Textbook cases
As Texas shows, school book content must not be left to interest groups. California, take note.
Oh, those disingenuous Texans. Pretending to bring ideological balance to history textbooks when what they're really doing is weighting the books so heavily with conservative mores, you'd expect the state's backpack-laden school children to list to the right.
If the revisions proposed by the conservative faction of the Texas Board of Education are adopted in May, the state's textbooks will raise the study of the inaugural speech of Confederate President Jefferson Davis to the same level as that of Abraham Lincoln. They will downplay the role of Thomas Jefferson, in part because he coined the phrase "separation of church and state," and will imply that the Founding Fathers were Christian even though historians have found evidence that not all of them held Christian beliefs. The internment of a relatively small number of people of German and Italian heritage during World War II would be emphasized to make it appear as though there wasn't a racial component to interning more than 100,000 Japanese Americans. This amounts to just plain disinformation.
Before Californians look down their noses, though, they should consider the rules governing this state's textbooks. The state regulates the portrayal of genders, minority groups, the elderly and the disabled by requiring proportional representation that also cannot show any group in a negative light. Thus, as education expert Diane Ravitch writes, the elderly must be portrayed as fit and lively even if reality tells us that some cope with illness and disability. Publishers have been discouraged from
If the revisions proposed by the conservative faction of the Texas Board of Education are adopted in May, the state's textbooks will raise the study of the inaugural speech of Confederate President Jefferson Davis to the same level as that of Abraham Lincoln. They will downplay the role of Thomas Jefferson, in part because he coined the phrase "separation of church and state," and will imply that the Founding Fathers were Christian even though historians have found evidence that not all of them held Christian beliefs. The internment of a relatively small number of people of German and Italian heritage during World War II would be emphasized to make it appear as though there wasn't a racial component to interning more than 100,000 Japanese Americans. This amounts to just plain disinformation.
Before Californians look down their noses, though, they should consider the rules governing this state's textbooks. The state regulates the portrayal of genders, minority groups, the elderly and the disabled by requiring proportional representation that also cannot show any group in a negative light. Thus, as education expert Diane Ravitch writes, the elderly must be portrayed as fit and lively even if reality tells us that some cope with illness and disability. Publishers have been discouraged from
