Texas was one of the first states to have broadly written standards for language arts, science and social studies, which were copied by many other states. When coupled with the fact that Texas is the 2nd largest market for textbooks (after California, which has very specific standards that aren't used by other states), it makes the Texas State Board of Education the arbiter for what goes into the textbooks for 46 or 47 other states. Currently, 7 of the 15 members of that committee are avowedly banding together to bring explicitly Christian concepts into textbooks, and remove anything that smacks of liberalism.
Lead by a dentist named Don McLeroy, who believes the Earth was created 10,000 years ago, these people change the standards suggested by teams of teachers and professors to make textbooks more right-wing:
To give an illustration simultaneously of the power of ideology and Texas’ influence, Barber told me that when he led the social-studies division at Prentice Hall, one conservative member of the board told him that the 12th-grade book, “Magruder’s American Government,” would not be approved because it repeatedly referred to the U.S. Constitution as a “living” document. “That book is probably the most famous textbook in American history,” Barber says. “It’s been around since World War I, is updated every year and it had invented the term ‘living Constitution,’ which has been there since the 1950s. But the social conservatives didn’t like its sense of flexibility. They insisted at the last minute that the wording change to ‘enduring.’ ” Prentice Hall agreed to the change, and ever since the book — which Barber estimates controlled 60 or 65 percent of the market nationally — calls it the “enduring Constitution.”
Last fall, McLeroy was frank in talking about how he applies direct pressure to textbook companies. In the language-arts re-evaluation, the members of the Christian bloc wanted books to include classic myths and fables rather than newly written stories whose messages they didn’t agree with. They didn’t get what they wanted from the writing teams, so they did an end run around them once the public battles were over. “I met with all the publishers,” McLeroy said. “We went out for Mexican food. I told them this is what we want. We want stories with morals, not P.C. stories.” He then showed me an e-mail message from an executive at Pearson, a major educational publisher, indicating the results of his effort: “Hi Don. Thanks for the impact that you have had on the development of Pearson’s Scott Foresman Reading Street series. Attached is a list of some of the Fairy Tales and Fables that we included in the series.”
Because textbook publishers want to be able to sell their books in Texas, they cave to McLeroy's demands, and those books wind up being sold in other states too. So now textbooks used all over the country no longer talk about a living constitution, and have Fables with right-wing approved morals instead of stories that might speak to today's kids.
They also have completely arbitrary power. Author Bill Martin, Jr., who wrote the kids book "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" is no longer mentioned in language arts textbooks, because one of the Board members got him confused with another Bill Martin who wrote a book on Marxism (which of course is justification in Texas for banishment from elementary school textbooks).
It seems like it would be viable for reasonable states who don't want their textbooks to be held hostage to these nuts to form a book-buying consortium that would equal or best Texas in purchasing power. Even excluding Texas, as consortion of NY, NJ, Mass, Illinois, Maryland, DC, etc. would have huge purchasing clout, and could have a panel of impartial experts figure out a way to merge any inconsistent standards between states.
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