By Alan Smithee

On Monday, May 24, Houston Independent School District (HISD) will be hosting a public forum to discuss the district’s future. The forum is not just open to parents of HISD students or taxpayers but to anyone who has an idea about where the largest school district in the state, and the seventh largest in the nation, should go.

In an era where the Texas State Board of Education has minimized the role of the civil rights movement , removed the rationale behind the seperation of church and state and now requires history students to analyze attempts by the U.N. to undermine US sovereignty; having input on the way children are taught has become the latest front in the culture wars.

Sadly, it seems that the only people who care about whether Moses will replace Thomas Jefferson as an American political philosopher are fundamentalist Christians. Then again,very few people in Houston, and almost no one in Montrose, was up in arms when the Texas Republican Party decided to include a proposition requiring the public acknowledgement of God on their primary ballot this year. So I don’t know why I should be surprised by the apathy of this community when it comes to the State of Texas moving farther towards the theocratic Christian Republic of Texas.

After all, most of the people in Montrose can name more members of The Polyphonic Spree and Broken Social Scene than they can the Texas Legislature. This is despite the fact that the Texas Legislature gets to determine the residency criteria for tuition purposes and regulate tuition rates.