Today is the day that Dr. Michael Soto gets sworn in as a member of the Texas State Board of Education.
http://www.michael-soto.org/
(stealing from his webpage)
Michael was born in Corpus Christi and raised in McAllen and Brownsville, where he attended public schools throughout his youth. He received a B.A. degree from Stanford University and a Ph.D. degree from Harvard University. Since 1999 he has served on the faculty at Trinity University in San Antonio. The author of three books and numerous articles, his research and teaching focus on twentieth-century American literature and cultural history. He and his wife, Celina Peña, are the parents of two boys: Alejo, a second-grader in the San Antonio ISD, and Américo, SAISD class of 2028.
Many of us have been following the notorious Texas State Board of Education and the effects it has on the America's textbooks.
I am so thrilled, I am going to the swearing in today!
I will not elaborate on the past but rather focus on the future of Texas education and the impact of educated Mexican Americans.
I am really very proud to have met Dr. Soto. He seemed a moderate well spoken man with his family at heart.
This is exactly the kind of person we need on the Texas school board.
He represents a segment of the Texas population who usually gets underrepresented in Texas politics in spite of the population size.
Mexican Americans!
He has experience in education!
Associate Professor at Trinity University
Director of the McNair Scholars Program
Chair of the University Curriculum Council (former)
Experienced and dedicated teacher
Award-winning scholar and author of three books and numerous articles
Wow! An educator get elected to the State Board of Education.
For me as an science educator/animal behaviorist, the election of Dr. Michael Soto is significant.
He was endorsed by the San Antonio Express editorial board.
http://www.mysanantonio.com/...
In recent years, an extremist faction on the education board has managed to politicize the curriculum and bring disrepute to the state's educational system. Board members have become more concerned about social and religious issues than ensuring students graduate from high school with the skills they need to be competitive in a global economy.
Some major changes are needed on this influential elected board. It's time to move away from ideological debate and refocus. It's time to stop the micromanaging and put the curriculum back in the hands of the teachers and education experts.
We recommend the election of Democrat Michael Soto, a Harvard-educated Trinity University professor who has a young son attending an urban, inner-city school. Soto, a product of the Brownsville public school system, is well-versed in the education problems facing our state.
Here is a recent statement from him on the recent "pro Islamic/anti Christian resolution.
Statement by Michael Soto, Democratic Party nominee for the State Board of Education in District 3, in response to SBOE "pro-Islamic/anti-Christian bias" resolution:
If this narrow-minded resolution were being considered anywhere besides the Texas State Board of Education, I would assume that I was reading satire rather than an earnest attempt at public policy-making. This pointlessly distracting, embarrassingly intolerant resolution is based on so-called analysis that makes a mockery of reading comprehension and, worse yet, of serious efforts to improve Texas public schools.
Even if the content analysis behind this resolution was accurate--and others have already pointed out its inaccuracies--it nevertheless betrays a short-sighted understanding of how books work. It makes a mockery of serious reading. According to the same standards held up by this resolution, Milton's marvelous Christian epic, Paradise Lost, would be considered an anti-Christian text because it gives considerably more "air time," more than twice as much, to Satan than to the Christian God. (And it gives roughly equal space to the Christian God and to non-Christian gods other than Satan.) To read Paradise Lost in this perverse way misses the point altogether. Similarly, the Book of Revelations features the "beast" far more prominently than it does Jesus Christ, a roughly five-to-one imbalance; this SBOE resolution would likely conclude that the New Testament tome is somehow anti-Christian.
I'm irked that I must waste my time thinking about such nonsense. But I'm far more upset that the SBOE is allowing itself to be distracted by such mean-spirited trivia when it should be figuring out how to fund public school textbooks in the face of a $21 billion budget deficit, when it should be working on new ways to stem the dropout crisis, when it should be giving teachers the tools that they need to prepare our kids for college.
Yet again I must say: Texas kids deserve better than this.
This is the kind of person we want and need on the Texas State Board of Education and the kind of leadership we need in the United States.
I am a supporter of his and will be keeping an eye on his progress as a fighter for our nation's children and their education.
On a person note:
Best wishes, Dr. Soto on your swearing in. It is a great day in American when something like this happens.
This is Hope and this is Change.
This will be tweeted and facebooked!!!
His facebook page
http://www.facebook.com/...
Updated link to pictures after my tip jar!