Damn, am I ever glad to live in Denmark. People here may disagree politically but at least no one is trying to change history just because there are certain persons and certain events you don't like.
We don't even have a separation of the state and the church but still basically no one believes that the Bible is true in every aspect of its word. I pity those Texas numbnuts. They must have gone through some serious brainwash to wind up like this.

I worked at McGraw-Hill Education in Texas, and some of my co-workers remembered starting their careers in the infamous old Texas Schoolbook Repository. North of Dallas, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has a giant faculty north of Dallas in Flower Mound, dwarfed, however, by MHE's warehouse in south Dallas. If the national response to the Texas State Board of Education nonsense were to threaten those jobs, as well as heap of editorial positions mostly in Austin, some very real muscle with the powers that Republican be would fund some candidates with a view to kicking the crackpots out.

I went to high school in the South, and every time the Civil War was taught, it always came with the disclaimer that the war was about more than just slavery. This is correct of course; it was about seceding among other things, but I always felt as if that particular subject was dealt with especially gently. Almost to the point of distortion. Not to say that I didn't get a good education, because I think I did. Education clearly shapes young minds, and this particular move feels like a desperate attempt to convert and indoctrinate.

McLeroy is right when he says our nation is founded on Christian principles, he is right. But Christian principles came pretty much from the Greeks: who looked down on abortion, but allowed it; who thought it was all the same to find love with someone of the same sex, one could go on.

The God of the Greeks is the same God of the Christians and its the same God for everyone else.

In the old days, say, 150 years ago or so, when people would look at history they would look at it in spiritual terms--not just facts--and asked what does it all MEAN.

When the textbooks are being taken over by an extremely conservative viewpoint, then there is no meaning. Martin Luther King Jr. is central to the meaning of our existence and thus, central to the meaning of our history and to the meaning of our textbooks. This is unacceptable.

I mean, as far as evolution, what other game in town is there? They can't even tell you what we looked like before today. It's absurd that they are against evolution and don't even have another theory to counter against it.

It's ironic that those in charge of educating kids are so opposed to our children acquiring a broad range of knowledge. Alas, their minds are too shallow to allow deep thought in others.

Our main hope is that books like HARRY POTTER, TWILIGHT, and DIARY OF A WIMPY KID will inspire a love of reading in the younger generations, and they will have the fortitude to branch out on their own to read more books and discover the world shielded from them by modern schooling.

"Therefore, major American textbook publishers must follow the Texas standards or lose their most important market."

This is perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the whole situation. It's bad enough that this small board is holding back the children in their state, but the possibility that their decisions will affect the rest of the country as well is simply horrific.

Politicians deciding on textbook content?? What has US education come to!?

While I share your outrage at the things Texas has done, I feel obliged (as a person who has worked in the textbook industry for a number of years) to point out that it is actually less and less true that what Texas wants dictates what the rest of the country gets. With the pressures of No Child Left Behind and the emphasis on standards and testing, states increasingly want materials that match their standards exactly. Customization is a big issue in textbook publishing these days. States that have not previously had this kind of attention from publishers now expect it; they are no longer "playing along" and buying whatever is produced for the largest states. My own employer (which I am not naming because I don't want to be seen as speaking for them in any official capacity; I am a relatively low-level person on the editorial side) produces "national editions" that are based on an analysis of many states' standards. These national editions are then customized for states where the market warrants it -- not just the "big three" of Texas, California, and Florida, but others such as North Carolina, Louisiana, Ohio, etc.

Producing a "national edition" is difficult, especially in fields such as science and social studies, because the standards vary widely from state to state. I personally am a strong supporter of the movements toward a Common Core or other national standards; it would make producing educational materials easier, and because it would reduce the amount of customization work required, it would also most likely reduce the cost of those materials as well.

I live in Alberta, the only province in Canada to have its own Creationist museum. My younger brother is being homeschooled using American textbooks from a Christian organization. His science textbook has three whole pages detailing the logistics of Noah's Ark. None of us can afford to be apathetic about this relentless and ignorant movement who keep coming back no matter how many times they are slapped down by the courts. Persistance is their strategy and they will keep pushing until they can find a weak spot. Keep up the good fight Roger.

I live in Richmond, Virginia, the former capitol of the Confederacy. There is a street here called Monument Avenue, which is lined with admittedly impressive statues of such as Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis (although relatively recently the city stuck one of Richmond native Arthur Ashe in there too--you know, equality and all). To look at these heroic figures you wouldn't believe for a moment that the Confederacy lost, not to mention that Richmond was involved in Sherman's Urban Renewal Project of 1865 and pretty much razed to the ground. There are people here who call the Civil War the War of Northern Aggression with absolutely no humor or irony; "Lee-Jackson Day" is a holiday celebrated the same weekend as MLK Day to commemorate the birthdays of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, and the reverence for the latter borders on worship. Anyone living in the south who is not a native can tell you that the natives are gifted at ignoring facts and history, and the "America is a Christian nation" line plays pretty well here despite the fact that Thomas Jefferson's Monticello is about an hour down the road--you know, the guy who wrote the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, one of three accomplishments he wanted noted in his epitaph along with writing the Declaration of Independence and founding the University of Virginia.

To be fair, Calvin influenced capitalism with predestination, which according to my sociology course, set up modern capitalism as stated by Max Weber.Evidence is the Protestant Ethic. Also, if the conservatives don't want science, tell them to throw away:

their cars
their televisions
their computers

and that's just the beginning.

This reminds me of how in France, in 2005, the (conservative) government passed a law asking history teachers in elementary and middle schools to teach children about "the positive effects of the French presence on colonized territories." This led to an uproar from teachers and parents alike, as well as from many historians.

At the time I was doing some work as an assistant teacher in the elementary school I used to go to as a kid, in the middle of Chinatown in Paris. Half the students in any given class there are Asian, with probably another quarter being either black or of Arab descent. I remember the teacher telling me, "can you imagine standing in front of those kids and telling them with a straight face that, really, colonization was actually a pretty good thing?"

Not a year after its introduction, that law was repealed, but not before it could lead to a few diplomatic "incidents," many of which involving then-Miniter of the Interior Nicolas Sarkozy, who'd defended it pretty fiercely. Here's hoping this attempt by the Texas Board of Education to rewrite history eventually suffers the same fate.

I'm glad you wrote this Roger. That Washington Monthly piece has stuck with me ever since I read it. There is a crisis in education right now, and these right-wing history deniers are doing everything in their power to accelerate it.

Part of the solution is to have federal education standards, just like every other developed country (sounds familiar huh?).

Way back in the day, when the US public school system was established, there was a conscious decision to keep standards (and funding) local. Because of this, we have a patchwork of standards, state by state, district by district. It was a recipe for disaster that has come home to roost some 150+ years later.

What's being done about it? Sadly almost nothing.

Would that the issue were as simple as an inattentive electorate. That might be affected by a public awareness campaign or other means of educating and enlightening people about what they are voting for. No, sadly, here in Texas a lot of people think this sort of "change" is a very good thing and about time too. They vote for board members like these specifically because the candidates say they will advocate to make these kinds of changes.

Most of them are the sort of people who like to preface the word "liberals" with something that makes it clear "liberals" is a bad word, and that the speaker is not in any way associated with liberals; "those liberals", "you liberals", and the ever-charming "them libruls" all get plenty of mileage in the Lone Star State. Those are just the ones suitable for print, of course.

I'm a native Texan, I love my state and I live here by choice...but lately it's been such an embarrassment, and for anyone left of center-right there's always a sense that one's vote and/or activism is just being thrown into a void.

First of all. . . to Mr. McLeroy, unless I'm mistaken, I believe Reagan lowered spending taxes but raised Business Taxes, Payroll Taxes and Energy Taxes (I was born in 1979 so I might not remember that very well).

Second, It is sad to see the Texas Board of Education act the way it's acting. Hopefully, when these children go to college, they will be exposed to a greater array of information (also available now thanks to the internet) and they will be able to learn what was omitted.

To quote Albert Einstein: "Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school"

Roger, you raise fair points but like all things there are two sides too every argument. Too often over the past few decades,the schools have been used to advance the propaganda of the left. Who can forget the classic children's book "My two Daddies" or of course giving condoms to 5th graders? Rightly so, many parents are sick of the left using the school system to indoctrinate students while they are young.

Now you have a few folks in Texas who want their turn. This is a natural turn of events and probably a healthy thing. It could return us to the middle where most of the country belongs.

Do you really doubt that certain "minority" figures are over represented in our school system??? The silent majority is tired of Black History month being celebrated in our schools. It is patronizing and wrong. The list goes on and on. We have affirmative action for admission in our schools. We have a United Negro College fund. Can you imagine the uproar over a United Caucasion Fund? There is a huge amount of resentment in this country over these things, but many are afraid to speak out openly because the will be labeled racists. This is why this is a healthy thing. Maybe the "far right" pushing this agenda can help bring those in the middle out into the open.

Dear Roger;

When I was a schoolboy Jerome Wiesner, Science Advisor to Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson and one of the founding fathers of the space program was the chairman of our local school committee. My public school education stressed a hands on practical understanding of the scientific method in the 8th grade. Evolution of course was taught and anthropology and psychology were electives in high school. It is very depressing to see public education take so many steps back from the 1960's.

The only optimistic thing I can think of is that the whole idea of printed textbooks is not going to be relevant much longer. Your Sun-Times Andy Ihnatko is writing extensively about the iPad and it's abilities to render books and other media. The State of Maine has been issuing MacBooks to all 8th graders for a decade now. Some school districts develop curriculum that is entirely web based.

Still maybe NASA should think about leaving Houston for a more enlightened environment.

Proud member of the Ebert Club.

Thank you for posting on this. I've been following the developments on a few education-focused blogs, and it's high time more people knew about it.

One thing that struck me was this:

"Of the current textbooks, McLeroy says: 'Instead of the American way they want multiculturalism.'"

A man named McLeroy (whose ancestors came to this country from Ireland along with immigrants from all corners of the planet) should be aware that multiculturalism IS the American way.

Unless, of course, you live in a bubble in Texas. That damned state makes me so angry sometimes...

I'm curious how other countries come up with their textbooks. Couldn't states simply buy textbooks from England or Canada or Australia so they don't have to deal with this nonsense? It wouldn't work for American history but it should be fine for science.

Why, when I consider all the road-blocks imposed on scientific process and historical accuracy by religious conservatives, am I left with a feeling akin to what must have been felt by enlightened Europeans when pondering the conflict between the Catholic church and Galileo? It all feels like a pointless fight against something that will eventually become widely accepted fact in a few hundred years. In that future time, this matter will more than likely be remembered as the simple provincialism of a once mighty nation.

Possible good news from Texas. A cursory Google check led me to an article posted today at The Corpus Christi Caller-Times:"Texas education board.What's next?"

Appears all the derisive National press is proving an embarrassment. Looks like the delusional McLeroy may be on his way out. If this column is to be trusted, the blowback seems to be growing. Sanity may yet prevail in the Texas educational system. Let's hope so. Also would be interesting to hear from any informed Texans that might be hanging out here.

caller.com/news/2010/apr/01/texas-education-board-what-next/

McLeroy: "The way I evaluate history textbooks is first I see how they cover Christianity and Israel."

As an Israeli American I take offense in the fact that McLeroy is using Israel in his excuse to taint the textbooks. Most Israelis are secular, believe in Evolution, would probably admire Cesar Chavez, Thurgood Marshall and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. if they knew more about them.

McLeroy, please keep us out of you vile thought process. We want no part in it.

Roger, all you have to do is compare any history book with what really happened to know that textbook writers are constitutionally devoid of shame. They have always, always lied, presenting a warped view of the world designed to assure their target market that it's more important and more central to the world than the unvarnished truth would show.

How many American textbooks on World War II spend ten times more space on the Western Front than on the much more important Eastern Front, simply because Americans fought in the West? How many all but ignore the war in China, which saw well over half the fighting and half the casualties?

Americans aren't the only ones, of course. Japanese textbooks ignore the Rape of Nanking and the horrors of the occupation of Korea; Canadian textbooks once barely mentioned First Nations peoples, let alone immigrants from Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa (which make up the majority of the population of some provinces). French texts make the colonization of Algeria seem like a dream come true instead of an exploitative, expensive mess. You have to give the Germans credit for refusing to whitewash the Nazi era, but they're almost alone in facing history honestly.

But Americans are specifically prone to getting on their high horses and pointing out everyone else's omissions while conveniently ignoring their own. Worse, they call the unvarnished truth "political correctness" because they assume that their textbooks' wildly inaccurate view of the world is holy gospel.

Thanks for giving this more national exposure, Roger. Don McLeroy won my county (Collin county) narrowly in the primaries last month, but lost statewide to a more moderate Republican candidate. Unfortunately, McLeroy keeps his seat until the end of the year, and the curriculum changes being made now may last for the next 10 years. My son is 7 now...

I understand the desire to provide balance, such as discussing the influence the Christian Coalition, etc. has had since Reagan (the entire reason we're having this discussion now). But the Texas school board has consistently ignored mainstream academic input in favor of forcing their personal views and creating unsupported, dangerous revisionist history. And they do with with an unrepentant zeal and single-mindedness.

But I think we ultimately need to thank the Texas primary voters for trying to restore some rationality to the curriculum review process by sending McLeroy home. Change needs to start here.

I have been wondering about this renewed interest in secession and "states rats"... is it just part of the polarization of america and the fear of a black man being in charge? maybe we should let them go. isnt that an american ideal, that people are free to choose their government? I remember around 4th grade being confused why the secession of America from Britain was ok, but the secession of states from the USA was not ok.

What I have never understood was why evolution or separation of church and state are such terrible concepts for a large number of Americans. Separating church and state provides for the healthiness of both. Evolution is based on the exact same scientific principles that have given us every major advancement in civilization over the past five hundred years. There is no reason why these concepts cannot be accepted alongside traditional religious beliefs. They are not mutually exclusive.

I have an even simpler proposal: wipe out state standards of education with a national one. Education discrepancies across states are staggeringly terrible, and Texas's emphasis on "the good Christian" further stipulates that state standard is stupid.

Hell yeah it's a slap in the face of conservatives, who feel entitled to their "America is number one! AMERICA IS NUMBER ONE!!!" mentality. But at this point, how else are Americans supposed to get a stinging cold reality wake up call? Outside the US evolution is considered theoretical fact: the creationism debate isn't even worth the effort. And yet here it is in the US that ignorance seems to be a perpetuating presence.

Publishers will be publishers, just like any business model is business. However this is an offense so strong and intellectually offensive on so many levels that honestly, the only appropriate response is to call Texas board out on an ultimatum.

As my brother adequately summed it up, "conservatives seem to have a complete disrespect for the weight and significance of history." Seriously.

I really don't know what to say? I saw this storm of pure irrationality coming ever since 2001 but I just thought nothing would come of it. The thongs of political cowardice and apathy has led us to a place of no return. Where a rational consideration of humanism is seen as a radical liberal point of view. While a far right-wing view is seen as being centrist, or apolitical.

We are living in such a cruel world now. Where acting "PC" is seen worse than a racial slur. Violence and irrationality rule as even champion liberals are pulled farther right in order to accommodate a radical conservative point of view and not be seen as radicals. This is the first time since the early 60's where something like this can fly without publicized protest.

I doubt the new textbooks will come under much criticism. After all, no one wants to be seen a being too "PC" by suggesting that Jefferson helped established the United States' political structure.

The curriculum you consider modern or mainstream is quite different from what was taught in the '50s. It too was changed without much attention from the public.

