New Books, another battle

The opening shots of a new state textbook tussle were fired Tuesday, as the Texas Public Policy Foundation released a review of proposed social studies and history books and the Texas Freedom Network announced plans to fight what it called textbook censorship.

The foundation’s review, conducted by academics and public school teachers paid by the group, found none of the more than 150 books offered by publishers to be without flaws.

One book, according to the group, claimed that civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks sat in the middle of the bus that made her famous, in the seats where whites and blacks were allowed to sit. Parks actually sparked a series of protests and a bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala., when she sat in the front of a bus because there were no seats available in the back, where blacks were expected to sit at the time.

Other errors include a claim that the Rio Grande is the southern border of Mexico (it’s the northern border) and that Thomas Jefferson wrote the Constitution (James Madison is credited as the author).

The Texas Public Policy Foundation will present its report listing more than 500 errors in the books to the State Board of Education next week.

Chris Patterson, director of education research for the foundation, co-founded by San Antonio businessman James Leininger, said the group focused on factual errors.

“We have not, and will not, ask for content to be removed,” Patterson said. “Rather, we want content added to ensure that every topic is treated fairly and presented accurately.”

The review, which cost more than $70,000, was conducted under the direction

of Christopher Hammons, a professor at Houston Baptist University. Reviewers

were asked to scour the texts for historical accuracy and bias.

“Our reviewers were selected from a wide spectrum, ideologically,” Hammons

said. “We just want to lay out the data and let the policy makers do what they

like.”

But members of another group said they feared that efforts such as those by

the foundation would lead to censorship. The Texas Freedom Network announced its own efforts to counter reviewers from the Texas Public Policy Foundation and

Citizens for a Sound Economy, another nonprofit that has organized textbook

reviews.

“In the land of the free, there should be no place for politically motivated textbook censorship,” said Sam Smoot, executive director of the group. “But in

Texas, a small group of people is bound and determined that children should have access to only some information.”

The network said that in 1996 other groups said some books had “an overkill” on cruelty to slaves and pushed to eliminate discussions of homelessness, drug

use, endangered animals and the environment.

More than 100 people have offered to read books for the network, to prepare

for what other reviews find objectionable.

Over the next two years, the state will buy more than $700 million worth of

books. Texas is the nation’s second-largest textbook buyer, and what publishers produce for Texas is what children in other states are likely to read.

jsuydam@statesman.com; 445-3635

CORRECTION-DATE: July 18, 2002, Thursday

CORRECTION:

In a story on Page B1 of the July 10 Metro & State section, the Texas Public Policy Foundation faulted a proposed textbook for saying civil rights advocate Rosa Parks was sitting in the middle of the bus when she refused to give up her seat to a white person. The foundation said she was sitting in the front. However, Parks was sitting in the front of the “colored” section, which was in fact near the middle of the bus.

GRAPHIC: Textbooks carry a lot of information, and groups have begun to grapple over their accuracy and perspective as the state prepares to spend more than $ 700 million on new books. Ben DeLeon, a worker for the Texas Freedom Network,

returns books to a warehouse after a news conference Tuesday.