News Guide: Texas' latest history textbook tussle

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

News Guide: Texas' latest history textbook tussle
By WILL WEISSERT, Associated Press | November 18, 2014 | Updated: November 18, 2014 12:08am

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The Texas Board of Education is poised to vote Tuesday on more than 100 proposed social studies, history, geography and government textbooks that publishers have submitted for approval and use in classrooms statewide. Texas is such a large textbook market that it sometimes affects books used elsewhere. A look at the latest book battle:

BIASED BOOKS?

Academics and activists on the right and left have complained about the proposed textbooks, saying some offer ideology over facts. One Texas university professor said some books so exaggerate Moses' influence on U.S. democracy that students will grow up believing the biblical figure "was the first American," while others complained of overpraising capitalism, sugarcoating historical racial segregation and unfairly portraying Muslims, American Indians and Hispanics. Complaints about many of the same books include that they give too much attention to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and downplay the role of radical Islam in modern terrorism.

CURRICULUM CONTROVERY

The proposed textbooks adhere to Texas' academic curriculum set by the Republican-controlled Board of Education. In 2010, the board created history and social studies curriculums that emphasized conservative concepts, saying they countered inherent liberal classroom biases. The current controversy over the influence of Judeo-Christian values on America's Founding Fathers grew out of requirements that Moses and Mosaic Law be taught. Tuesday's approval of social studies and history textbooks is the first since 2002, and they are set to be used in classrooms for a decade beginning in September 2015.

EVOLVING EDITS

At its September meeting, the board heard hours of complaints about the proposed textbooks. Many publishers have since made or promised to make edits, or provided justifications for why they aren't. A division of publishing giant Pearson Education said it's willing to remove a cartoon in a high school American government textbook that featured space aliens hovering over earth with the caption, "Relax, we'll be fine — they've got affirmative action." The company also cut wording from a fifth-grade social studies book casting doubt on human activity contributing to climate change. But Pearson refused to modify its Contemporary World Cultures book stating that jihad means "the struggle to be a better person," even though some critics said it actually means holy war.

Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/texas/article/News-Guide-Texas-latest-history-textbook-tussle-5899977.php

[jtuck004]

1. So can we make any money operating an Underground Railroad, smuggling students into school

districts where they will at least have a chance at something past a Texas high school?

They may have to revamp the entire training system in Texas above high school, because such training may not let them get into colleges elsewhere.

And if I am an employer in another state, or a professional association that doesn't have a "clown annex" and a resume or application comes from those areas it won't be long before we can buy canned software that will automatically delete it. So they may want to increase those fast food and home health care jobs.

Heck, maybe this is their plan to secede?

[liberal N proud]

2. Why is this moronic group allowed to continue to distort truth and effect our youth so drastically?

Can't we get this shit out the hands of these monsters?

[JHB]

5. It comes down to getting out the vote...in ALL elections

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/jun/21/how-texas-inflicts-bad-textbooks-on-us/

The Texas State Board of Education, which approves textbooks, curriculum standards, and supplemental materials for the public schools, has fifteen members from fifteen districts whose boundaries don’t conform to congressional districts, or really anything whatsoever. They run in staggered elections that are frequently held in off years, when always-low Texas turnout is particularly abysmal. The advantage tends to go to candidates with passionate, if narrow, bands of supporters, particularly if those bands have rich backers. All of which—plus a natural supply of political eccentrics—helps explain how Texas once had a board member who believed that public schools are the tool of the devil.

Texas originally acquired its power over the nation’s textbook supply because it paid 100 percent of the cost of all public school textbooks, as long as the books in question came from a very short list of board-approved options. The selection process “was grueling and tension-filled,” said Julie McGee, who worked at high levels in several publishing houses before her retirement. “If you didn’t get listed by the state, you got nothing.” On the other side of the coin, David Anderson, who once sold textbooks in the state, said that if a book made the list, even a fairly mediocre salesperson could count on doing pretty well. The books on the Texas list were likely to be mass-produced by the publisher in anticipation of those sales, so other states liked to buy them and take advantage of the economies of scale.

[UTUSN]

3. R#7 & K n/t

[charliea]

4. It would cost the publishers too much but...

Just give Texas what it wants in a textbook, as a Texas edition only. The rest of the country can have real books.