You grew up in Urbana, Illinois. I lived in Germany four and a half years during the '60s. I saw the Berlin wall when East Germany and the Soviet bloc were still in business.

My father wasn an Air Force navigation instructor in the '50s. Some of his students were black. When he invited them to his traditional poker party after graduation he instructed them to come to the front door in broad daylight. To hell with what the neighbors thought.

The pendulum swung too far one way, and the inevitable reaction threatens to swing it too far the other way. Hysteria will only exaggerate the problem.

I remember an email a college friend wrote right after the Bush/Gore election. She was afraid that the Christian Fundamentalists controlling GWB would impose a theocracy. It didn't happen, not because the left prevented it, but because it was never in the cards.

Sir, you are a wonderful writer and a fine movie critic (despite some factual lapses here and there).

No comments yet? Are people just willing to let this go by?

I have a 16yo son in HS in MA; I absolutely don't want the wingnuts in TX deciding what he should study in History and Science for the next two years of his HS career. It's bad enough if his current US history book is that mish-mash of "not-authored" rehashed material. (Thank goodness his teacher was savvy enough to assign a reading of "Lies My Teacher Told Me" and "People's History of the United States" at the beginning of the year.) Critical thinking is urgently needed!

What can an individual, not a TX resident, do??

Nice, succinct summary of the issue, Roger. Thank you. I particularly appreciate the final paragraph and the "educated, rational being" zinger.

I would like to propose a modest solution....

One would assume that most of the editorial changes necessitated by the self-righteous Savonarolas in Texas comprise a relatively small percentage of any given text. If that's the case, it would be a fairly easy thing for publishers to produce several versions of a title. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt could have an "Intro to American History: Texas Edition," and then an "Intro to American History: General Edition."

It's unlikely, of course, that the publishers (who are actually quite mercenary in their protection of profit margins) would go to this trouble without nudging from the other markets. Various states outside the Bible belt -- New York, California, etc. -- will have to speak up and refuse to buy texts that have been corrupted by the Texas troglodytes, by those who have mistaken proselytizing for education. (Of course, this would have the unintended consequence of biasing the better universities against Texas students when it comes to admissions, but better a single state than the entire country.)

Thanks again for a great post.

3 things. In general, textbooks cost WAY too much considering they are mass produced. They should be cheaper than common literary hardcovers.

When history textbooks are upgraded with the latest knowledge, it shouldn't require a complete re-printing of the book, just an update volume. Said volume could vary in page count according to how much new information is added. Basic math and English books should always be the same as previous editions. Basic math and English never change. It's a racket that a 3-year-old book cannot be used for this year's class.

I think I remember reading that Neil Bush is heavily involved in the book business. Damnation, will this country ever get away from the mis-rule of that family?

You sure know how to kick off Easter weekend, eh, Rog?

Because of the holiday, I won't be able to see the comments on this one until Monday morning. If you don't have at least 300 fulminating diatribes in the hold by then, I'll be be surprised. This isn't the slippery slope, it's the Great American Glacier.

As always, pretty much everybody will bring the zero-sum mindset:
I am Right, so therefore You are WRONG.
All disputes get turned into Holy Wars this way, guaranteeing that a reasoned solution will never be attained.

When I was in my early teens, back about '62 or '63, we had in the house an old high school history textbook that had been published around 1950 or '51. I wish I knew what happened to it; I could have used it as a touchstone for this post. My limited memories of its content are vague and general: I seem to recall that, as a public school text, mention of religion was limited and very general, and partisan politics played little or no part in the text (I could be wrong about this; at age 11 my knowledge of the then-current buzzwords and tropes was limited).
My own high school years were the mid-'60s, which means I got the Cold War version: Communism bad, Democracy good, and since this was a public high school, religion assumed and kept vague and general. We were in a southwest suburb, all white, Catholic and Protestant mainly (there may have been some Jewish kids, but no one wore their church on their sleeve).
Politically, I'd make it about an even divide between Democrats and Republicans with a slight edge to the latter; we wre mainly reflecting our parents, at least up to '68. There were here and there the odd radical or "socialist", but they had short hair and clean clothes like the rest of us. Anyway, at least in the early going politics was of secondary importance to music and school sports - even the "radicals" cheered at the football games. Summing up, while there may have been disagreements as to style and form, everybody got along.
1966 came midway through high school for me - and that was the start of The Sea Change. The differences between us that we used to enjoy became points of contention - points that often turned to bitterness. People who had been friends suddenly decided that they couldn't be any more. What had been cordial jibing turned into hostility. By 1968 the lines had been drawn, by kids and adults alike - and they remain drawn to this day.

Please don't read the above as my "good old days" lament. Obviously many things have improved in our society over the years. But this fact has to be faced: the human being has yet to be born who likes to lose an argument. Over the years, that's one thing that hasn't improved - and it shows every sign of getting worse.

In the embedded clips, we see zero-sum thinking at its worst: the Other Side must be stopped, no matter what. Just like everything else these days - and in the immortal words of Rodney Dangerfield, "I can't take it no more!"

Pfui.
I can take it,just like all the rest of us do.
It's the world and we're stuck with it.
Happy Easter.
Happy Passover.
Peace On Earth.
Go Go White Sox.
And for God's sake, get Ellery Queen back in print in the USA.
*that's for starters*

Randy Masters and Bill Hays - just forget I said anything.

Welcome to my world. I think you should consider retitling this entry: The Texas Book Suppository.

A few points:
1) Not all textbooks are authored by consensus. I'm using Michael J. Padilla's excellent series of textbooks for my study on whether creationism is correlated to science achievement. (Probably not, as many teachers just skim over evolution nowadays, so as to avoid conflict.)

2) If any single President saved us from Communism, it was Harry Truman. I'd be okay with a full explanation of Reagan's Presidency, as long as it included the Iran Contra affair, cutting the Dept. of Health and Human Services and the capital gains tax increases.

3) Just today, in the South Bend Tribune, a Civil War reenactor from the Confederacy explained that "the Civil War wasn't fought over slavery only, but that economics played a big role."

http://www.southbendtribune.com/article/20100331/News04/100339896/-1/googleNews

Dressing up like a historical figure is not my cup of tea, but whatever turns your crank. That being written, why do so many Americans want to dress up like Confederates? I can think of so many reasons why I'd choose the Union side. Again, just off the top of my head:
A) They won.
B) The Confederacy committed treason.
C) The South fought to protect their right to own human beings.

P.S.: Kind of disappointed this isn't an April Fool's joke. Considering that thousands of people will read your blog today, the possibilities are endless:
1) Announce "Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo" will be prominently featured at Ebertfest.
2) A Q & A with former Gov. Sarah Palin about her new nature documentary! Palin could say how global warming might actually be a good thing for Alaska, as it means better hunting weather.
3) A public thank-you note to Gov. Rick Perry for renewing your subscription to Mother Jones magazine.

My favorite Stephen Colbert quip: "Reality has a liberal bias." It's a great dig at the gamesmanship involved in spinning the media. And then along comes the Texas State Board of Education to strip away all of the irony from the joke. Wow.

I've been troubled by this development since first reading about it a few weeks ago. I realize that we've struggled with the question of who gets to write our history since our inception. And that this has been an especially volatile issue related to school textbooks over the last century. Many US citizens today are still convinced of the origin myths regarding the Civil War (i.e., "state's rights") and the singular evils and corruptions surrounding government during Reconstruction. (I've probably just invited flak for writing that.)

But are facts truly this pliable? Don't we actually live in a world where the same person who could write so eloquently about Freedom & Liberty also owned slaves? Do we take away his authorship of the Declaration of Independence because of this inconvenient fact? Maybe we should just take all mention of the Declaration out of our textbooks to be safe. Acknowledging Jefferson's writings may surely lead us to his "revolutionary" influences. After all, he coined quite a few more doctrinal phrases besides "separation of church and state." Sigh.

I like your proposal for states to mitigate the impact of the Texas State Board of Education's agenda by refusing to purchase these texts. So, how do we do persuade them to actually to it? Is it as simple as getting more involved with our state Boards of Education? Or does there need to be some more direct economic influence? I'd really like to know.

This post could have also been called the "Texas School Book Suppository" because it feels like a bunch of terrible decisions by a clackish clique of uneducated Texans are being forced...

Well... you get the idea.

In the long run, this is one battle we cannot afford to lose. No wonder we have to import scientists, and our education system bleeds money with miserable results, when we're being dumbed down from within by political shills. In the past, home-schooled kids were usually parented by those who wanted to avoid secularism; if Texas has their way, we'll have to home school our kids so they can learn about evolution, the Enlightenment, and that folks other than White Anglo-Saxon Protestants contributed to the history of America.

Erasing the legacies of American icons to further a political agenda. Hmmm.... Sounds to me like someone has a nefarious right wing shopping list.

If I recall correctly, there were a few leaders in the last century that "photoshopped" dissidents out of existence.

I'm very, very interested in seeing how they want teachers to handle the Mexican American war.

In the mean time, we're working on a list of changes to make to the SMART ALECK'S GUIDE TO AMERICAN HISTORY book to get it in line with TX standards. We'll probably have to stop saying that the 1790s were NOT a golden age when everyone agreed on what the role of government should be, how the constitution should be interpreted, etc.

I sincerely wonder how much of this has been inspired by Conservative backlash against the Obama Administration. With such a liberal in the White House, maybe they feel that their beliefs are threatened, therefore they need to make sure that they are ingrained into their children's subconscious. I mean, look at the Tea Party protesters who are so certain that Obama wants to destroy this country and turn it into a Communist State. Is it possible that this debate would not have taken place if John McCain had won the election?

Just a thought...

When I was in school, my parents complained that I didn't study from the text book. Now I think they'd be glad if I didn't.

Perhaps the "godless Chinese" will come to our rescue by demonstrating that without the impediment of Creationism and other superstitious nonsense, they are Bigger, Longer, and Uncut enough to beat our pants off just like the godless Russkis did with Sputnik--and then we'll have the RIGHT kind of war, a Brain Race, and leave all this silly Life For Dummies behavior far behind.

April Fool!

Wow, Awesome Blog! I totally agree with the idea of other states not allowing textbooks created for Texas to be used in out schools. In fact if I were a textbood publisher, my new motto would be "We Sell Textbooks that are not allowed in Texas!"

Roger, I love your blogs, been reading them for years. Your blogs are easily some of the best on the web!

I think I'm less offended by the idea of Texas politicians wanting to beef up America's conservative strains in history, and more offended by their fundamental ignorance about that history.

Jefferson was certainly a liberal in terms of wanting American independence. But he was a social conservative through and through, and of the Founding fathers, among the most conservative in his views of how the new republic should be constructed. While Alexander Hamilton was laying the groundwork for the American economy of the 20th century, Jefferson exalted the citizen farmer, looking down on anyone who proposed manufacturing as a means of economic growth, and despising all forms of banking. Of course, Jefferson's political beliefs weren't as simple as "He's a conservative." No one who makes the Louisiana Purchase can be called a truly fiscal conservative. But this idea of Jefferson as the firebrand revolutionary is highly influenced by a revisionist view of history, that leaves out his profound naivete about how life functioned for those who were not born into a large plantation.

Alas, publishing is a business and if one publisher will not comply, others will.

I wonder about the way publishing works. It might be a simple thing for the publisher to tailor a set of books only for Texas. Indeed, they would have to. How could Texas set the standards for the U.S? But even if other states refuse to go along, it might be easy to publish the distorted texts for the millions of kids in Texas. Someone will do it.

Reality by consensus. We can do that now. If some fact bothers us, then let's believe something else. And if others offer us 'evidence'--like college professors who spent their life studying the founding of America--we can see right through them and their agenda.

You're not a liberal because you believe the truth. You're a liberal because you care about the truth and want other people to know what it is.

It seems unbelievable to a ‘thinking’ person that the same ignorant rhetoric is still occurring over classroom education 85 years after Scopes, and (more importantly?) 50 years after Spencer Tracy…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtNdYsoool8

I could not agree with you more. The Texas State Board of Education are showing their ignorance with every meeting and every TV show appearance they make. Since they are elected officials, let's hope that Texan voters will do the right thing and vote them out of there. If they do not, then I'm inclined to think they deserve what they get.

While I do believe these people are idiots, I do not agree with the kid who says "you're setting us up for failure." The fact that he aware of what is going on and knows it is wrong simply means he is going to have to start taking responsibilty for his education. This is true of students and parents. Realize that your children are being cheated by the board of education and take control of it. All you can do is vote. If that does not work, you need to make sure your children are getting taught that which you feel in important at home. Success and failure is up to you, and should not be in the hands of some morons making these kinds of dumbass decisions.

Too bad this isn't an April Fool's joke.

Best post title EVER.

Thanks for shining light on this issue. Minor correction: The Discovery Institute is headquartered in Seattle. And while it is the author of the Wedge Document, it is not quite fundamentalist: it has mostly focused its efforts on promoting "Intelligent Design." You may be conflating the Discovery Institute with the Institute for Creation Research, which is truly fundamentalist, in that it believes that the Bible is completely inerrant and that the universe was created 6000 years ago. ICR recently moved its headquarters from San Diego to Dallas.

Thanks for your witness, Roger. I hope that sane states will follow your advice.

Just to pick a nit: the Discovery Institute is based in Seattle (!), not Dallas.

One niggling detail: The Discovery Institute is located in downtown Seattle; you may be mixing them up with the equally mendacious Institute for Creation Research which moved to Dallas from California a few years ago.

Otherwise, you're spot on. I'd go further and suggest colleges in other states consider a Texas high school diploma evidence of a substandard education and put applicants at the bottom of the stack. I suspect the fastest way to light a fire under the electorate is to threaten the opportunity of white middle class Texas kids to get into a decent college, thus undermining their wage-earning potential. The religious fringe won't care because they have no use for education, the rich can throw money at the problem, the poor can't influence anything, but the vast majority of middle class Texans are like middle class parents everywhere and will fight like hell to maintain or advance their kids' class status. That's the wedge between the social and economic conservatives - exploit it to its greatest effect.

Right wing nutjobs. What else would you expect from them?

How embarrassing for Texas. I do hope that all the “sane” states will absolutely ignore everything that the current Texas State Board of Education has recommended for curriculum and textbooks in this unbelievable fiasco. NEVER in my family’s four generations in this state has something from Texas been so very deserving of complete ridicule.

My dogs are smarter than the Dunbar woman. How in the world could people elect such a loonie?

Off Topic: AMPAS Announces Plan to Filter "Oscar Bait" (From MSN movies)!:

AMPAS President Tom Sherak announced today that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences would be taking the initiative to make it more difficult for movies made specifically to gain Academy Award nominations to win Oscars:

“I was browsing the message boards of the Internet Movie Database for the first time the other day when I was struck by something… most of the movies released in last third of the year, a period dubbed “Oscar Season” by the press, aren’t made because the director thinks they’ll raise important questions or because the project is considered not marketable enough for mainstream audiences by the major studios, but because the filmmakers want Oscars! That is just disgusting.

Also, I’ve determined that the mainstream public just HATES “Oscar Bait”. As you know, the Academy has been trying extremely hard lately to align itself with the feelings of the general public. Therefore, I am announcing a plan to ban all future “Oscar Bait” from awards consideration.”

