Statement by Peggy Venable, Director of Texas CSE, on TFN Attempts to Censor Citizen Input On Texas Textbooks

The Texas Freedom Network, the organization that supports banning the Pledge of Allegiance from classrooms, is making allegations of textbook censorship.

But it appears they are attacking their own “hero.” Last year, that so-called “freedom network” presented SBOE Chairman Grace Shore with the organization’s first “Hero Award”.

Now they are attacking Chairman Shore — charging her with censorship and calling her a right wing religious fanatic. In recent news stories, it seems she cited some references to the “Cowboys and Prostitutes” subsection in a history textbook. Though the book was voluntarily withdrawn by its publisher citing it as inappropriate for juniors in high school, the so-called Texas Freedom Network continues their attacks and name calling.

Their frantic attempts to distort this issue are counterproductive.

Even the author’s attempts to defend his textbook ring hollow. It appears any time liberal demagoguery is exposed; they claim “right wing conspiracy”.

The text in question read, “50,000 women west of the Mississippi worked as prostitutes during the second half of the 19th century.” We do see this as a misrepresentation of the history and an attempt to denigrate the West and our forefathers. This type of statement begs the question: how were prostitutes counted? Did they register? And one might ask “if 50,000 women…were prostitutes in the period of half a century, how many women were prostitutes each year?” And with integrated teaching, will this be a question on the math test?

Texas Citizens for a Sound Economy and other organizations in the textbook review partnership are citizens working to make sure Texas children and teachers have the best textbooks in our classrooms. We just want to get history accurately presented to our schoolchildren.

It’s time for the Texas Freedom Network to recognize the only censorship underway is their futile fight to keep citizens from reviewing textbooks.