This is so cool.
The Texas Board of Education is doing a damn good job of, well, destroying education in Texas. Religious right-wing extremists have taken over the board and are spearheading a strong push to get young-Earth creationism taught as fact. They have tried to get the history textbooks changed to show that, despite all the evidence to the contrary, Joseph McCarthy was right and his allegations that everyone in the whole world was a Communist were true. They have tried to get the Separation of Church and State removed from the curriculum. In 2009, they ammended the science curriculum to cast doubt on the existence of global warming, despite overwhelming scientific concensus.
An even bigger problem is that Texas is the biggest market for textbooks, and therefore holds significant influence over publishers. What Texas insists on could dictate what is taught in other states across the US as well.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vujkVltpBXg]
This is the cool part: a team is doing a documentary on the situation, which will help raise awareness of what’s going on. Like all film projects, it requires money – so they started up a Kickstarter project. Kickstarter is a crowd-funding site that lets people pledge money towards a project – software development, film, craft, anything really. Initially asking for US$10,000, they very quickly made more than that and they now hope to get the film scored and maybe entered into international film festivals.
This is a really cool project, and it’d be great to see it come to fruition. They are still accepting donations, and the more money they get the better the film will be!