The plan will proceed as follows:

Two weeks before nomination ballots are mailed to Academy Members, a special “Oscar Bait” committee will be formed. This committee will not consist of Academy Members (because, as Tom Sherak puts it, “They might consider “Oscar Bait” to be art, which it totally ridiculous"). Instead, E-mails will be sent to 25 IMDB users (“The real film experts”, as Sherak calls them) randomly chosen from the “Oscar Buzz” message board. The E-mail will contain an electronic ballot where the user will be asked to list up to 25 projects the consider “baity”. After the ballots are returned, the 10 films with the most votes (or any with over 20) will be disqualified from Awards consideration.

This is not the only way in which AMPAS is planning to regain the trust of the genereal public. Plans have also been announced to ban from future awards consideration other things “the average person” hates, including films more than 3 hours long, handheld cinematography which features “more than three shakes per every 10 seconds”, and Nicolas Cage.
http://tinyurl.com/pq24rx

Ebert: They're also making it mandatory for all candidates in the acting categories to have a facebook page.

Very happy to see you turn your critical eye towards the lunatic shenanigans of the global embarrassment that is our State Board of Education, Roger. One correction though: the Discovery Institute is based in Seattle, not Dallas. And it might be more appropriate to call them a "belief tank" rather than a "think tank." Very little thinking actually goes on in creationist circles.

There are two things that are completely destroying this country:

1) The 24 hour news cycle.

2) Anti-Intellectualism(which is really just anti-education).

Great post Roger. Truly frightening and infuriating.

Mr. Ebert,
I couldn't agree with you more about this issue! As a former history teacher, debate over our historic figures and events can provide our students with a better understanding of the world around them. Students also need a broad understanding of events, people and places in order to do this. It seems that the students I taught--this was at the community college level--never got that from high school history, assuming they had history at all (and many did not). This is not a liberal or conservative viewpoint, but rather is one that should allow students to pick the views they like best, and have an understanding of why those view exist. The watering down of our public school systems leave students without the capability to think for themselves and discerne nuance, an important skill in today's economy. The whitewashing and/or absense of basic understandings of our world will only hurt us. Dumbing down in schools is not a good thing!
P.S. Your review of Clash of the Titans is hysterical! I'm in total agreement of some 3-D films... some look just as cool as in 2-D and saves five bucks. I'm still feeling a bit sick from Avatar...

I live in Austin (as Craig Ferguson says, home of the rare Prius driving Texan) and these Texans are ignorant buffoons and an embarrassment. I believe that right-wing Christians are succeeding in forcing their viewpoint on others, as is their intent. For them to say that a country founded on the principle of freedom of religion is specifically Christian is outrageous. Thanks for writing about this, Mr. Ebert.

Great article! Unfortunately, there are even more issues that Mr. Ebert didn't have time to address. The word "capitalism" is out (it has a "negative connotation"), "free enterprise" is in. "Democracy" is out, "republic" is in. If I didn't love Austin so much, I would encourage Texas to secede and take these stupid people with them.

Minor thing: I notice you have a Dawkins Amazon widget at the bottom, for people who want to learn more about evolution. It might be a good idea to add his The Blind Watchmaker, which not only teaches us about what evolution is but also wherein the beauty of the theory comes in.

As a college student who's planning on becoming a high school Social Studies teacher, these reports are timely and disturbing. Hopefully, Minnesota will be wise enough to stay far, far away from the Texas standards.

If they've managed to expunge Nader from history books, that dismays me, for I voted for him. I'm not sure that was such a great idea in retrospect, but I find I still largely agree with what he'd had to say.

I doubt even he would have expected that he would be Stalinized in the USA and there would actually be progress made towards convincing people he not only lost, but had never run for President at all.

I'm no longer a bit sorry I voted for Nader. I voted for Obama too. Stalinize him too- if you can.

Sometimes I think Gov. Rick Perry and his secession-minded friends have an idea with some merit.

Holy. Crap. I am glad my children are homeschooled. And I'm glad I don't live in Texas.

Creationism and "Intelligent Design" may be a lot of things -- I believe in a higher power myself -- but it is NOT science. I am all for open debate, but any argument that educators diminish the theories of natural selection and evolution, which form the whole framework of the field of biology, just don't belong on the table. And I'm not even going to get started on this approach to history curricula.

I actually think educators should be talking openly to public school students -- particularly at the high school level -- about this debate. I think students have a right to know some of the political and economic factors -- including special interest groups -- behind those sacred Standards of Learning. I'd love to see us raising a generation of kids who thoughtfully question the system. Who know, we might even nurture a nation of critical thinkers.

I wish to retract, here and now, all of the skepticism I've expressed in the past about the growing enterprise of homeschooling. I'm beginning to understand the appeal.

I'm shocked and sickened by many of the changes being made.

Thomas Jefferson is one of the most important figures in our nation's history. He shouldn't be taken out. The Separation of Church and State is very important to the way our Country is built.

The idea that affection for the Confederacy is re surging disgusts me. The confederacy was a traitorous and depraved mar on American history, and while we should examine why the Civil War took place, and why the southern culture at the time did what they did, we should make no concession to the ideas that succession was anything but wrong.

We need to embrace the multicultural elements of American history. Multiculturalism is a fact. America hasn't always been some Caucasian paradise that no-one else had a hand in.

Of course my complaints go the other way too. The video you posted with Huckabee also highlights a number of changes I don't approve of. While too many people take the word "Creator" in the Declaration of independence to mean a Christian God (instead of a deist one, which it was) it should still remain included because it was an honest part of American history. Replacing holidays like Christmas and so forth...

It's one thing to say that Church and State are separate, and that one cannot respect one religion more than another. It's another thing altogether to pretend religion doesn't happen, and that it isn't a part of the national historical fabric. We may not be a Christian nation ("...the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion..." - George Washington) But we are a nation with religious people within it that do notable things.

As far as the Creationism vs. Evolution in the classroom debate, well...
Evolution should be taught in the classroom thoroughly.
However I’m also totally cool with pointing out the weaknesses and *gasp* gaping holes in evolutionary theory, but I do not, as of the situation today, believe that Creationism should be taught in federal schools, as its claims to scientific fact is even shakier than Evolution's.
They are both primarily belief systems.

Oh, and I should note that any Creationism that supports any particular religion’s version of creation doesn’t belong in schoolbooks, ever. There is a separation between church and state, and it should stay that way.

First, to Roy--the book is Heather Has Two Mommies. Or possibly you mean Daddy's Roommate. Have you read either? Personally, I prefer Gloria Goes to Gay Pride, wherein everyone gets presents. I'd also like to know how you know you're the majority.

The reason I know about those three books is that, when I was in college, I studied banned books for a quarter. It was one of the most enjoyable and yet depressing quarters of my college career. I got to read Harry Potter and Narnia. (Banned, amusingly enough, for "anti-Christian values.") I got to read Mark Twain, one of the great names of American literature, and alas, it was challenged and banned by people who actually would have agreed with him, had they read the work without focusing on certain words in it. Well, except the people who assumed Jim was molesting Huck because they were naked all the time.

I am a Pagan who is better informed about the Bible than the majority of the Christians I have encountered. I am an English major who is better informed about the science of Apollo than any Moon Hoax Believer than I have yet encountered. (It turns out I know more about karate than the makers of the new Karate Kid; who knew?) The failure of education in this country makes me sad sometimes. I take pride in my Fount of Knowledge status among my friends--I explained the Battle of Hastings at some length last night. On the other hand, I also watched Earth yesterday, and you were right, Roger. I had to explain the Partition to the friend I was telling about the movie. It's disheartening, isn't it?

Lol, I can't believe i didn't get the title of this blog the first time!

Why are these people so afraid of the truth? Why does science and reason scare them so?

HOW THE HELL CAN YOU TEACH ABOUT AMERICAN HISTORY WITHOUT MARTIN LUTHER KING?!?!?!? I mean, if it weren't for King, we wouldn't have a black president. That must be it. At first they try to claim that Obama wasn't born in the U.S. Now they're claiming that he dosen't exist at all.

Yes, every school district in the county that isn't under the thumb of right wing fanatics (and I imagine that includes many districts in Texas) should flat out refuse to use those stupid books.

For people that wonder what is the harm of promoting Creationism and demoting Evolution in a scientific classroom, they should read up on Lysenko. He did not like Mendel's theories on genetics, so he suppressed them, and promoted theories for political (rather than scientific) reasons. Set back the biological sciences in Russia by decades, at least. Maybe someone could make a list of medical advances that were made possible by any part of Evolution theory, and compare that to what could be done with Creationism.

Once upon a time, my great state of Texas had the late, great Ann Richards as our governor and this kind of nonsense didn't happen. I don't know how the Republicans in the state managed it, but somehow they convinced all the good-intentioned church-going citizens that not towing the Conservative line made you a bad Christian right about the time GW Bush became governor - politics and education has been an even bigger mess than it was ever since. Personally, I've been welcoming the influx of Hispanics with open arms - it's with their votes that Dallas now has a Democratic sheriff and Democratic judges. With luck, we'll be able to set the state even again.

RE: "The separation of church and state is enshrined in the Constitution."

Which Constitution are you reading this from? Not the U.S. Constitution.

This is a common misconception that the Constitution states that there is a separation of church and state.

That was from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson.

Keep spreading the propaganda.

the hate the right has for the left is only equalled by the hate the left has for the right, what a shame

McLeroy says: "Instead of the American way they want multiculturalism....But we are a Christian nation founded on Christian principles..."

...like the colonization and displacement of aboriginal Americans!

I just had a nasty flashback to the basal reader I was to use with high school freshmen in Title I funded classes (1986).

See before your very eyes, A Tale of Two Cities reduced to seven textbook pages with two columns on a page. We took a newspaper one day a week for several weeks and occasionally pulled out other lit texts from the metal cabinet. My children, who seriously asked why hillbilly wasn't a choice on race question for CATB tests, made their way through Jesse Stuart's Split Cherry Tree short story without too much trouble.

Textbooks can be okay or horrid. Seldom are they wonderful.

It stands to reason that these days the first University college science course that homeschooled children most often take is Biology. They need the lab experience you know :>)

This is an interesting topic and a great example of how things that don't need to be controversial become so when the government gets involved. If there were no government schools, all schools would be private. If you wanted a school that teaches creationism, you could send your kids to that school. If you prefer natural selection, you could send your child to a school that favors Darwin. If you want both, you could probably find that too.

But now you have the government involved. True, parents who favor creationism have the option of private schools if they can afford them, but why should they have to pay for a private school when they are already paying for public ones? If the government is going to take their money and set up schools and dictate what is taught in them, they why shouldn't they have a right to say what is taught in them?

Any time you take personal choices away from people and put it in the hands of government to decide, you are going to create issues like this. The more people that are affected, the more decisive the issue will become. If the government decided what kind of car everyone would drive, or what kind of health care system everyone is going to have, you'd get the same level of decisiveness as people make an effort to have their side heard.

I am concerned for the longevity of the Texas State Board of Education's recent reform efforts. Their agenda is at risk. They better ban mention and/or use of the scientific method in their curriculum as well.

Thanks for writing this.

We need to keep bringing issues like this to the forefront so decisions that affect our children and their futures aren't made behind closed doors by closed minds.

It cracks me up that the same people who decry Obama for supposedly "defiling the Constitution" ignore many of its basic underlying principles, like the separation of church and state. These same people will spout off about how government-run health care is about control, while they sit in their committees and try to control what appears in students' textbooks.

Religion, simply put, has no place in a public school. Besides the fact that there are so many people it would offend - and I don't see this as a matter of being P.C., just right or wrong - it's not a school's job to teach about faith, or beliefs. It's a school's job to educate. Intelligent design and education are oxymorons.

As for America's current textbooks being written with a liberal slant, this is, to put it bluntly, complete bullshit. I remember my textbooks from high school, history in particular, and they were boring as HELL. They presented the facts in the most homogenized, least offensive manner possible, and that was that. As far as I recall, there was no subversive message about communism, or Obama bending Lady Liberty over the sink.

You propose that the more enlightened states simply don't use Texas's compromised textbooks. I propose that Texas doesn't use Texas's compromised textbooks. Surely there are people living there with some common sense, who see this for the injustice it is, and want their children to get a fair and balanced education. What this committee is trying to do is wrong to the very core. If they want to shove their political agendas in people's faces, fine. But leave the kids out of it.

"These people, chosen by an inattentive electorate,"

Why is that some people always assume that when the public votes a way that they don't like, it is because people were uninformed, or because people weren't paying attention?

Couldn't it be that there are more conservative/religious people in Texas and that is why this faction won more seats? Or did more of them turn out and vote than perhaps a less interested opposition. Elections also serve to aggregate interest. A minority of voters who feel strongly about an issue and as a result have a higher turnout at the election may win over a less passionate majority that doesn't vote with as much enthusiasm. Does that delegitimize the victory of the minority on any given issue?

I've always put Washington ahead of Lincoln. As tremendous as Honest Abe was, the man who could have been King George I of America turned down that kind of power. I can't think of any president in my lifetime who would have done that, including FDR and Reagan.

I do think FDR is overrated, and Reagan underrated, but not by any enormous degree. But it's almost impossible to hold a discussion on the topic, because it's all in what you value. Take FDR: I think he led the country towards fiscal ruin and civic irresponsibility by putting the government in charge of so much. On the other hand, he got us through a nightmare of a war after years of fiscal ruin. Did he do more good than harm? Sure. A truly great president? Depends what you value. He's in my top 20, but not my top 10.

Roger, what drives conservatives nuts about liberals is that liberals come across as holier than thou, unwilling to consider any values except their own. Of course, what drives liberals nuts about conservatives is that they tend towards irrationality.

I'd get upset about this whole controversy, except I don't think it matters. I think liberals and conservatives both are dinosaurs of another era, and ought to decently go become extinct. But as polarized as the country is, it won't happen, and each side will go on in its one-sided way. Maybe if China starts dominating the world the way we did 50 years ago we'll wake up and realize that everybody better stop worrying about what they believe and start getting some pragmatism.

I am a nearly life-long Texan, having lived in DFW and surrounding areas since I was 4. Neither of parents are natives (Mom is native Chicago, so I was raised that way).

I attended public schools in Texas for my entire educational career. I have followed this story with a combination of chagrin and amusement.

One of the things that strikes me about this controversy is that apparently none of the combatants on any side have been near a public school classroom since 1955.

The reason this is important is because they miss a series of central truths:

1. Students do not actually read history textbooks. Let me say that again. The only people who read textbooks are textbook committees. These texts are so mind-numbingly dull they should carry a black box warning that reading them may induce an instant coma. Unless they plan to put porn in the history textbook, the number of students in a class of 30 who will open their textbook at any time during the course of a school year is exactly 2. This severely limits the potential damage of even an idiotic textbook.

2. US history in TX is taught by assistant football coaches. They, too, do not read the textbook. Nor did they read one when they were in school. Nor do they teach anything even approximating the field of study known as "history". Those of you from civilized societies will just have to trust me on this. Like the horrors of war, you can't imagine it unless you've actually been there.

3. Students have their own agendas. None of them have to do with the content of their unread textbooks. Teachers, also, have their own agendas, and good teachers will simply cancel out the textbooks. Bad teachers do not teach anything memorable, so it won't actually matter. As evidence, I offer the fact that I can't even name any of my high school history teachers, except for one, an assistant football coach(!) who was barely literate, and "taught" us by reading the textbook aloud in class, which would have worked but for the fact that he couldn't actually read. I remember nothing about the content of the textbook. I do remember the comical fashion in which he intoned the names of certain Mesopotamian kings.

I am not trying to minimize the sheer stupidity of the state school board. They really are that stupid. And the spread of idiocracy is always deplorable, but the fact remains (however sad) that the content of the latest Lady Gaga video is what will be remembered by 15 yr olds (just as I can remember the content of Wham videos) and not whether Phyllis Schlafly was or was not given an undeserved include in "US History 2".

