
Name: X-Forwarded-For
Value: 69.64.67.75 (any US IP address should work, but this works for me)
Enable it, and reload the page. This fools a lot of simple region-detecting websites, but unfortunately not the big ones like Hulu (for which you have to purchase a proxy’s service in the US to fool them).
Still NBG. But thanks for trying.
I watched this when it aired. Definitely disturbing, definitely scary, definitely a reason to research ALL candidates — even “lowly” offices like school boards — and VOTE!