You're gonna have to go through me first

I hate Steve Jobs quotes. Don't get me wrong, I think Apple is an awesome company, mainly because of how Jobs ran it, but to be honest I think he was kind of an asshole. You're opinion, however is definitely something I can agree with. Critical thinking is critical (haha) in public education, including the questioning of traditional values and beliefs that go along with it. It seemed like in your blog post that you were making it out as if the GOP's platform was directly attacking "Higher Order Thinking Skills." The Republican party openly admitted that the inclusion of this specific text was a mistake, so it's hard to say that they are in fact openly against teaching kids how to think for themselves. The interesting part, and something that the GOP can't deny, is that they were at least considering making this anti-thinking stance an official part of their platform. This would make sense, as the conservative ideology prefers to keep things traditional, and critically questioning traditional, parent-taught values doesn't really mesh well with Texas Republicans that lean far to the right. However, the GOP knows that actually stating this in something as official and concrete as their political platform would drive away more moderate conservatives, aka the people that decide elections. So here's my deduced insight into the Texas Republican Party: A) They accidentally included a section in their official platform that states an intention to eliminate critical thinking in publican school curriculum, B) They openly stated that this was an accident and that the Republican Party does not in fact want to critical thinking in schools, C) In my head this means that the Texas GOP does in fact want to strip kids of the right to think for themselves, they just don't want to tell anybody else about it because they know how crazy that sounds. This actually kind of scares me. So it's up to you and I Mindy to keep progressivist thinking in schools. Just because Republicans are too scared to openly attack it now, doesn't mean they won't try in the future.