This is an outrage. I'm a high school freshman (counting the days until I get out of the bible belt...), and i'm a proud atheist. I'm a minority of one, but my rights still matter. If creationism is taught in my Biology class next year, i'm complaining to the school board.

Also, not sure where to put this, but you're not dead, are you?

http://twitter.com/nytobituaries

Money influences things, big surprise. Complaining about this issue with text books is like pointing out that a drunk-driver who ran over someone, had a car failed inspection. It misses the bigger issue.

Can we really complain about textbooks when it takes an ungodly amount of millions to win an election? If money influences our highest levels of government, isn't that the bigger issue, since that influence trickles down to everything else, including education?

But I guess that's dealing with something too deeply rooted. So I guess we must aim for the branches.

The hope in all this is, that children have never relied on schools for their beliefs, our their outlook on the world, like in the rebelious 60's. Kids have even more tools to excersise their objectivity now than ever before, and are only too glad to use them.

Kids aren't as easily fooled as we make them out to be. They wont be fooled by Creationism; any who are have already been indoctrinated since birth by their parents, long before school was a factor. And with the help of that supreme medium called the interent, kids talk and discuss; and more importantly, they watch. Most importantly, they form their own opinions.

Our kids will be okay. This country went from teaching Adam and Eve in public schools, to having it's future children strike it down Dover.

Our kids will be okay.

Speaking as a person who once witnessed a Christian orthodox priest say in all sincerity and conviction that Halloween was a celebration of "Hell", I have the suspicion these people don't really have the faintest idea as to what they're dealing with.

Just sayin', you can't criticize The Divine Comedy if you don't understand the language of poetry.

This topic came to mind when the first reviews of the new iPad were posted late yesterday. Devices that easily, and hopefully more cheaply, allow the publication of electronic books will make paper versions nearly obsolete. I know some folks will still want to have a book in their hands. But in the case of textbooks this will allow for different easily edited versions to be available. This will mean that Texas can have their version but it won't effect other states so easily. That would put Texas, if they persist in electing board members more interested in politics and making their points, out on their own. I could imagine that colleges & universities evaluating Texas students might take that into consideration.

Also I must say that the value of textbooks is probably over rated. Classroom teachers have a far greater influence and can/do interpret and explain things. While conservatives are probably horrified by that thinking most teachers are heathens no rules could change it because it just cannot be monitored.

Hi Roger,

I'm an editor in the textbook industry, and allow me to confirm this for you: Textbook publishers have virtually no standards. We are, in effect, mercenaries providing big states (California, Texas, Florida) the product the ask for and then passing off that work on the rest of the nation.

Why do we do this? It's simple: publishing is fighting for its survival. Trust me, the vast majority of people in this industry are as liberal as they come, and I've never met anyone who didn't genuinely want to deliver a good product to students and teachers.

But the reality is that our jobs are at stake. Failure to meet state standards exactingly will lead to a book not being adopted, which leads to losing out on huge amounts of money--money that *has already been spent to produce the books.* To give you some idea of the scale of this issue for us: When a math book I worked on was in danger of missing a deadline for California adoption, there was serious talk about shutting the entire department down. *The math department.* Department after department has gone down in some companies. We are already in a situation where budgetary constraints are causing states like Florida and California to put off buying more books, threatening jobs across the entire industry. Personally, I've been working project-to-project bouncing from publisher to publisher as publishers take on staff for major pushes and then shed them due to lack of work. Projects need to move faster and operate on a smaller budget to stay competitive, meaning that I may do a year's worth of work in four months (pulling the required 70-hour weeks in the process) and then have to look for another place to do the same thing. The quality of the books suffers because everyone is working too long and too fast.

Then, of course, there's always the game of chicken that is competition in the industry: If one publisher doesn't cater to Texas, another one will and the publisher who took the stand will end up bankrupt.

So is it all bad? No, actually. Let me clarify a couple of things and hopefully give at least some cause for hope.

First: "No one writes textbooks." This is a little misleading. Textbooks are, indeed, Frankensteinian creations cobbled together from pieces of other textbooks and new material, but obviously someone does write them. The "authors" credited in a textbook are almost never the writers. Generally, those are education professionals who have developed a specific kind of pedagogy that a publisher wants to use. They are a selling point, and generally influence the overall philosophy of a book. On some occasions, the "authors" will be switched up in the middle of a project, or added later on, but generally the books editors keep these people and their work in mind as we plan and create the program.

We also employ freelance writers. Freelance writers are usually people with teaching or education experience, and they vary vastly in their skill and ability. I will admit--even bad writers often get work simply because of deadlines and budgets and the fact that so few people have the stomach for the job. But these people are hired guns who have little or no impact on the method or content being taught. They're given an assignment, and they produce work and in many or most cases that work isn't even close to what the final product will look like.

It's the editors, then, who are generally most responsible for the content of a book. We don't get credited, but when you say you thought textbooks were written by teachers and education professionals, that's us. Many or most of us have teaching experience, although general publishing experience and sometimes content-are expertise are also valued.

Editors--senior editors who've advanced to management--decide the layout and content of the books, based on the standards provided by the states. In most cases, the books will be based on a previous program--we don't decide anew whether to include The Scarlet Letter in a lit book every time we do a new program--but they are revised (sometimes dramatically) based on current educational thinking, new standards by the state, and new trends in publishing. Math books will be revised to include more word problems, Lit books will be revised to include newer works, Grammar books will be jazzed up for the internet age, etc. etc. One thing that comes up more and more these days is the necessity of reaching out to ELL students--English Language Learners. Our hope is that when we put out a new edition of the book it genuinely performs better than the last version, and that all our changes will reach students better and equip teachers to deal with modern challenges.

So is it a matter of taking the carcass of an old book and trying to resuscitate it to sell it again? In a way, yes. But I think it's more akin to a car company putting out a new version of its successful models every year. Sure, it's mostly the same, but every now and again there's a difference like anti-lock brakes (or ELL instruction) that can really make a difference.

And let me say one more thing about editors: In my experience, this industry is pretty close to being a meritocracy. On 9 out of 10 projects I work on, the editor in charge is simply the best person for the job. And our companies are staffed, usually to the vice-presidential level, with people who came up through the ranks and know how the business works. Not only that, but they do everything they can to make books that serve their readers within the sometimes foolish and contradictory guidelines set forth by the states. For the most part, these are the people you want writing your books.

Second: "As Texas goes, so goes the nation." This is true, but it's only true to an extent. The reason Texas has so much power, as you noted, is that it's an adoption state. States that go through the adoption process (essentially evaluating textbooks and deciding which ones they'll give schools subsidies to pay for) wiled out-sized power--and when huge states like California, Texas, and Florida wield even more power, they become the gravitational center of the industry. When a new program is proposed or an old program is revised, they will generally revolve around either Texas or California. The Texas or California edition will be crafted first, based on the state guidelines. Then it will be modified for other states and for the National edition.

And this is what I'd like to clarify: People across the country will *not* simply be forced to buy the Texas versions of books. There will be revisions and variations.

I don't want to minimize the issue here. The Texas books will still be the basis of many national books, and some of the more "judgment call" decisions about material will remain. Reagan may keep his place above FDR (though I highly doubt we would see Jefferson so roughly hewed from History or Literature). But when a national edition is crafted, it will likely be significantly different than the Texas edition. And many books will still be based on California (though even there there are issues with certain religious institutions...).

Third, and finally, let me remind everyone that there is hope for Texas itself. The oft-quoted Don McLeroy recently lost his bid for re-election to the Texas state board of ed.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/politics/state/stories/DN-edboard_04tex.ART.State.Edition1.4bba42d.html

Texas's board of ed has long been a breeding ground for nuts so conservative they've objected to the use of the word "imagine" in their books, but we're finally seeing some resistance. McElroy may've finally been the rope they needed to hang themselves with.

Only time will tell, but I encourage everyone to get involved in their own state's education. The best defense against this kind of nonsense is ensuring that your state demands better. Unfortunately, textbook publishers will sell you exactly what you ask for.

Ebert: I posted this excellent comment on a TwitterPage:

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/pages-for-twitter/a-textbook-editor-publishers-h.html

Man, this essay frightens and infuriates me. I think I'm most frightened by the total and complete confidence these people have in their abilities to make such determinations. That as non scientists, they feel qualified over the near unanimous view of the whole scientific community, to decide that evolution is bunk. That as non historians, they feel perfectly comfortable deciding that this is a "Christian nation," and that the founders would have been just fine with an idea like a national church. That they manage to think this way, without even a cursory reading of the writings of the founding fathers which would have told them otherwise. That these people would try to marginalize any historical figure that offers a contradiction to their viewpoint, such as in the case of Jefferson. All of this frightens, and alarms me because these people insist on imposing their idiocy on future generations.

I can't stand the anti-intellectualism that is growing in this country. The way phrases like, "Intellectual elite," are tossed around as though they are bad things. As though one shouldn't endeavor to reach those heights oneself. To quote Bertrand Russell ... "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure, and the intelligent are full of doubt. “ You have confirmed the truth of that with this essay Roger.

Come on Roger, If you think your "Theory of Evolution towers with majesty above" creationism or intelligent design then you shouldn't be afraid of it being taught in the public schools. As you called it yourself, it is just a "theory. Also your misused quote on "Thomas Jefferson, who first wrote the phrase "separation of church and state" in 1802" is taken out of context. If you would bother to go back and read the entire letter that Jefferson wrote, you would discover that that is not what he was trying to communicate at all.

I am a practicing Christian and a sometime professor of philosophy and religious studies. I am also a Texan. What appalls me most about all of this (apart from the disservice to the children) is that it makes mainline Christians and Texans look like absolute dunderheads. Of course, we professionals are laboring under the burden of our training and education and can't be as sure of ourselves as these amateur autodidacts of the Texas Board of "Education" who have nothing to lose.

Hi Roger.

Well written post, as always!

What's this about some controvery about Evolution vs. Creationism? And, what about this new thing that I'm hearing about called Intelligent Design?

Kidding.

Seriously:

I have a simple proposal. More enlightened states should refuse to play along. Their State Boards could require generally-accepted educational standards, and vote against purchasing the corrupted Texas texts.

Interesting proposal. Perhaps, though, you are starting too high.

Why State Boards dictating textbooks to local schools? Why not local school districts? Why not, even, local schools making their own decisions about where to purchase textbooks?

It's just different levels of government, that's why. Same problem, different scale.

Walter Williams has an interesting and relevant column this week about "Conflict or Cooperation".

http://townhall.com/columnists/WalterEWilliams/2010/03/31/conflict_or_cooperation

Essentially, he argues that allocation of government resources causes conflict. It creates a zero sum game. Someone wins and someone has to lose - conflict is born. We don't argue with each other about what clothes to wear because we can each choose and it doesn't cost the other his choice. When government is involved in allocating resources, one is approved and the other is not. Winner and loser. Conflict.

The problem is not that a "right-wing" State Board of Education is making the decisions on textbooks. The problem is that a government agency is making the decision on resource allocation - with winners and losers. Conflict.

Walter has an interesting point. Check him out. Thoughts?

The classroom that depends wholly on the textbook to educate children is the classroom that is not educating a single child.

I am just as worried about the state of the textbook industry, and of public schools, and of the textbook industry's taking over the business of teaching of our kids entirely, as I am about particular states deciding for themselves what elements of our culture and our history they wish the children of their cities and villages to learn.

I was forever against the privatization of our public schools, until I began working in them, and realized that there is something missing, something that was there before that has been consumed entirely by the bureaucratization of American life; that something being so vital to American life, so elemental to Human life, so utterly spiritually nourishing; that being the passing down from one generation to the next of the mythologies and wild ideas and narrow avenues of debate that existed in cities and in villages during their most magnificent moments, as a force for social cohesion, as a wellspring of identity and community spirit that sustained cultural specificity and sent forth the boldest ones into the world with their peculiar ideas and a sense of their ideas' being right, into the worldwide debate in a courting of, a mating with, a combatting against, a defeating of or submission to the possibly better ideas of another headstrong crowd.

I think that we are agreeing too much. We, Americans, westerners, young people, baby boomers, liberals, conservatives perhaps (though they're certainly impressing me lately), we are, in our thinking and in the way we live our lives, giving in to the way we are told things ought to be, to political correctness, to utopian 60s and 70s liberal points of view perhaps more than anything else, perhaps even more than to Christianity and White Anglo-Saxon ideals that dominated in the past.

I think of myself as a rather liberal, free-thinking type. And yet I get a thrill when I hear the impulsive utterances of Backwards People. A gratitude. For what they are saying is, you don't necessarily have to agree with me, you won't have to adopt my point of view, as you are asking me to do with yours; I am simply telling you who I am, who I have always been.

If you are as outraged as I am by what the current Texas Board of Education is trying to do, please consider donating to the campaigns of Dr. Rebecca Bell-Metereau (District 5), Dr. Judy Jennings (District 4) and Michael Soto (District 3). Each of those candidates is running to unseat one of the extremists who are currently on the Board.

I should add to my previous ramblings that I think textbooks are, ultimately, a tool for groupthink, for a dumbing down of the incredibly complex and nuanced elements of any particular subject. They are also a wimpy shortcut for teachers who are too lazy or uninformed to accumulate more illuminating pieces of evidence to support their knowledge of their particular field. History teachers should ditch Houghton Mifflin and produce facsimiles of actual historical documents, texts that come to life in the very voice of their authors. Textbooks should probably only exist as teachers' manuals, always hidden in one of the bottom drawers of teachers' desks, as a sort of guide for their presentation of information to and facilitation of discussion among the students, a Cliff's Notes that one doesn't admit openly to having actually needed.

The majority of teachers today, in all of the schools in which I've worked, are still depending largely upon the shortcuts that were used by the weaker teachers at the schools I attended ten, twenty years ago: Reading from textbooks, assigning the questions at the end of each section or chapter, passing out worksheet after worksheet, giving pop quizzes and end-of-the-week tests ... how predictable, don't you think? No wonder the youth of today are bored with it, have seen through it, are not benefiting from it.

What we are doing in Indiana is a distant first leap in the direction of true education reform: Secretary of Public Instruction Tony Bennett has won approval for his proposal that all new teachers must major in the subject which they'll teach, and only minor in Education. I don't know how it eluded us all these years, that history teachers, for example, should have read thousands of pages of historical documents, as only a history major can say he has done, in order to possibly teach it well.

It is important to realize Lincoln wasn't the progressive people think. If you want a progressive politician of the time, look at Sumner or Seward. Also, the Emancipation Proclamation excluded several border states practicing slavery from its scope.

But seriously, excluding Martin Luther King Jr?
Maybe the Texans think they live in the 19th century. If they believe it, I think my earlier suggestion stands on all the pesky innovations made during the 20th century not being needed by them.

Be honest, Roger. They do not wish to "vindicate" Joe McCarthy. They only wish to include an excerpt regarding the Venona Cables which clearly showed Joseph Stalin, one of history's greatest mass murderers, had an intricate spy network here in the US, which included among others Julius Rosenberg, often portrayed as a martyr by people on the left. Those are facts. What problem can you possibly have with that?

