How Texas Inflicts Bad Textbooks on Us
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/jun/21/how-texas-inflicts-bad-textbooks-on-us/?pagination=false“What happens in Texas doesn’t stay in Texas when it comes to textbooks”
No matter where you live, if your children go to public schools, the textbooks they use were very possibly written under Texas influence. If they graduated with a reflexive suspicion of the concept of separation of church and state and an unexpected interest in the contributions of the National Rifle Association to American history, you know who to blame.
When it comes to meddling with school textbooks, Texas is both similar to other states and totally different. It’s hardly the only one that likes to fiddle around with the material its kids study in class. The difference is due to size—4.8 million textbook-reading schoolchildren as of 2011—and the peculiarities of its system of government, in which the State Board of Education is selected in elections that are practically devoid of voters, and wealthy donors can chip in unlimited amounts of money to help their favorites win.
Those favorites are not shrinking violets. In 2009, the nation watched in awe as the state board worked on approving a new science curriculum under the leadership of a chair who believed that “evolution is hooey.” In 2010, the subject was social studies and the teachers tasked with drawing up course guidelines were supposed to work in consultation with “experts” added on by the board, one of whom believed that the income tax was contrary to the word of God in the scriptures.
Ever since the 1960s, the selection of schoolbooks in Texas has been a target for the religious right, which worried that schoolchildren were being indoctrinated in godless secularism, and political conservatives who felt that their kids were being given way too much propaganda about the positive aspects of the federal government. Mel Gabler, an oil company clerk, and his wife, Norma, who began their textbook crusade at their kitchen table, were the leaders of the first wave. They brought their supporters to State Board of Education meetings, unrolling their “scroll of shame,” which listed objections they had to the content of the current reading material. At times, the scroll was fifty-four feet long. Products of the Texas school system have the Gablers to thank for the fact that at one point the New Deal was axed from the timeline of significant events in American history....
= new reply since forum marked as read
So we'll have all these kinds of articles--this one's archived, but there'll be new ones--floating in the cesspool of the media.
1. TX has outsized influence because it's centralized in textbook adoption, adopts very few textbooks for a year and subject, and is #2 for size.
2. TX had a lot more influence last time 'round because Calif., #1, all but bailed from the textbook market. It used to have more. Most of the problems are just posturing.
3. This time around Calif. may be back in the game. Even if it isn't, it's going to be TX against Common Core. The only reason TX won't be completely sidelined is that the Common Core states won't be speaking with one voice. I doubt it'll matter much. Nobody follows the textbook page by page; most skip sections and add in new material.
Texas isn't a Common Core state. It was leading in "rigor" and standardized testing. The wave of ever more rigorous standardized tests apparently crested in 2012-13. The new rigorous standards preceded Common Core and are in the "TEKS" (Texas essential knowledge and skills) and the College and Career Readiness Standards, proposed by business and universities, and included by reference in the TEKS.
Still, I'm not sure there's all that huge a difference most of the time between CC and TX by the end of 12th grade. It'll matter by grade level, where TX may be, for example, biology in 7th grade and Earth science in 8th. That may make it easier--if CC has biology in 8th, then TX gets exactly what it wants for 7th and 8th.
4. But the biggest point is that a lot of articles are fairly misleading. TX suggests text but seldom imposes the text itself. Most of what textbook companies do is present their wares, written to at least cover what the state standards are, and then sit back and take notes. In some cases, states want more stuff in. TX usually wants stuff out. If the textbook doesn't cover something, California or Vermont can include it in their standards. It's just not in the textbook. If TX wants something truly quirky in, TX probably won't really care if the textbook publisher leaves it out. Yeah, it's possible that the SBOE will say "no" to the textbook that doesn't kowtow, but more likely all the publishers will balk at the same place and SBOE won't have much of a choice.
5. What the State Board of Education wants and what it gets by the time it goes through the various levels of revision and writing are often very different things. Take the whole "origin of life" business. Some SBEers wanted creationism in. You know what they got? Two things. We teach the "theory" of the abiotic origin of life. Oops. And we get a discussion every year of what makes a theory a theory, as opposed to a hypothesis. They know that in principle a theory can be overturned; they know that it's not likely, although it may be tweaked around the edges or revised. So Mendelian inheritance is a theory. When I was in school it was taugh as the absolute truth--secular system, after all. In the last decade I've learned about epigenetics, which doesn't say Lamarck was wrong but does revise Mendelian processes a bit. I rather like emphasizing that a theory is a bunch of hypotheses that have been supported by observation and taken to be true ... but may change with time (teacher adds "slightly"
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