Groups spar over what goes in history textbooks
The fight over what material goes into Texas social studies textbooks heated up Tuesday when several groups accused each other of trying to push their political and religious agendas on public school students.
Texas, which has about 4.1 million students in its public school system, adopts new social studies books every eight years. The state will spend $344.7 million on the textbooks, which will be used in classrooms in 2003.
The elected State Board of Education has no say over textbook content but can reject books because of errors or failure to follow the state curriculum. The board is scheduled to begin reviewing the social studies books next week. Final decisions are due in November.
The Texas Freedom Network, a lobby organization that calls itself a watchdog of the religious right, on Tuesday launched a campaign dubbed “I Object!” The group has gathered parents, teachers and community leaders to review social studies books that are up for state approval.
Texas Freedom Network Executive Director Samantha Smoot said religious and conservative groups have for too long had too much influence on what goes into textbooks.
Members of the conservative groups said they have found hundreds of factual errors in history books and believe some books are anti-American, anti-Christian and anti-conservative.
“All the texts we reviewed have bleached history from the pages,” said Chris Patterson, executive director of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank.
Smoot accused some of pushing for photographs of white families that include a mother and a father, instead of minority and single-parent families. She also said the conservative groups objected to books that portrayed slavery as cruel.
“In the land of the free, there should be no place for politically motivated textbook censorship. But in Texas, a small group of people is bound and determined that children should have access to only some information,” Smoot said as she stood behind a podium of stacked history books.
Dick Collins of Austin is among those reviewing social studies books for the group.
“I believe attempts to force personal religious beliefs and morality upon the rest of us are undemocratic and un-American,” Collins said. “We forsake our legacy if we don’t keep fighting those who would make us a ‘theocracy.”‘
Conservatives said Smoot’s group is pushing “liberal demagoguery.”
“These are the same folks who supported the California courts ruling to ban the Pledge of Allegiance in classrooms. They are so far to the left I fear they may fall off the edge of their flat earth,” said David Bradley, a Republican member of the State Board of Education from Beaumont.
“We just want to get history accurately presented to our schoolchildren,” said Peggy Venable, executive director of Texas Citizens for a Sound Economy.
Because Texas is such a large market, books approved here are almost guaranteed a measure of financial success and are often shopped to schools elsewhere.
On the Net:
Textbooks: http://www.tea.state.tx.us/textbooks/
Texas Freedom Network: http://www.tfn.org
Texas Citizens for a Sound Economy: http://www.cse.org