I agree emphasizing Calvin over Jefferson is lunacy, but Cold War studies have often been biased by members of the left. There needs to be balance that has sadly been lacking. Go ask any kid who Aleksander Solhzhenitsen is. THe Gulag Archipelgio? Solidarity? How about Andrei Sakharaov? You know as well as I do most will give you a blank look. Then ask them who Che Guevara is and I bet you get some white-washed haiography regarding him. I've seen more hullaballoo from the paragons of culture regarding 10 screenwriters getting unjustly fired by HUAC than the tens of millions butchered by the likes of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot.

I don't know what to call myself anymore. I used to think I was republican, then conservative, then liberal-conservative, now I guess I'm just in the middle of the road. If I was to take a poll of the top ten issues and my political bent towards them, I almost always would fall 50-50 between the two parties. I have never heard a complete political philosophy that I agree with completely. I don't think I'm alone.

All this business of changing textbooks is just one more barometer reading in a virtual storm of issues over the past 15 years. People are scared to death to offend anyone, anywhere, about anything. Lawsuits fly to and fro, dictating our corporate and personal mannerisms. Common sense has been replaced with a lawyers business card, and we are all worse for it. I don't mean this to be a rant against lawyers, after all they have to earn a living just like everyone else, besides the horse has already left the barn with this issue.

We as a people have allowed ourselves to spin out of control in a dangerous spiral of complacency and self-entitlement. There is almost no area of our lives that has not been touched by the ability to file suit at any time. Stores can't celebrate Christmas, schools can't celebrate Halloween, you can't spank your own kids, you can't speak to anyone elses kids.
Any recitation of crime stats, however honest and therefore inherently painful, is met with cries of racism, any list of average salaries is met with cries of sexism. Due to knee-jerk reactions to a growing violence problem among high school children a zero tolorence policy is now in effect at most schools. Kids are being suspended, expelled, charged with crimes for bringing G.I. Joe guns to school. One-inch chunks of injection molded plastic, typically with bent barrels and teeth marks in them, are being treated like the real thing.

Unfortunately, the scarier a subject the more it needs to be discussed. I know Religion, Race, Sex, Violence, Drugs, Abortion, Health care, War, and countless other subjects are polarizing to this country. All the more reason to discuss them openly and come to workable compromises. Both sides are to blame in the current state of blame and ignore. Right-wing: Evolution exists, don't be stupid. Left-wing: You have had your hand out for so long that it has worn out it's welcome.

In an era where every minute detail is examined live on CNN, Fox, MSNBC, C-Span, Comedy Central, and Telemundo, I think we are missing the forest for the trees. We dedicate hours of our lives listening to discussions about what pin was worn on what jacket, and simple grammatical errors in a speech are headline worthy. The issues, the real issues, are glossed over in a series of one minute soundbite competitions between talking boxes on the television. Any time someone attempts to present a more in-depth look at an issue it is regarded as extremist and immediately made light of, or ignored.

Texas is wrong. They are hiding their ignorance and fear behind the age-old shield of religious right. To say that this country was founded on Christian ideals is wrong. This country was founded on freedom of religion, regardless of what religion that may be. As a stout Atheist I am grateful for the opportunity to choose who and what I want to worship. I think identifing our country with one certain religion is a dangerous slope. Take for exapmle England and Ireland, India and Pakistan, Israel and Jordan, and many more. All conflicts based on religion. The whole point of America is that this would not go on here. I think we need to move back towards that ideal before we tip into the abyss.

People as a whole need to realize that the world does not revolve around them. You will be offended from time to time. It happens, it's normal. The adult thing to do is to move on with your life, not ruin everyone elses. In regards to children, they need to be taught the most bleeding-edge material they understand to get our country back on top of the worlds constantly evolving technological market. We have rested on our laurels for to long and it shows. Kids need to know about evolution and creationism. These are theories on how we came to be, granted one is the standard on which all scientific theories are judged, the other based on faith not fact, kids need to know them as part of their core education. Textbooks do need to be re-written, in fact they need to be written in the first place not cobbled together Frankenstein-style with an eye on profits. We have short changed ourselves for the last 15-20 years, and now it has leaked into the school system.

Challenge yourself to read what your children are reading, see for yourself the mindless pap that is designed to sell to the broadest market available. Challenge yourself to not let Texas' misstep become a national travesty. Challenge yourself...

Very scary stuff. If this continues America could very well someday be a theocracy.

On the question of Jefferson and Calvin, you make the claim that Jefferson is more important to American history than Calvin. No one would disagree with you.

But Jefferson was not cut from courses on American history; he was cut from WORLD HISTORY courses. From the NY Times article you cite:

"Even the course on __world history__ did not escape the board’s scalpel.

"Cynthia Dunbar, a lawyer from Richmond who is a strict constitutionalist and thinks the nation was founded on Christian beliefs, managed to cut Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century, replacing him with St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone. (Jefferson is not well liked among conservatives on the board because he coined the term 'separation between church and state.')

"'The Enlightenment was not the only philosophy on which these revolutions were based,' Ms. Dunbar said."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.html (emphasis in first line added)

As you rightly state, a course on American history cannot be taught without reference to Jefferson. However, the answer is less clear in a course on world history. Rather than America and Jefferson, it is the French who are the dominant influence on the Atlantic Revolutions (the name for the American, French, Haitian, and South American revolutions that took roughly place between 1775 and 1830). The French were not using Jefferson to argue for reform in 1789, they were using Voltaire, Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and John Locke -- incidentally, the thinkers from which Jefferson drew the majority of his political ideas. The Haitians (a French colony until 1791) fought their revolution for the application of the French principles of "liberty, equality, and fraternity" in Haiti. And Simon Bolivar in South America took his major cues from Voltaire, Rousseau, and Napoleon, not the Americans. There is thus a valid historical argument for leaving Jefferson out of the list of influences for the Atlantic Revolutions of the 18th/19th centuries.

(I should not that, when I teach world history to undergraduates, Jefferson is included as a revolutionary actor [as the author of the Declaration of Independence] rather than as an influence.)

At the same time, Ms. Dunbar's final statement (quoted above) is in some sense correct: one can (and should) make the argument that religion did play a larger role in the Atlantic Revolutions than has traditionally been acknowledged. While claiming Aquinas as a direct influence is certainly misguided and most likely flat-out erroneous, the case of Calvin is less clear-cut that one might think (though Blackstone is a peculiar choice, it is one I don't necessarily object to). Since the late 18th century, the Protestant Reformation has been considered one of the main causes of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Not only did Protestantism encourage the individual to inquire into the Bible on his/her own, but at the same time Protestantism became an acute political force towards the end of the seventeenth century (this is in addition to the "Protestant Ethic" that Max Weber found so compelling, as another poster previously noted). When King Louis XIV of France expelled the Huguenots (Protestants) in 1685, they regrouped in Holland and began publishing vicious criticisms of absolute power. These criticisms of the absolute power of the king were made in the same style and language that Calvin had earlier used to criticize the absolute power of the Catholic Church -- religious debates had been transferred to the political realm. These critiques would later be taken up in the political battles of the 1750s-1780s that led to the French Revolution.

Religion, therefore, was definitely an influence on the revolutionary moment, which people recognized almost immediately. In the nineteenth century, this was the argument of both conservatives like Joseph de Maistre and liberals like Benjamin Constant and Francois Guizot. Recently, the role of Protestantism as a revolutionary force has been the subject of research by Dale Van Kley, Timothy Tackett, and Helena Rosenblatt -- all of whom are major scholars of the eighteenth century. Just what role religion played in the eighteenth-century revolutions is still a matter of debate, but to deny any and all influence of religion on the Atlantic Revolutions is the same as denying any and all influence of evolution on the history of man: not a valid argument.

Obviously, this is not the reasoning of the Texas Board of Education. As the NY Times article describes, the Board is more concerned with substituting its own personal beliefs for sustained historical research, inquiry, and knowledge -- an attitude that is shameful, repugnant, and downright frightening. That there is some validity to their claims in this instance is merely coincidental and my statements here should not be taken as an endorsement of their political platform.

As an educated, rational right-winger from Texas (we do exist!), I've got to say that I've had a lot to be ashamed about in the last few years.

I just love it when movie reviewers/sports journalists (I'm talking to you, Mike Lupica) suddenly become experts on everything else. I haven't paid attention to Roger Ebert since he pronounced his incredulity in 2000 at George Bush beating Al Gore Jr. in a presidential debate. Here was a MOVIE REVIEWER, for heaven's sake, not understanding that in a televised debate, the visuals trump everything else.

It seems to me you've been getting far fewer "stick to film reviews Roger" on this one. Does that mean even the more right wing readers think this new curriculum is completely insane, or has it finally occurred to them that you have no intention of sticking to movie reviews?

As an educator (one who, thankfully, teaches college English in Florida and can therefore ignore any revisionist history Texas tries to force onto the country) I am of course outraged by the radical ideologies they are trying to impose, but encouraged too at how much national attention this has been getting (this is far from being the first article I've seen on the matter, though, being an educator, it could be I was more in the loop). I have heard almost no national support for these revisions and while I'm not quite confident that the negative reactions that have pervaded the media will work against the curriculum (which doesn't go up for final approval until May) it's looking increasingly promising that academics, educators and people who simply care about raising their children with a proper education are going to fight these revisions however they can. The effectiveness of their curriculum depends entirely on our willingness to acknowledge it, and I know I for one will not allow it to corrupt anything I do in the classroom in any way.

The video link from Mike Huckabee's show says its the 8 liberals on the Texas schoolbook committee who are trying to destroy the school books - replacing Christmas with something, calling us "citizens of the world" ratheh than of the USA. This was really too stupid to believe, but is this the right wing's answer to their wanting to remove Jefferson, etc.?
I haven't heard of any of that. Is it a case of nutjobs on the right and the left? Or is Huckabee allowing a liar on his show?

* Roy wrote: "Roger, you raise fair points but like all things there are two sides too every argument."

Yes, and in this case those sides are (a) the right one, and (b) the wrong one. Hint: racist rightwing religious folks trying to run history through a white-wash machine and print Bible verses on the newly minted pages are in group "b".

* Roy wrote: "Now you have a few folks in Texas who want their turn. This is a natural turn of events and probably a healthy thing. It could return us to the middle where most of the country belongs."

Teaching children that gay people exist, and not to act like a hateful ignorant bigot toward them, is not giving kids false information and it's not based on bias AGAINST other people. Comparing that to attempts to insert Christianity into textbooks, and to remove positive portrayals of minorities in exchange for positive portrayals of slavery, is simply crazy.

* Roy wrote: "Do you really doubt that certain 'minority' figures are over represented in our school system??? The silent majority is tired of Black History month being celebrated in our schools. It is patronizing and wrong. The list goes on and on. We have affirmative action for admission in our schools. We have a United Negro College fund. Can you imagine the uproar over a United Caucasion Fund?"

Probably has something to with black people not enslaving white people for hundreds of years. Maybe it also has something to do with the fact that for the first 188 years of our nation's 234 year history, white people forced blacks to remain segregated and regularly beat and lynched them. See, you and your "silent majority" weren't so silent for those 188 years of enslavement, segregation, lynchings, and beatings.

That you can even claim "certain 'minority' figures are overrepresented" in a nation where some of our currency has the image of white slave-owners, where every single president in history until now has been a middle-aged white man, where Congress is still about 70% white (and 83% male). Look at films and we find that overwhelmingly lead male and female actors are white, and black actors almost never win Oscars. Median household net worth for white citizens is $143.6 thousand, for blacks it is $9.3 thousand, and for Hispanics it is $9.1 thousand. Oh, and if you thought 99% of Fortune 500 companies are lead by whites, you'd be wrong -- it's MORE than 99%.

To look around this vastly white society -- in terms of messaging, images, who and what we hail, how we teach our history, etc -- and claim there's too many of them thar dark people is irrational and hints at some far worse unspoken attitudes lurking below the surface.

The knee-jerk backlash comes from racist whites who are suddenly screaming and kicking because all of sudden they don't get treated with special privilege and power. The world isn't specially suited and organized to cater to their whims and treat them like they are the most important things to ever walk the Earth, and boy they just can't stand it.

* Roy wrote: "There is a huge amount of resentment in this country over these things, but many are afraid to speak out openly because the will be labeled racists."

Yes, and that resentment comes from a bunch of angry white guys pissed off that anyone would even suggest the world shouldn't be perfectly arranged for their benefit. It's certain a huge amount of resentment, but it happens to come from a huge amount of hugely ignorant racists. Notice "racists" in that sentence, because as you accurately noted, people who have resentment based on ignorant bigoted sentiments are what we accurately call "racists".

Lucky for such folks, they have less need to fear speaking out, since they've got a growing political movement backing their ignorant hatred. I hear there are more and more meetings, and they serve tea.

That Huckabee clip was amazing. It was so divorced from reality, I thought I was watching something from another dimension. One name they mentioned that doesn't seem to get enough recognition is David Barton. One can not have a serious discussion about American history using him as a touchstone. He has repeatedly made false claims (including producing quotes from the Founding Fathers that only seem to exist in his own research) that others have repeatedly told him are false and yet he refuses to correct these errors. Much of what these BoE people wanted to insert into the social studies textbooks was based on his writings.

Of course, I don't necessarily disagree that our current history texts have a liberal bias. It already seems so whitewashed. Putting a bias into history is unavoidable when you're creating textbooks to tell children what to think instead of how to think. If these BoE folk were truly interested in teaching kids how to think critically, they'd work to remove as much bias as possible and allow the classrooms to explore on their own and decide for themselves who and what they think is important and, most importantly, why.

There is no self existing God, only a self existing universe.

To add some levity, here's a sample of what you get when rightwingers run your education...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pargon/sets/72157623594187379/

I suppose those Texan white men who want to make a generation of stupid kids who don't know science are the same kind of Texan white men who think the white man is the indiginous native of Texas as opposed to the native americans they think don't belong anymore in what used to be mexico.

It's not surprising, I guess. If they think a supernatural being created them they're mistaken enough to think there were no humans in Texas before them.

**Shrugs** I just don't understand this country sometimes.

Maybe instead of teaching bible studies the U.S. schools should force all students to learn at least two or three languages. It might open up their brains. (**laughs at the thought of how much outrage some parents would have at having their kids learn anything but English**)

When I was growing up they had us all say the pledge of allegience, but they didn't mind if some of us chose to sit it out and not say it.

I grew up in the time convention was to try to brain wash kids but teachers were smart enough to let kids rebel against it without saying a word or making them uncomfortable.

If a teacher had tried to teach me there's such a thing as a soul or a supernatural god when I was in 11th or 12th grade I'd have such a fun time arguing against them. Come to think of it, that's the age I did argue against everyone who believed in that stuff--it isn't until years later I decided to let people think whatever they want. But at 11th grade? Forget it, the teacher would cry trying to proove the supernatural.

Mike Doran (Lowbrow Crank) said: "As always, pretty much everybody will bring the zero-sum mindset: I am Right, so therefore You are WRONG...."

Hi, Mike. May I point out that there are times (such as in the belief of supernatural beings creating us) that there is a very definite right and wrong? There really is no between in this.

Yes, there are cases where allowance for judgement is involved. For instance, there's a year 1600 Japanese samurai/philosopher called Miyamoto Musashi (author of Go Rin No Sho) whom I very much admired from age 15 up. When I was around 23 I mentioned him to my Aikido teacher, and my Sensei practically spat with disgust saying, "That man was a cold blooded killer."

There was no doubt that the man existed. And there was no doubt that he had philosophical ideas that came not only from all the people he killed but from associations he made between combat, the growing of rice, nature, drumsticks, pottery, painting and more. I liked the Miyamoto Musashi (and my Sensei), and my teacher hated him. That's okay. That's something where both sides can be right.

