Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Why I owe the TX school board a note of gratitude

I'm sure most of you have heard about the absurd curriculum 'standards' created by the Texas school board. And I am further sure that most of you heard the absurdity of banning the children's books by Bill Martin Jr because he shares the same name as the author of Ethical Marxism. Well, so I have a shameful secret to admit. I actually had not read Ethical Marxism when this incident occurred. It did, however, get me to look into this book. And I discovered that the book not only deals with, well, ethical marxism, but explicitly deals with questions of vegetarianism and factory farming from such a perspective. I blame Open Court Press' policy for not letting me look inside the book on either amazon or google for my lack of knowledge on this point. Well, my copy came in yesterday. I obviously haven't finished it, but I did skip to the section on vegetarianism and am very, very pleased with it so far.

I also realized that if I hadn't come across this work or gotten around to reading it, other people in the CAS world might be in the same boat. So, my suggestion is go and pick up a copy. If for no other reason than to thank the TX school board.