Curriculum changes have been approved in the state of Texas, one of the largest buyers of textbooks in the U.S. From the New York Times:
After three days of turbulent meetings, the Texas Board of Education on Friday approved a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light.
Proponents cite adding “balance” as an underlying goal:
Since January, Republicans on the board have passed more than 100 amendments to the 120-page curriculum standards affecting history, sociology and economics courses from elementary to high school. The standards were proposed by a panel of teachers.
“We are adding balance,” said Dr. Don McLeroy, the leader of the conservative faction on the board, after the vote. “History has already been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left.”
Battles over what to put in science and history books have taken place for years in the 20 states where state boards must adopt textbooks, most notably in California and Texas. But rarely in recent history has a group of conservative board members left such a mark on a social studies curriculum.
Notably, some voices were absent from the discussion:
There were no historians, sociologists or economists consulted at the meetings, though some members of the conservative bloc held themselves out as experts on certain topics.
Changes to history and economics curriculum include revisions to sections on the history of the civil rights movement, the conservative resurgence of the ’80s and ’90s, the separation of church and state, U.S. internment practices during WWII, McCarthyism, affirmative action, and Title IX. Additionally:
In the field of sociology, another conservative member, Barbara Cargill, won passage of an amendment requiring the teaching of “the importance of personal responsibility for life choices” in a section on teenage suicide, dating violence, sexuality, drug use and eating disorders.
“The topic of sociology tends to blame society for everything,” Ms. Cargill said.
Comments 3
Charles R — March 14, 2010
This would not be such an issue if textbooks were an open source or creative commons resource available to teachers. By entangling education with market pressures, and especially free market ones in the global context, this is exactly the kind of 'smoothing' of local differences one should expect—what one finds in the fast food industry, for example, as the homogeneity of flavor, texture, and presentation throughout the country, but already found in furniture, cars, mp3 players. The local interest that has the biggest market share along with the cultural force comes to dominate the variations and pull them in line. It becomes more difficult to produce things for a niche market, driving up the costs for that niche, becoming even more difficult to continue justifying the niche purpose.
Modular textbooks accessible digitally and published online solves this problem at its source, by denying the power of any one consumer to dictate the entire market's allocation of resources. Publishing houses already accomplish their version of this, at some profit to themselves, by tailoring university textbooks to specific instructional goals of professors. Even the very fact that the publishing company would construct a text in keeping with the Texas board's curriculum shows they have the machinery in place already to make a textbook according to customer demands. They need to be called on this, and local communities need to demand their own interests are similarly respected. But in the absence of any move on the part of the publishing companies to follow through, a state-wide school board needs to then solicit the aid of the many hundreds of professional educators throughout its state to construct a textbook.
If a market exchange is not working fairly to distribute resources, the people need to have some courage to do the possible: return to work on a common interest to develop a text in common. Professors and teachers are out there who love the craft and are sincerely interested in their disciplines. It's an upheaval that'll be chaotic, but a state school board who takes the step to do so will have a product, a resource, on their hands that is home-grown, "made in the usa" and reflects the hard work, diligence, intelligence, and pedagogical talent of their own state's professionals. A state's small businesses can benefit: local printing companies can benefit from printing off the texts for local schools
Texas elected those members of the school board. That is what Texans wanted. They have now opened up the board's recommendations to public comment. If the Texas public has no further comments, then we need to ensure the damage they elect and choose for themselves does not spread through the mechanisms of the market to others. That's Cargill's own logic, is it not? Freedom is fragile, which is why we work on it together. Those who choose to go it alone, should have that freedom to wither alone. That's the Texas secessionist logic, is it not?
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