But sometimes there really is only right and wrong. An example of evil is teaching what is wrong because one is afraid to pick a side.

So they want to take out all information and replace it with a bunch of nonsense and irrelevant trivia? Smart idea. That should really help keep American kids ahead.

I only hope our Canadian school boards don't buy textbooks from south of the border.

This reminds me of the history textbook controversy in Japan that ensnares influential Japanese nationalists and their business connections with the nearly socialist, refuse-to-stand-for-the-anthem, teachers.

Although not a proficient reader of Japanese, while working in a high school in Osaka I was fortunate enough to look through many Japanese textbooks. All in all, I was quite impressed with the density of information and supporting illustrations; also, printing must be subsidized in that land, because every year kids get their own textbooks in every subject, and they are free to write in them.

Without causing suspicion, I borrowed some history textbooks. World War II is boiled down to a story where underdog Japan had no other options (which some historians agree with). While a little sympathy is shown to victims of aggression and the Okinawan people in general, there is no detail over 'comfort women' or other delicate issues that continue to allow hostilities to fester between Japan, Korea and China. The textbooks do however appear to be quite open about the scorched-earth policies. Less open about POWs. And above everything, the main focus is on the victimhood of the world's only atomic bombing.

I didn't think much of this for a while. Then one day, sitting in a ridiculously small desk eating salmon and rice, I overheard one kindergarten child ask another "Who do you hate more, Americans, or Chinese?" Despite being neither, but possibly resembling one, I was very shocked. I became very interested in how this society passed on its views. I also became surprised at hearing of the military confidence expressed by some right-wing Japanese. At a conversation at a bar, instigated by news report on a North Korean missile test, a guy told me that Japan had the technology to assemble and launch a nuclear bomb in hours. For him, the conflict with China was not over and the Japanese had the advantage.

Did the textbooks do anything to shape this man's views?

Even without misinformation, the balance of neutral information we receive has a profound effect on our views. As Alisa Miller shows in a 6 minute TED talks clip, we get the news that sells the most. Publishers print what it takes to get more profits. Since you could argue that John Calvin deserves more attention than Jefferson, or that Hiroshima is more important than Nanking, and since future values will undoubtedly be imbued based on the direction and spread of our attentions in the now, I wholeheartedly agree with Roger - we must not become apathetic and relegate this debate to the fanatics..

Dear Roger:

I've been living in Texas since 2007, but I am fortunate in that I have no kids to put through such a backward school system. Mr. McLeroy, in addition to various other egregious errors and misreads of history and science, made one statement that really caught my eye.

He says that the late Dr. Stephen Jay Gould has said repeatedly "stasis is data" and that this is evidence against evolutionary theory. I couldn't have done a grander job of proving Mr. McLeroy (a dentist) ignorant when it comes to evolutionary biology.

I happen to have a copy of Dr. Gould's magnum opus, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. It's quite a behemoth, about 1600 pages, of which I can only surmise that Mr. McLeroy read only one... or not at all. He might have heard the quote out of context.

This site poses an interesting observation that several quotes Mr. McLeroy's presentation had mined out of context. I won't repeat the bulk of their argument but they suspect, too, that he had pulled the quotes from a Creationist website which itself took Gould out of context.

It is true, Dr. Gould did say this. And it is also true that it is a kind of motto for Punctuated Equilibrium. But here's where McLeroy's argument goes horribly wrong. In the 150 years since Darwin, as you have repeatedly pointed out yourself, few scientific theories (including gravitation) have gathered such a mountain of supporting evidence.

Punctuated Equlibrium is not at odds with evolutionary theory. It seeks to refine it. Let me repeat that... Mr. McLeroy doesn't seem to understand that the problem Gould resolves is not by replacing all of evolutionary theory, but explaining that some gaps are genuinely long periods of stasis interrupted by... *drumroll* abrupt and dramatic change!

In other words, Mr. McLeroy failed to realize that "stasis is data" is part of a larger amendment to the theory that proposes a better explanation for the nail in the creationist's coffin... macroevolution.

Roger, my best wishes for your country are that, while people shall keep on having no qualms about identiyfing themselves as either conservative or liberal, they will analyze the issues instead of immeadiately taking sides while also diqualifying their opponents in the worst day. That one day extremists and "public figures" who make a buck from spreading anger will become obsolete (see Rush, G. Beck, and Sarah).
Yes, I'm a conservative in most areas but rooting for your country to pick "W" in 2000 thought me a valuable lesson. Let's also not ignore the fact that several Democrats voted against Health Care Reform. Politicians are simply politicians and very, very few of them deserve our blind trust.
My personal gratitude for your recent tweets.

It just goes to show that history is a living thing and what we learn about has more to do with our contemporary situation than it does with the past we are 'studying.' And right now our contemporary situation is full of rightist know-nothings that seem to spring into the public consciousness every so often.

It's fascinating that this propaganda is being played out live in front of the country without any pretense that it's actually not a conservative agenda. One would think that a Department of Propaganda would be smart enough not to list its objectives in the open: Kill Darwin, Kill Jefferson, Resurrect McCarthy, and lionize Reagan.

Roger,

I do understand that there are people, good people in many cases, who honestly believe what some members of the Texas Board are proposing (okay, demanding) be included in new textbooks as honest to God (no pun intended) fact.

I get that.

I also understand that there are some (fact-based) reasons espoused claiming that our country is based on Christianity - given that our forefathers were (mostly) good church-going believers.

But facts are facts, and a fact that cannot be ignored by anyone who values critical thinking is this: In spite of (perhaps even because of) their devout Christianity, the founders of this nation agreed to clearly separate Church and State.

This reason is paramount; devout believers of any faith, be they Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or even Zorioastrinist should be able to understand that not everyone believes as they do. Jefferson and many others felt that it was of paramount importance that such beliefs remain individual choices, not a government fiat.

Too many people in this country (and other countries) are no longer willing to grant unto others the freedom they demand for themselves. If you value the right to worship where you please and when you please, then you should not be too quick to censor that right for others...lest you be censored yourself.

I am a True Believer. I believe I have the right to make my own decisions, and I also believe I have no right to control the beliefs of others. Because of my beliefs I also refuse to let others control what I or others (especially my school-age children) are forced to imbibe.

Show me the facts. If you can't provide "facts" without quoting the "Good Book" of your religion, then I will fight you until my last breath. Those are not facts, no matter how deeply you feel them; those are beliefs.

I want my children to learn about everything, but most of all I want them to learn to think. Think cogently, think critically, think with reason -not emotion- as their guide.

To all of you who feel that our textbooks are not "safe" unless they include beliefs alongside science as if they were comparable?

I hope you can hear your God. Like my own, S/He may be saying "For shame."

Texus Bord aminds awl grammer boocs too encluud teechin Teabonics. Howluluuyuh!

Dear Roger.
I am a forty-two year-old first year college student. I am astonished that learn that politicians decide what goes into textbooks.It is bad enough that these people are elected into office in the first place. Funny how it seems that someone with no real knowledge of history wants to rewrite it. I researched a paper last semester in which I learned that one in seven adults in America is illiterate. With people like Mr.McLeroy in charge of our children's education, it does not sound like that statistic is likely to change.While I am sure that McLeroy is not an illiterate, he seems to be an example of someone who did not receive a good education in our school system. What does that say about our country? That the uneducated can be elected to office and be placed in charge of education. Only in America.

Yeah, this is the first argument I've seen that makes me favor homeschooling my... as yet hypothetical... children. I've been living in Japan for the past 6 years, where history textbooks are also a huge issue, and while I'm looking forward to moving back to the United States in May, these kinds of backwards moves really concern me.

Let me tell a story about my experience with the Texas schools, having gone to the public schools in the suburbs of Houston, Texas.

The theme of these two two experiences is people tend to remember the bad; if you are having a party in a white room, with white tables, furniture--everything white--you're going to remember MOST a tiny little stain that you saw on the floor looking down by chance (hell, probably subconsciously looking for it).

Story One

O.J. Simpson

On the day of the verdict of the O.J. Simpson trial, the entire school shut down for a few minutes; our class turned on the television, which was supposed to be used for EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES (I don't think we ever even used it before that or after), my teacher left the classroom (to holler at some other teachers to let them WAY across the hall, presumably) and I think she also used the school phones to call some other teacher, or maybe even the principal (that's what the phones are for) who let her know when to turn the television on and sure enough it was turned on just about right when it happened. Then another teacher came in the class to watch our television. I don't really even remember my original teacher at all in this memorable moment; it was like the teacher from the other hall replaced her as my teacher in during this time. Then the verdict came and she kind of yelled out (the teacher from another classroom from pretty far away) in disbelief, although not much. Also, this other teacher (who was my history teacher), once said while I was in her class, of her fear that if you cut somebody off while driving, they might shoot you with a gun, which I suspected might have been a race thing with her. Basically the O.J. Simpson trial shouldn't have been the most memorable moment for this classroom in a series of other memorable moments that had nothing to do with school; I don't really remember the actual school criteria is what I'm saying.

My original teacher moved mid-school year from that class because her husband went to go work for Nike. I say this because a very "memorable" teacher replaced her. He was a body builder type from a more tough ghetto school district--which I'll come back to in a second--who looked like a combination of Arnold Schwarzenegger with a little flat top and a stereotypical 1950's businessman because he had the same type of glasses, although he dressed kind of preppy (and I once years later saw him at the mall wearing a wind breaker zip-up outfit). Well, apparently he had already broken up a fight or two at our school because he would say the kids at our school would say that he was hurting them when he would grab them and pull them off whoever they were pounding (which I imagine probably was a firmer grip than was necessary; a bit angry), which he said never happened at the school he worked at previously.

Well, back to this story, he would often yell at the class very loud when the chatter would kind of drown him out(which probably wasn't so loud to everyone else because it was a science class requiring a key to get in). He would also usually add to this, when he yelled: "I pay my taxes!" as if that had anything to do with us misbehaving. So THAT'S what I would take out of the class. He would also pay many huge phony compliments to another teacher we had in the classroom (who was there almost every day) who, I think was a math tutor and there to help with that: but also helped in general. Well, he would smile all dreamily in a phony way like "Oh, isn't she something", which was all really about HIM. So, these are things I took out of that class.

Story Two

Separation of Church and State

In 8th grade the next year, I had a teacher who said, after having been given half a chance, matter of factly: "I believe God created the universe" and then stared kind of seriously at the student that she was addressing. This was another one of those "memorable" moments that for some reason kind of shut everything else down in my memory. I remember thinking "Okay, (this sounds important)...and....?" I thought maybe she would add something to this, but she didn't. So, it was that unexplained belief that I felt didn't belong in the classroom. I don't know, maybe if she had went into it, I might have dismissed it too. But I remember thinking it was a little inappropriate. I think maybe you could suggest belief without actually saying it and make it self-evident.

So, those are some of the "stains" that I remember that shouldn't have been there, and I probably should work on not looking for them, if that's possible in our nature.

For fun, I'll throw in another one.

In 6th grade, our teacher commented on a student's excessively baggy pants, and said suggestively "perhaps you're wearing them to cover up for other smaller things" and kind raised her eyebrows and looked away immediately after which the whole class erupted into laughter and instigative "oohs", while the student, a very big mexican gangsta-type, kind of laughed along at first with the students in a kind of teary-eyed embarassment and then in the midst of all that laughter, still kind of laughing along with them squinting even more his already squinted eyes, said, which was still being drowned out by the noise, speaking to the whole class (which didn't seem to matter under the noise) in the obligatory macho manner: "I don't know what you're about...[still drowning him out; still laughing together] I gotta big dick."

His last words were unnoticed seemingly. But so was our education. Well, that's the story.

Actually let me add one more thing to the O.J. Simpson story,

Probably the most memorable thing was when we learned about evolution.

I had this "Of course!" moment which has never left me.

Darwin wins.

Thanks for writing about this Roger. I remember seeing the great movie Inherit the Wind over thirty years ago and thinking thank goodness I live in this age rather than back then during the time of the Scopes Monkey Trial. I have it on dvd now, I think I'll watch it again. Here is an awful thought that is not at all scientific: half the time I read about some poor mother killing her kids the tragedy has happened in Texas. It must be something in the air.

I feel sorry that the children of America will have to go without a rigorous education. The side-effect of that lack of education is a benefit to my children: less competition.

The assertion that the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation typically goes unchallenged. However, as this journal amply demonstrates, this assertion needs to be challenged, with great fervor.

Jefferson's "fall" in the minds of conservatives aside: Washington's religious views are a point of historical dispute. John Adams did not believe Christ was divine, neither did Benjamin Franklin. Not even Glen Beck's hero, Thomas Paine, was a Christian. In fact, Paine's Age of Reason argues against institutionalized religion, and includes a list of inconsistencies that Paine saw in the bible.

The view of God at the time of the revolution was just very different from that of Christians today (especially those on the right). Their views of God were informed by the Age of Enlightenment, which advocated reason, above religion, as the source for legitimacy and authority.

While it is true that many of the founders believed in God, it is not true to blanket all of them with the label of Christian. To further assert that this country was founded as a Christian nation is just patently false.

Thank goodness for the high school senior in the first clip. A thoughtful and articulate argument from a future scientist. Nice work young man.

What to do, what to do, what to do. Your trouble is, Rodge, you were born a little too early. School still meant something. Getting a job thanks to school meant something.

By my day -- not a whole lot later than your day -- all school meant was getting some damn job. By my son's day, all it meant to the positive was learning how to put up with a LOT of bug poop just to get along in a society that had become so incredibly boring that only incredibly boring, and highly malleable, people could get along in.

I made a point to stay in touch with classmates, not so much out of enthusiasm for friendships, but from a penchant for patient observation. Lord a'mighty it'll be 41 years this coming prom night. In those days they told me I looked like Tarzan. Lately I look like that Texas propane sales guy in "King of the Hill," but with a mustache (which I hear prevented someone from actually reading the true story I wrote).

This high school was rated "the second hardest school in New York State."

A surprising number are dead -- I think too many; I've compared with others. The most successful alumnus, whom we called Pud, quit school at 16, went AWOL from the army, became a heroin addict and an alcoholic, more or less straightened out, and was making $80k a year at his own business while us college grad-u-waits were largely still hoping for decent jobs accomodating our credentials in at least some way. I was gratefully plodding along as a copywriter for about $9k 10 years after Pud was showing off his whizzy camper van and house and many affluent personal accoutrements. At least the job sorta involved my schooling and scholarship.

Anyway I've enumerated my classmates' progress over the years. There were only 250, not that hard to do. In short, what I found was this: those who did the best academically have been leading the most unexciting lives; some, even stultifying. I mean to the point where boredom doing the right-and-good could probably be classified as a poignant malady, for which we might get Nick Nolte to do a telethon.

Seriously. Tho' I'm not sure about Nick Nolte. Many, many high-paying, high respectability jobs are very, very boring. In view of that, old Pud did just right, mistakes and all.

What's this got to do with the Texas Educational Suppository Board and their antics? This: never mind the backward hayseed decisions they're making. What they're doing is guaranteed to bore the kids even worse. What they're doing is probably a local hysterical abreaction to their own clinical boredoms.

I drink just slightly more than you do, and since you don't drink at all, that's slight indeed. But let's say we were drinkin' in vino veritas on the subject. I bet it'd go:

"Yeah, well, the whole thing's a crock a'shit, when ya get down to it."

"Yeah." Swig.

Silence.

