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www.tfn.org the Texas Freedom Network reported: the board stripped Thomas Jefferson from a world history standard about the influence of Enlightenment thinkers on political revolutions from the 1700s to today. In Jeffersons place, the boards religious conservatives succeeded in inserting Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin. They also removed the reference to Enlightenment ideas in the standard, requiring that students should simply learn about the influence of the writings of various thinkers (including Calvin and Aquinas). Science is in a street fight with anti-science, as Nature has argued. Now the forces of the dark ages are taking on the Enlightenment itself. As the NYT reported, Last year, the Texas Board of Education adopted language requiring that teachers present all sides of the evidence on evolution and global warming (see How ultraconservative Texans are rewriting your kids textbooks and bringing global-warming denial into science class). The Texas Board of Education wants dumber kids. Thursday, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported: Ken Mercer, a member of the State Board of Education, wants Texas students to know about both the good and the bad that government can offer, he said Thursday. So, he introduced an amendment to state social studies curriculum standards that said: understand how government taxation and regulations can serve as restriction to private enterprise. He said the students need to know that over-regulation and over-taxation can inhibit …