Will Students Get it “Wright” If Asked Who Invented Flight?

An Anniversary That Could Have Be Forgotten…

100 years ago two brothers from Dayton, Ohio, challenged conventional wisdom and reached for the sky. They put their skills as bicycle mechanics to use attempting to fly.

They changed the way we look at our world and remind us that acting on a dream can open a galaxy of opportunity. Thanks to them, what was 100 years ago an incredulous thought — man flying — is now commonplace and almost taken so for granted.

Their first flight put Kitty Hawk on the outer banks of North Carolina on the map…and it put man in the air. Most of us appreciate that inventing flight is noteworthy.

Who among us did not learn about the Wright brothers in our textbooks?

However, the important flight and the pioneer inventors could slip into oblivion if some textbooks submitted for consideration in Texas had been approved without citizen input and changes.

Thanks to CSE member Bill Ames from Dallas, our school children will have that important bit of history in their textbooks.

The State Board of Education (SBOE) is responsible for approving textbooks which then are submitted to school districts for their selection. The Permanent School Fund (PSF) provides the funding for the textbooks.

One would think the SBOE would have been applauded for their open process of textbook review and adoption. However, the SBOE braved the criticism of the liberal newspaper editorial boards, the ACLU and education unions who opposed citizen participation in the textbook review process. And the citizens of Texas will benefit for the SBOE’s leadership in providing parents and taxpayers with a voice in the process.

Most citizens would agree that Texas school children need to know that two brothers who repaired bicycles for a living had a vision of flight. Not only is it an important window into our history but their feat serves to inspire students and serve as an example of how ingenuity and perseverance can result in dreams coming true.

Today, Wilbur and Orville Wright are household names. But what if they were omitted from textbooks? What if future school children did not have the opportunity to daydream of two brothers who challenged the law of gravity and had the courage to pursue their dream to fly?

It would be a great loss to have omitted the Wright Brothers from the history textbooks. And thanks to one committed citizen who spent hours pouring over textbooks, the Wright Brothers’ first flight will be in the new textbooks and their dream can inspire future inventors.

Much has been written about textbook reviews and charges were made by some groups that “conservatives want to censure textbooks.” CSE and other groups’ efforts were recognized in a front-page story last year in the New York Times. I was on the Phil Donohue Show on MSNBC to defend citizens’ rights to review textbooks. Citizens should demand that errors, omissions and bias be corrected. Teacher unions and big-government advocates tried to call this censorship. We call it good citizenship.

CSE’s role in this endeavor began making sure that science the environmental issues were accurately portrayed in textbooks. Then we worked on assuring that students were taught free enterprise, patriotism and democracy as required by state law. These are tomorrow’s leaders in the classrooms today, and they need the background to make educated decisions on public policy issues.

Middle and high school students in Texas will have new history and social studies textbooks in their classrooms when they return to school this fall. Had these textbooks been purchased without citizen review, the Wright brothers would have been omitted from at least one prominent publishers’ book. And that would have been wrong to have omitted the Wrights.