No matter what, I vow not to bring a bottle of liquor to a panel discussion I am shortly to face on this very subject. No, no. No. I will follow your splendid example and am composing highly thoughtful perceptions on the subject. I will let somebody else quote Mark Twain or Einstein about not lettin' yer schoolin' interfere with yer edumacation.

I've got it! A sing-along! Everybody: Now teacha don'tcha fill me/up with yer rules/ Everybody knows that smokin' ain't allowed in school!

No? Well... how about this: the best teachers are an education in themselves. For that, if you're reading Roger's blogs, Joe Ruccio of Ballston Spa Jr. Sr. High, you were the best. Your teaching on the "widget economy" still works great.

People like that will save Texas, whatever the half-cocked curriculum. They always have.

As a parent of an elementary school student in Texas this has been terrifying to me. THe only good news is that so many conservatives, see this for the insanity it is. We have a local "conservative" really Bushlike neo-con, columnist who usually makes my blood boil. On this even he was a voice of reason, as was the editorial board of the paper he wrote for. Read his column.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/viewpoints/stories/DN-markdavis_0317edi.State.Edition1.6fdaa8.html

It gives me some hope, and might give you some as well. I don't agree with all of it, but more of this and less McLeroy's might just be the ticket.

From "The Daily Show," Wednesday March 17, 2010:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-march-17-2010/don-t-mess-with-textbooks

DON'T MESS WITH TEXTBOOKS
"Since no one knows who Oscar Romero is, the Texas school board decides not to include him in the curriculum."

I wish the Creationists would turn their razor-sharp attention to other troubling sciences. The theory of relativity sounds too much like "relativism," the cause of modern moral ambiguity. And Newton's laws of motion for too long have provided an excuse for the kind of fidgety behavior that erodes our children's sense of discipline. Then there's that unnecessarily fussy periodic table of elements. If four were good enough for the founders of Western culture, they should be good enough for us.

Cheer up Roger. At least we have East Anglia to turn to for un-biased science....

Ebert: I guess you missed the news that Climategate has been discredited.

You know, as a liberal, I've come to realize that we have ourselves to blame...this is all our own fault. We accomplished too much, you see. We no longer allow slavery. We aren't still fighting to let women and black people vote.(Okay, so we're still pleading with Ann Coulter on that one.)We have freedom of speech (somewhat), and we just watched a man who is not a conservative white male first become President, and then achieve an epic legislative victory. (Man, that had to hurt. Oh, and by the way...it was not called Obamacare when the Republicans were proposing it themselves.)

The people against whom all of these battles were fought are still here, still trying to make it a crime to lead men in war if you happen to sleep with one at home, still trying to define freedom of speech as the right to say what they agree with, still trying to make us forget that freedom of religion means..you know...the freedom to practice your own religion.

And this Demographic Of The Afraid, and the Party Of The Afraid which does their bidding (as long as there is political profit in it), obviously are going to stoutly stand by their values, with their consciences clear and their chests swelling with moral pride beneath a windblown flag in the sun, at times like this.
It's courageous, and noble, you see, to respond to sweeping, inexorable change in a society by rewriting the schoolbooks in a pathetic, underhanded attempt to hamper it.

You know, things would be less angry and acrimonious, and sociopolitical backstabs like this would be less necessary, if we liberals just stopped accomplishing so much.
If we didn't demand that society continue to grow up (because Heaven knows the conservatives aren't going to demand it). If we didn't forcefully stand up to these people when they attempt something like the Meese Porn Commission, or the legalized theft of a Presidential election. Or something like this.

Maybe that's why things are going to stay so angry and acrimonious. Whattaya think?

Roger -

Much like party politics themselves, the discussion doesn't seem oriented towards respecting differing views, or giving equal time, or putting the citizenry in a position to reach it's potential. You do not seem remotely as bothered by the notion of distinct bias in our textbooks as you do ensuring that it's YOUR bias which gets overly-represented. You are thoroughly convinced, as are too many on both sides, that your bias is somehow capital "T" Truth correct while the alternative - creationism, the importance of Newt Gingrich, etc, is "uneducated" and "irrational." In fact, you use that language.

Ultimately, much like Washington, the logical conclusion to all this is finding equal ground on the common sense stuff, and trying to keep the other stuff (the biased stuff) tit for tat. Any other alternative is dogmatic, be it the dogma of the Christian Right or the alternative.

Ebert: It is not biased to say that Creationism is uneducated and irrational. It is a fact. As for Newt Gingrich, I believe he is one of the more important former Republican floor leaders. Name three more.

As a graphic artist, I had actually worked in a pre press company that used to handle some major publishers of school books for all levels of education.

One of the things we had to do was make "adjustments" for Texas versions of the school books. From my memory, they have always printed two versions of the text books....one for Texas, and one for the rest of the country.

If this is no longer the case, Texas is only 7% of the population. Perhaps the text book publishers should concentrate on the other 93% of the population.

Let me make two corrections on my stories:

The teacher from another classroom was the only one i remember and she was the one on the phone, hollering at other teachers etc.

And the Arnold Schwarzenegger/1950's teacher, he would often yell right in another students face like he was going to kill them.

I have only one thing to say in response to this entry

"Callie is supposed to learn to be a lady (this is 1899 Texas after all) but she would rather learn about the world around her. When her grandfather gives her a copy of The Origin of Species, corsets and cooking are the last thing Callie is thinking about..."

"The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate" - book review

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAS0WjioVrA

Awards: Newbery Honor Book; Bank Street/Josette Frank Award; CPL: Chicago Public Library Best of the Best; Texas Lone Star Reading List

Recommendations: Booklist, Starred; Bulletin-Center Child Books; Chicago Tribune; Horn Book; Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review; New York Times; Publishers Weekly, Starred; School Library Journal, Starred Review; Washington Post Book World

"Writer Jacqueline Kelly was born in New Zealand and moved with her parents to western Canada at an early age. She grew up in the dense rain forests of Vancouver Island, so you can imagine her shock some years later when her family moved to the desert of El Paso, Texas. She attended university in El Paso and medical school in Galveston (lovingly known as “Galvatraz” among the inmates). She practiced medicine for many years and then attended the University of Texas School of Law. She practiced law for several more years before realizing that what would really make her happy is to write fiction. Her first published short story appeared in 2001 in the Mississippi Review (one of her proudest accomplishments). Her debut novel, The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, was released by Henry Holt on May 12, 2009."

The light will always a find a piece to pierce the dark, Roger. :)

Why don't we simply have our high school students read the Constitution and the Federalist papers? Because the Constitution is written above their average reading level. Why are they such poor readers? Well, let's see... my own son's elementary school is considered the best in its district, and yet my son only has 20 minutes of homework per week. Yes, he's in 2nd grade, but right now in China, millions of 2nd graders are taking home five hours of homework a week. Is this too much to ask? Are the Chinese working their children to the bone? Hardly! I would love for my son to have five hours of homework a week. I'll bet that if he did, he'd be able to read the Constitution and comprehend it by age 12, given a decent instructor and dictionary.

The fact that such instruction is possible and yet nonexistent implies that a terrible number of monsters exist in our midst--by which I mean in this context, people who deep down do not want their children to think for themselves.

You never fail to amaze me with your negativity--blog after blog. You undeniably have an incredible gift for writing. . .I just wish that you'd write more blog entries with words that bring life. . .and maybe one without politics for a change.

Just a thought.

Ebert: You haven't read most of my blog entries, including the previous one.

Try here: http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/

Just a thought.

Roger,

As a resident of the less "enlightened" state of Texas, I agree with you that these reforms are appalling and indefensible -- indefensible, that is, for any other reason than to indoctrinate children into certain religious and cultural viewpoints. I hope that the Texas Board of Education is brought before court for their utter disregard for constitutional restraints in the public forum. Not that such trivialities matter to a lot of these people on the right; here's what one supporter of the revisions to say, reprinted from the New York Times:

“I reject the notion by the left of a constitutional separation of church and state,” said David Bradley, a conservative from Beaumont who works in real estate. “I have $1,000 for the charity of your choice if you can find it in the Constitution.”

It seems to me that Mr. Bradley is either illiterate, the heir to an oil executive, or planning to pay in Zimbabwean dollars. What do you think?

If you look at history as it's being written now, do we really want to tell our children that everything that's done in this country and every other country on earth is done becuase someone manages to buy political influence and gain a government contract they would not have normally obtained, or that most rich people make sure they are safe to let the poor fight their wars? Or that the U. S. Civil War really was about owning people and getting poor white people to fight for the right of the rich to own other people??

When you get right down to it, not much in history is true, it's all a glamorized and moralized version of what really went on. What really goes on would make Jesus throw up (that's if he really exists, and he were really here to witness all this bloodshed and destruction and pain caused in HIS name and the names of all the other Gods we've come to allow to order us to do what ever the hell we feel like doing and make it God's will).

I don't think accurate history is our problem Roger. I think the problem is that we're just insects on a rock, and we're all just guarding the queen and mistakenly think we're on a divine mission that is totally unrelated to ejaculation and conception. Nothing we do matters enough to be taught as important archive. Make up whatever you want. It matters not.

Can Texas include the strengths and weaknesses of the Church of The Flying Spaghetti Monster as well?

"The silent majority is tired of Black History month being celebrated in our schools."

If they're silent, how do you know they're the majority?

Seriously, people have that much of a problem with the notion that maybe for 1/9th of the school it couldn't hurt to focus a little more on a minority that has had a huge impact on this country politically and, more importantly, culturally? Do those people know anything about black history? Because I imagine most of them didn't learn much about it in school back in what they think were the better days.

What scares me is, I first heard abut this controversy on Fox News--midday during what they adamantly insist are their "real news" hours that don't have the bias of their morning and primetime shows--and it was just about the craziest stuff the liberals on the board wanted in, and yeah, that stuff was crazy and had no place in textbooks. No mention at all of the items Roger discusses above. Then they interviewed some guy from one of the committees involved and it turned out pretty much every outrageous thing the liberals wanted didn't even survive initial consideration, which really made the whole segment kind of moot in my opinion. But if, like millions of Americans, I only got my news from Fox--again, not Huckabee or Hannity but like 2:00 in the afternoon--I'd believe the conservatives on the Texas school board saved the country from the insanity of the far, far left. And let's face it: far more people are getting their "facts" from Fox than from any school textbooks.

Rene wrote "Why, when I consider all the road-blocks imposed on scientific process and historical accuracy by religious conservatives, am I left with a feeling akin to what must have been felt by enlightened Europeans when pondering the conflict between the Catholic church and Galileo?"

In fairness to the Catholic Church, it should be pointed out that Galileo brought many of his problems on himself.

Pope Urban VIII had been Galileo's friend and supporter for many years. When Galileo said that he was going to publish something on the Copernican system, Urban asked that he hold off while an investigation of the theological aspects of the matter was made, and when he did publish, to give the arguments in favor of heliocentrism. Galileo ignored the request, and published his Dialogue on the Two World Systems, in which the character Simplicio (Italian for "Simpleton") made a direct quote from Urban. This really annoyed the Pope, since Galileo had ignored both of his requests, and had also indirectly called him a idiot.

Therefore, Urban ordered the Papal Inquisition to investigate. Two Jesuits were assigned to examine the scientific aspects of the case, Christoph Scheiner and Orazio Grassi. Both men had solid credentials as astronomers, which turned out to be a problem for Galileo as he had fought with both of them.

In 1612, Scheiner had published a paper on sunspots. Galileo came out with his own paper the next year, claiming priority on the discovery of sunspots. What made things worse, as far as Scheiner was concerned, was that Galileo had plagiarized part of Scheiner’s paper.

Galileo and Grassi disagreed about comets. Galileo claimed that they were an atmospheric illusion, while Grassi said that they were both real and astronomical in nature. Grassi had made a series of observations of a comet and noticed that the moon moved faster in the sky than the comet did. Thus, he correctly concluded that the comet must be farther away from the earth than the moon. Galileo wrote a series of papers attacking Grassi, ending in Il Saggiatore ("The Assayer"), still presented to Italian students as a masterpiece of polemical writing.

Both Scheiner and Grassi could have been very helpful to Galileo, but neither one felt the slightest inclination to do so. Can you blame them? Can you also blame Urban, who made two quite reasonable requests of Galileo, who not only ignored the requests but insulted the Pope in the process?

Before anyone mentions Giordano Bruno, who is often seen as a visionary who saw an infinite universe and paid for this vision by being executed for heresy. Bruno did see multiple worlds, but he also denied the divinity of Christ, the Virgin Birth, the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the efficacy of the sacraments and the Trinity. It’s as if a man robbed a bank, killing several people during the robbery, forcing a hostage into his car and running a red light during the getaway. Saying that Bruno was executed for the heresy of believing in an infinite universe is like saying that the bank robber was wanted for running the red light. Indeed, the same vision was enunciated a century before by Nicholas of Cusa, whose fate was to become a bishop and later a cardinal.

I hate to be nit picky, but there's a little fact I must point out. They are not rightists. They are conservatives. The right is not as interlinked with religion as most people think.
It has, and apparently continues to be; the unsavory baggage of conservatism.
Sorry, I just loathe seeing the political ideology I am a firm adherent off associated with religious nuts.

What's really scary is that the U.S. as a whole is the Texas of industrialized nations.

Yet again proof that our decision to home-school our children to avoid all the "isms" that swirl through the educational tornado was the best thing we ever did. Creationism indeed!

Hi, Roger. As always, a spot-on commentary. One thing I wanted to add, though, is that the situation is not much better in terms of English instruction in California. I taught high school English for ten years, and my dissertation research was on content standards and standardized testing, and how standards are translated from the page into actual instruction, so this has been a concern of mine for quite a while.

In California, many popular English textbooks (my district used Prentice-Hall; the district where I conducted my research used Holt) phase out "real" literature altogether in favor of short expository pieces, short stories, and excerpts from novels and plays (there's also an increasing emphasis on "workplace documents"; students are reading fewer novels because the state insists that they be able understand memos, business letters, how-to instructions, etc.). I don't in any way want to imply that there aren't great essays and great short stories to be found in these textbooks, but the problem is that these works are largely decontextualized and tied directly to the content standards, with corresponding worksheets and multiple-choice tests. Reading, in this way, ceases to be an aesthetic pleasure and becomes merely a scavenger hunt wherein the student tries to find the seemingly arbitrary literary and stylistic devices housed in the standards. I believe very strongly that this is one reason why schools often turn students off from reading: it becomes solely an efferent exercise – work, not pleasure.

The state of English textbooks wouldn't be a problem if districts weren't insisting that schools place an instructional focus on them. In my district, we were told that the textbook should be our primary source for reading and that novels should be strictly supplemental, "when we had time." In one of the schools where I conducted my research, novels (except in Advanced Placement classes) are outlawed altogether. Can you imagine? I have former students teaching in these schools, and they report that their 9th graders go the entire year without reading a single novel. Instead, they get a steady diet of essays of essays, speeches, and workplace documents – all by district mandate, and all in the name of raising test scores.

I think all rational people in your country should get together and plan a massive campaign that would force priests to teach plate tectonics during Sunday mass. See how they like it.

Roger,
In your post you wrote:
"the Theory of Evolution towers with majesty above those who, in some cases, believe the earth may be 10,000 years old, and that men walked the earth with dinosaurs."

You are SO behind the times... haven't you seen that there is now "proof" that the Earth is 6,000 years old! And from a "real" scientist too!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1msS71xL00&feature=related

Chris Ortman

Ebert: He must be right. He's wearing a white lab coat.

