political censorship

Our campaign in Wyoming to end the political censorship of world-class science standards that include climate science is gaining increasing national attention. More and more Wyomingites are speaking out for the right of our kids to have access to the highest quality science standards, free from political, economic and ideological censorship.

Those responsible for the anti-science legislation are on the defensive. They’ve been telling anyone who will listen that “outside interests” are stirring things up and that they speak for Wyoming parents and citizens, despite working hand in glove with a national group that has been campaigning against Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) across the country.

It’s time to tell Wyoming legislators and Governor Mead in clear terms that they weren’t speaking for us when they used a sneaky maneuver – a footnote amendment to the state budget bill -- to stop the Board of Education from adopting the best science education available to Wyoming kids.

Please sign our letter to Wyoming legislators and Governor Mead today: 
http://act.engagementlab.org/sign/WYSci_letter/?source=change

Here’s the choice facing Wyoming. We can move forward with 21st-century science standards that have been developed and recommended by leading science educators from Wyoming and throughout the country. Or we can allow ideological groups who don't accept the findings of science to hobble our kids’ educations.

Let's show state legislators and Governor Mead there’s a groundswell of public support to repeal this offensive footnote that stifles science education in Wyoming. The future prospects for Wyoming students are on the line.

Two state legislators (Rep. Hutchings and Rep. Reeder) told the State Board of Education that the Legislature was representing the will of their constituents when they voted to prohibit the Board from even considering the NGSS. Yet, there was no public discussion when the footnote was passed in the 2014 Legislature. It’s time for that discussion now.

Let’s tell those who claim to represent Wyoming citizens that we want great science standards. If the anti-science groups and legislators are not speaking for you by denying Wyoming kids a world-class science education, please add your name to our letter, and share it with everyone you know.

Sign the letter: http://act.engagementlab.org/sign/WYSci_letter/?source=change

Thank you for taking action!

Sincerely,

Cate Cabot, Mom and Climate Parents member 
Kelly, WY

Marguerite Herman, Mom and Climate Parents member 
Cheyenne, WY

上梁不正下梁歪

China’s Censored World

By EVAN OSNOSMAY 2, 2014

The defining fact of China in our time is its contradictions: The world’s largest buyer of BMW, Jaguar and Land Rover vehicles is ruled by a Communist Party that has tried to banish the word “luxury” from advertisements. It is home to two of the world’s most highly valued Internet companies (Tencent and Baidu), as well as history’s most sophisticated effort to censor human expression. China is both the world’s newest superpower and its largest authoritarian state.


For most of Chinese history, readers had limited access to books from abroad. In the 1960s and ’70s, when foreign literature was officially restricted to party elites, students circulated handwritten, string-bound copies of J.D. Salinger, Arthur Conan Doyle and many others. But in the past three decades, rules have relaxed somewhat and sales of foreign writers have ballooned, thanks to Chinese consumers who are ravenous for new information about themselves and the world. In 2012, the most recent year for which statistics are available, China’s 580 state-owned publishers acquired the rights to more than 16,000 foreign titles, up nearly tenfold since 1995; current hot sellers range from Gabriel García Márquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude” to Henry A. Kissinger’s “On China.”

Ever since the reign of the first emperor, who oversaw the burning of Confucian texts in 213 B.C., Chinese leaders have valued the science of censorship. To release a book in China today, foreign authors must accept the judgment of a publisher’s in-house censors, who identify names, terms and historical events that the party considers unflattering or a threat to political stability.