Matthew LaClair will be presenting at the 2008 Secular Student Alliance conference.  This conference is being held jointly with the conference of the American Humanist Association and the world congress of the International Humanist and Ethical Union.

Secular Student Alliance board member Matthew LaClair is the author of an Op-Ed piece in the April 27 edition of the LA Times.  In it, he talks about the recent controversy where a nationally used American Government textbook was found to contain several mistakes and conservative bias.  Matthew, with the help of the Center for Inquiry, alerted the publishers of the book (along with the media) about these problems.  The full report can be found on the Center's website.

Matthew urges students to not remain silent when these misstatements occur.  He writes:

What is most distressing is not that some public school teachers preach their religion, or that some authors put politics ahead of education. It is that it is so rare for anyone to call them on it. This text is widely used. Yet to my knowledge, no one has challenged these incorrect and misleading statements.

One of the authors of the textbook also responded to the criticisms in the LA Times.

"As a high school teacher, I'm always proud to see a student speak up in the face of any type of injustice.  I'm even prouder that a student like Matthew cares enough about his education to request that he get a proper one -- with the use of a fair, balanced, and factual textbook," said Hemant Mehta, chair of the Secular Student Alliance.

You can read more about Matthew's work here.  The eMpirical also covered his nationally recognized struggle against a proselytizing teacher in a two-part series (Part 1 Part 2), and featured an interview with Matthew.