Texas Schoolbooks: Education Without Enlightenment September 15, 2014

BillMoyers.com:

One of the tasks of the Texas State Board of Education is to update curriculum standards and textbooks for Texas schoolchildren. The Texas school system is so large — 4.8 million textbook-reading schoolchildren as of 2011 — that revisions made by the board are often included in school books across the country, though digital technology has lessened this effect in recent years. In 2010, the board got a lot of attention when it approved over 100 amendments — many of which had a very clear conservative political agenda — to the social studies and economics curriculum standards. Here are some of the more pointed proposals. Thomas Who?

Thomas Jefferson, the Founding Father considered by many to be the author of the Declaration of Independence, is also credited with coining the phrase “separation of church and state.” According to The New York Times, that coinage didn’t make him very popular with the conservative members of the board. They removed Jefferson from a list of great Enlightenment philosophers — including John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu and Jean Jacques Rousseau — who inspired political revolutions from the 1700s to today. They also removed the word “Enlightenment” and added Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin. After much criticism, they added Jefferson back, but left out “Enlightenment” resulting in a standard very different from the original.

National Journal:

Texas Board of Education member David Bradley wants to set the record straight on global warming. “Whether global warming is a myth or whether it’s actually happening, that’s very much up for debate,” Bradley said. “Don’t listen to anyone who tells you otherwise.” Bradley is not a climate scientist, but he’s about to make big decisions governing what Texas students learn about climate change. In November, Bradley and the rest of the state’s 15-member board will vote to adopt new social-studies textbooks for public schools from kindergarten to 12th grade. When he does, he says that part of his mission will be to shield Lone Star schoolchildren from green propaganda. Instead, Bradley plans to push for textbooks that teach climate-science doubt—presenting the link between greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activity and global warming as an unsubstantiated and controversial theory.

Natonal Center for Science Education:

Among the most problematic claims about climate science in the social studies textbooks submitted for state adoption: a statement that fossil fuel emissions have caused a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica; a claim that scientists “disagree about what is causing climate change”; and a quotation from a notorious climate change denial organization presented in rebuttal of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change. “The scientific debate over whether climate change is happening and who is responsible has been over for years, and the science textbooks Texas adopted last year make that clear,” explained NCSE’s Minda Berbeco. “Climate change will be a key issue that future citizens of Texas will need to understand and confront, and they deserve social studies textbooks that reinforce good science and prepare them for the challenges ahead.” But the social studies textbooks under consideration too often fail to reach that goal, added Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund. “In too many cases we’re seeing publishers shade and even distort facts to avoid angering politicians who vote on whether their textbooks get approved,” Miller said. “Texas kids deserve textbooks that are based on sound scholarship, not political biases.” According to the Austin American-Statesman (September 10, 2014), the Texas state board of education is scheduled to have a public hearing on the social studies textbooks on September 16, 2014. Thomas Ratliff, a member of the board, told the newspaper that the board considers only whether the books have factual errors and cover fifty percent of the state standards: “If there’s a complaint about the standards, that ship has sailed.”