Texas Textbook Bonfire
Texas has geared up for another year of Fahrenheit 451 homages. In the most recent case, Texas has refused adoption of a history textbook because it described rampant prostitution in the newly-settled American West. The chairperson of the Texas State Board of Education rhetorically whether “that something that should be emphasized? Is that an important historical fact?”
It turns out that Republican ideology is formally engrained in the Texas Education Code. § 28.002(h), “Required Curriculum”, contains the following:
The State Board of Education and each school district shall foster the continuation of the tradition of teaching United States and Texas history and the free enterprise system in regular subject matter and in reading courses and in the adoption of textbooks. A primary purpose of the public school curriculum is to prepare thoughtful, active citizens who understand the importance of patriotism and can function productively in a free enterprise society with appreciation for the basic democratic values of our state and national heritage. (Emphasis added)
This statute has been used to challenge numerous textbooks. In one particularly horrific example, an environmental science text was banned as being “anti-American”. Although I do not know the specifics, the only way I can conceive of an environmental science textbook being “anti-American” would be for it to note that the U.S. emits more greenhouse gases, both total and per capita, than any nation on earth, that the U.S. has refused to sign on to environmental protection treaties, and so forth. In other words, the truth. An alternative environmental sciences book was accepted, however. This one was partially funded by a consortium of mining companies. Conflicts of interests abound, not the least of which is the fact that the chairperson of the Board of Education is a co-owner of a petroleum company. “The oil and gas industry should be consulted,” she explains. “We always get a raw deal.”
Citizens for a Sound Economy, a right-wing special interest group involved in the censoring of Texas textbooks, flaunts their influence. With Texas buying one tenth of the nation’s textbooks, the field director is able to proclaim that “what we adopt in Texas is what the rest of the country gets.” The director bluntly and snidely describes their economic coercion: she explains that the publisher withdrew the textbook because they “wisely didn’t want to jeopardize their larger sales in the state by having that book as its poster child.”
Some examples of deleted and edited sentences in Texas textbooks:
- “Destruction of the tropical rain forest could affect weather over the entire planet” is changed to “Tropical rain forest ecosystems impact weather over the entire planet.”
- Astonishingly, the sentence “In the past, the earth has been much warmer than it is now, and fossils of sea creatures show us that the sea level was much higher than it is today. So does it really matter if the world gets warmer?” was added. (I’m all for instilling critical reasoning skills by having students challenge claims, but this line seems solely to suggest that global warming does not matter.)
- The sentence “Most experts on global warming feel that immediate action should be taken to curb global warming” was deleted.
- A textbook was rejected, with partial justification that it proclaims the “oft-heard falsehood” that over 100 million Americans are breathing unhealthy air. This is a said to be a lie because air is only toxic on some days.
Despite this blatant inculcation of ideology and censorship of true statements, the director insists that they do not want to edit or rewrite textbooks, only to assure that they are “stripped of ideology and offer a straightforward, objective statement of facts.” (Quote is from a New York Times article, and may be a paraphrase of the director’s statements.) In the end, the censors fall back on one excuse. “[Historical realities should not be swept] under the rug. But the children should see the hope and the good things about America.”
Texas’s senators are Phil Gramm and Kay Bailey Hutchison. I have written both regarding this issue. If you desire, you may use my letter as a model for your own letter:
Dear Senator [Gramm/Hutchison],
I am writing as a concerned U.S. citizen regarding the censorship of textbooks by the Texas State Board of Education. In recent decisions, environmental textbooks have been banned for their frank discussions of global warming, and history books have been banned for their discussion of prostitution in the Old West. I believe U.S. students should be armed with relevant facts, historical and modern, so that they may grow to be conscientious and knowledgeable leaders upon reaching adulthood. Texas purchases 10% of the nations textbooks, and as such is in a unique position to set the standard for the United States. Accordingly, I ask that you advocate for the revision of textbook adoption policies in the Great State of Texas.
I appreciate your time and consideration.
Best regards,
[Name]
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November 25th, 2007 at 23h51
[...] Texas textbooks. Ring a bell? Go read that link if you haven’t. It tells about Texas’s textbook [...]
October 17th, 2008 at 08h57
[...] was a little too much for the delicate sensibilities of the TEA. Oh, and for years they loved to go after anything that suggested we were fucking up the planet. I really want to send my kids to public school, but if I do, their education will be heavily [...]
March 18th, 2010 at 22h19
[...] is not the first time the issue has crossed the mcgees.org desk. It did 8 years ago as Texas Textbook Bonfire. But don’t just get pissed. Get moving. Write letters. Better yet, [...]