Texas GOP backtracking on "critical thinking?" Forest for the Trees...

By now, we're all familiar with this plan from the Texas Republican Party platform that can't be changed until 2014:

We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student's fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

The response from the Texas GOP was:

[The chairman of the Education Subcommittee] indicated that it was an oversight of the committee, that the plank should not have included ‘critical thinking skills’ after ‘values clarification,’” Elam said. “And it was not the intent of the subcommittee to present a plank that would have indicated that the RPT in any way opposed the development of critical thinking skills.

Fair enough. So, according to this, it was simply the use of the words "critical thinking skills" that was the problem. So, what you're left with is...

We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification) and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student's fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

The thrust of the plank still stands. They're still opposed to anything that has "the purpose of challenging the student's fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority." The underlying thread of "don't teach anything that might make me uncomfortable" is what should be confronted.