Don McLeroy will make your kids stupid

Don McLeroy is one of those no-nothing, creation spouting evangelicals and has a real problem with real education. He is trying to wreck the Texas education system by substituting his own dogmatic plans for those built over years of research and planning by real educators.

"What good does it do to put a Chinese story in an English book? You learn all these Chinese words, OK. That's not going to help you master ... English. So you really don't want Chinese books with a bunch of crazy Chinese words in them. Why should you take a child's time trying to learn a word that they'll never ever use again?"

--State Board of Education chairman Don McLeroy, attempting to justify why a reading list for the new English language arts curriculum should be almost exclusively restricted to classics of English literature. McLeroy added that some words — such as chow mein — might be useful.

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Bonus Item - Thomas Jefferson to his nephew Peter Carr: "Spanish. Bestow great attention on this, and endeavor to acquire an accurate knowledge of it. Our future connections with Spain and Spanish America, will render that language a valuable acquisition. The ancient history of that part of America, too, is written in that language. I send you a dictionary."