Textbooks have been slanted way to the Left for decades. It is not surprising that there is a jerk to the Right. When we are taught that are Founding Fathers were racist Indian killers, when we are taught about how the US is a war monger in the 20th Century, instead of the country that freed the world, you can expect a reaction, Mr. Ebert.

Evolution is still, after all, a theory. It would be nice if it were taught as a "theory" instead of as a fact. Since it has been taught as gospel for decades, "Creationism" has come about. Creationism is certainly not scientific, but why it couldn't be taught in a non-science class is beyond me.

The Left knows the importance of education much more than the Right. This is why they are upset that textbooks are trying to be balanced. Again, if there wasn't a left-wing bias to begin with in our texts, there wouldn't be such a "right-wing" reaction.

Whites are still the majority in this country. And, Mr. Ebert, some of them did some good things for this country. We can and should teach that as well.

I don't want textbooks that represent Liberal or Conservative points of view. I want books that dig into the issues of American history, so that children understand /what/ we argue about, and /why/.

Nor do I want "fair and balanced" books, but books that are critical of /all/ points of view, and supportive of few or none.

Unfortunately, such books are difficult to write, and most children are too young and inexperenced to understand them.

One might also argue that, given the ready availability of the Web, teachers might profitably discard text books, and teach from on-line documents of all stripes.

The issue of inane/shallow/misleading text books is not new. MAD satirized it 50 years ago ("A Child's History of the Middle 1900's", 10/1960):

"...although their leaders were bad, the German people had always been good... The reason they were so good was because they had never liked the foolish things Hitler had done. Such as losing the war."

While I am a Creationist (one who also believes in evolution) I completely agree with you that Creationism has no place in science textbooks. The question of God is simply outside of the realm of science; it's not something that science is interested in. While I do believe that the study of the natural universe does reveal God's beauty and glory as its creator, it is completely unable to give knowledge on whether God exists, and if so, what God might be like. This is why I'm always amused at how many people seem to care what scientists have to say about God. I am as interested in what Richard Dawkins has to say about God as I am what the pope has to say about evolutionary biology.

Ebert: I suspect we may agree: God is by definition unknowable, even to those who think they know him so well they attribute opinions to him.

Please keep this topic in the news and media - its SHAMEFUL that we have these idiots in power here in Texas. I am FRIGHTENED of what our children will be learning in public schools because of a handful of christian based morons. I have to live here for now and thankfully am aware enough to teach my son (now in the 11th grade) the truth and for him to seek out more information (and not just thru Wikipedia) in the library.

There's no canard of the Right that offends more with its sheer wrongness than "The USA was founded on Christian principles." Not only are the founding principles of America not Christian, but Christianity is actively hostile to most of them.

What priciples could Christians possibly be referring to? Well, start by asking what principles America is founded on.

Freedom is probably the most important American principle; is freedom based on Christianity? Absolutely not. Not only is it arguable whether you can even believe in freedom and an omnipotent, omniscient God simultanously, but Christianity is deeply suspicious about the entire concept of freedom. Freedom is based on the assumption that we can choose our own path in the world; but Christianity does not believe this. Central to Christianity is the idea of submission: God has a plan for us, which we must follow. Christianity has a word for when humans exercise their own wills over God's; the word is 'sin'. It's not hard to see the story of the serpent in Eden as a retelling of the tale of Prometheus: the serpent gave mankind the gift of freedom, and was cruelly punished for it. Is it a coincidence that the name Lucifer literally means "light-bringer"?

Another great American principle is democracy. Is democracy Christian? Again, no. Democracy is the idea that authority ultimately derives from the will of the people, and propagates upward. Christianity believes the exact opposite; that authority derives from the will of God, and trickles down. Obviously, these ideas don't fit well together.

Surely a basic American principle is a concern for human rights. But there's no such thing as human rights in Christian thought. God is sovereign, and can do to us as He pleases. Christianity is deeply hostile to the idea that human beings have value, or that we are entitled to things. To a Christian, the only thing humans are entitled to is eternal damnation; and if God loves us, this is not to be taken as a sign of our inherent worth, but as a testament to His infinite capacity for love.

There are other American principles I could mention (self-determination and the pursuit of happiness are other good examples), but those three will suffice. The history of Western civilization is the history of two distinct threads, one Greek, one Christian, existing uneasily side by side. What distinguishes the two is that Greek thought is concerned with the glorification of Man, while Christianity focuses on the glorification of God. The principles that America is founded upon -- the principles that make her a great nation -- are essentially Greek in character. And if you doubt that Christianity is hostile to American principles, ask yourself one question:

"Can you think of a single book that Christians haven't tried to ban at one time or another?"

While I have always felt textbooks from any level of education were inadequate in certain areas, some of the changes proposed above go well beyond lunacy. In fact it sounds down right pernicious.

However, I do think it would be beneficial to take a closer look at John Calvin's influence on western capitalism, just not to the neglect of Thomas Jefferson - that is madness. For example my history textbook in high school barely contained a footnote on what they termed Calvin's Genevan theocracy and gave us caricature of Calvin's person. Not until studying western influences in college did I see how patently untrue the image of Calvin propagated by our textbook was. I mention this is a good example of where our textbooks have previously failed. Of course the things they want to minimize... oh my.

I am very concerned with textbook changes. To take out Thomas Jefferson does not make any sense to me. Having noted that, I also think it is equally important to pay attention to the importance of teachers because (as we learned this year) even the best textbooks do little good if the teacher barely cares about the subject, can't write assignments with proper spelling and grammar (confusing for students) or even with clarity. I wouldn't actually call the current textbooks "the best" but they included everything you noted as being desirable and Jefferson was definitely a major figure, as was Lincoln. But I agree with Tamin Ansary, who noted (as you posted above):

"In fact most of these books fall far short of their important role in the educational scheme of things. They are processed into existence using the pulp of what already exists, rising like swamp things from the compost of the past. The mulch is turned and tended by many layers of editors who scrub it of anything possibly objectionable before it is fed into a government-run "adoption" system that provides mediocre material to students of all ages."

Also, as long as Martin Luther King Day and other holidays revolving around specific people is celebrated as a national holiday, with schools closed for the day (as it is here), the students ought to know the history behind those days. I was in Indianapolis when Robert Kennedy noted that Martin Luther King was assassinated and it was a pivotal moment. Indianapolis did not have major riots and students should listen to Kennedy's speech, easily available on YouTube or elsewhere.

Textbooks are no longer essential to educating children. More and more teachers are opting out of using them. In the high school I work many teachers don't require textbooks. When asked why they use textbooks the most common answers are: "I can give the kids a reading assignment for 15 minutes while work on something else," and "If I don't have text books in the room parents won't think kids are learning." Most teachers teach with numerous materials and use the textbook, when necessary, as a guiding rod. The internet is the best source of information and education out there. Textbooks are heavy, expensive, obsolete the moment they are published and an antiquated way to hold information.

If we don't move forward we will always be going backwards.

Methinks the lady doth protest too much. What we have here is a knee-jerk leftist responding to a perceived existential threat contained within a relatively minor news story. You, Roger, and brain-dead leftists like you, have always become borderline apopleptic at the prospect of anything that challenges leftist hegemony in the government schools. Furthermore, I fail to see what the problem is. If there is one goal of education, especially in an individualist republic such as ours, it is to foster personal intellectual growth and critical thinking skills. The best way to do this is to present both sides of an argument and socratically debate its merits. In this manner, we can more firmly grasp pure, unadulterated truth. Ideally, the commonalities of the revolutionary spirits in the words and deeds of Cesar Chavez and Phyllis Schlafly (got her name wrong there, Roger) should be taught simultaneously, but time and memory constraints necessitate omissions. Neither are particularly towering figures of American history, but both played their respective roles and are worth learning about.
I suppose my main concern with history curricula in particular is the idea that any historical figure should be emphasized simply because they were a member of an "underrepresented" minority group. American history should focus on the genesis of the idea of these United States, which means the founding fathers, to the exclusion of more insignificant factors in our shared heritage-this means John Brown, Malcolm X, various Indian chiefs, Ralph Nader, etc. If this means that students learning American history are spending 95% of their time learning about dead white men, so be it. The truth is the truth. Reality is reality. I don't think anybody would be in an uproar over the lack of whites represented in a course on Chinese or Senegalese history. Attempting to make the past conform to our feeble, squeamish, politically correct viewpoints of today is a fool's errand. Truth doesn't comform to politics.
I may not agree with many things on the Texas school board's curriculum, but this occurrence was an inevitable check and balance against a system that's drifted too far left. This is inevitable. Whenever viewpoints that are supposed to be as objective as possible become adulterated with dubious (read: leftist) political ideology, it is only a matter of time until the backlash. This has always, and will always, occur, especially in such a polarized society as ours. One simply hopes that the pendulum doesn't swing too far back to the right. The central irony, or course, is that by exerting gestapo-like control of the government school system (for which there is absolutely no constitutional mandate, by the way), leftists have sowed the seeds of the discrediting of their own ideas. It's sorta funny, if one sees it in this light.
You also cannot deny that certain figures in public education are sacrosanct while others are anathema to unbiased instruction-your example of Reagan vs. FDR being a good one. I don't remember anything critical ever being said of FDR in my AP Euro or US history classes, even though one could make a very cogent argument that he was the worst president of the 20th century. Regardless, there are certainly plenty of things in his presidency about which to be critical. Conversely, Reagan, who one could make the case was a fairly good president of the 20th century, was only cursorily discussed, as was the cold war in general.
You use a classic leftist bait and switch argument concerning demographics. The fact that the aggregate of minority groups in TX outnumbers whites is irrelevant. None of those groups alone comes close to the population of whites in that state. It is nonsensical to lump them together, and also astoundingly racialist. An American black has no more in common with a Mexican immigrant living in TX than you or I do, Roger. American life is not simply whites vs. minorities, although this is a common prism through which the world is seen by the left. One of the endearing qualities of America is our capacity to be the only fully successful multiracial nation in the history of mankind, through shared ideas, culture, language, individualism, and dreams. The story of America is not one of various minority groups constantly oppressing other minority groups. There is no more institutional racism in America, and anybody who believes there is is simply a fool. There is plenty of individual racism to go around, much of it coming from the left in general and minorities in particular, but that is another story.
Also, I know a few comments above have pointed this out, but there is nothing in the US Constitution about the separation of church and state. This phrase is frequently taken out of context and was contained in Jefferson's letters. It was primarily meant to emphasize the importance of protecting the church against the state, not vice versa. It's demoralizing how consistently self-righteous pseudo-purveyors of the constitution end up misrepresenting and misunderstanding it, and you, Roger, are guilty of this now and have been in the past.
I always enjoy the debate and welcome any responses. Keep up the good work.

I am a Texas citizen, and consider myself to be barely to the right of Libertarian, as well as being a Christian. I am also a Senior History Major at Texas A&M University, which is widely considered to be a conservative institution. However, I consider this move in the curriculum to be one of the more liberal moves the Right Wing in this state, the heart of the bible-belt, has tried to push off on us for some time now (liberal, referring to the true definitions of liberalism and conservativism). It's utterly ridiculous to take a black highlighter to Jefferson, to cheapen the words of Lincoln by placing them side by side with Jefferson Davis, and to erase the lives of "minority leaders" from our books (what a load of malarkey that idea is).

May I also say that there are MANY conservatives in this state who are smarter than all of this crap. The problem is that the squeaky wheels get the grease, and apparently the Texas Board of Education is using rubber cement on their push-cart.

As a future History teacher, I hereby swear that I will never, in my entire career, submit to purchasing, or forcing others to read, these inaccurate and ignorant piece of garbage they find themselves calling "textbooks." Maybe that makes me a liberal; maybe not. The fact is, the debate here isn't over liberalism vs. conservatism; it's about being a rational, educated, and open-minded person. And, that being said, the Texas Schoolboard has failed.

In 2001 I wrote a fiction screenplay set ten years into the future in which a fearful populace elects a theocratic government in my home state of Texas resulting in the disenfranchisement of dissenting views, a morality police force, censorship of books and knowledge, and a movement to secede from the United States. We produced a short film version of this story in 2004 called AFTER TWILIGHT. (www.nu-classicfilms.com)

Sadly, the fiction I wrote in 2001 has almost become a documentary as the state slips closer to theocracy and, in the last year, the idea of Texas secession went from fringe nonsense to high-profile political discourse that was even encouraged by Governor Perry.

Let us hope that, by the final vote on the textbooks in May, cooler heads and reason can exert some influence on the board members.

Boy the bottom of the barrel just got lower. Education is what people need to live richer lives but this is just counter productive.

Ironically people who go for this kind of procedure only does it for the appearances and to please their elected officials. I am pretty sure that those elected officials don't care one way or the other.

Let me tell you that if every Jew, Christian and Muslim would follow that course there would be a LOT less problems in this world and surely this situation would never exist.

http://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies/introduction-to-the-old-testament-hebrew-bible/

Go ahead I dare you to follow it, or are you afraid of making your own conclusion...

Phil

well you know what? Its time someone took a stand on moral grounds and stop supporting this "anything goes" filth that got hold of our children and society. If it means changing a few text books then so be it.

Odd how these red-blooded patriotic conservative Christian 'mericans seem to have taken a page out of Josef Stalin's playbook. In attempting to "disappear" their least-favorite historical figures from our schools' curricula, they might have more in common with Communist totalitarianism than they'd like to think.

I have been following this story about the proposed changes to the textbooks by the Texas State Board of Education for a couple of weeks. As a history teacher (college level), I find that the most difficult part in education is to motivate students to investigate and research on a given topic besides the material that is taught in the classroom. I particularly use the textbook as a guide to plan and schedule the course material, and use a variety of sources to broaden the scope of any given topic. Nowadays, with the advent of the Internet and the explosion of information at literally your fingertips, teachers don't need to stick exclusively on textbook material . As I see it, a teacher's truly job is not only conveying content to students, but help them develop inquisitive minds, so they can apply those skills to real life complex situations. My point is that, even though the proposed changes can have some effect on the way students receive or perceive "historical" facts or contents, ultimately the teachers (and parents) will be the deciding factor on how well those minds see and understand the world around them. Who knows? Maybe some good will come out of this situation, as parents could get more involved in their children education.

NPR just did a segment presenting that our textbooks are indeed liberal, "progressive with a lower-case p" is how they said it.

The New York Times also pointed out that most of the changes aren't that sweeping...

Dear Mr. Ebert,
Thank you for calling attention to this issue. My message is that there is something we can do about this sorry state of affairs. As a professor at Texas State University, I am running for Texas State Board of Education in District 5 because I care about education. I believe we should follow a reasonable, rational process in deciding on curriculum and textbooks.

There is nothing "conservative" about deleting Jefferson from the list of Enlightenment thinkers, or removing the words "democracy" and "capitalism" from the social studies curriculum. These are radical, extremist moves prompted by partisan considerations. Some of the people who voted in favor of these changes know better, but they voted in a bloc with their fellow Republicans. I hope that the voters of Texas show more independence of spirit in the November election. I call on moderates in Texas to vote for people with the strongest qualifications and a proven record of experience and accomplishments in education.
Rebecca Bell-Metereau
Candidate for State Board of Education District 5

Two comments:
Texas is the nation's largest textbook market, not the second largest. California has more schools and more pupils, but California does not adopt and purchase textbooks on a statewide basis, as Texas does, so each California school district is a different textbook market. Book publishers have long acknowledged that Texas largely calls the shots.

With Non-Hispanic Whites (to use the Census term) being a minority in Texas, my state is a "melting pot" whether some Texans like it or not. But that's also beside the point. Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, Thurgood Marshall, et al were not "minority figures." They were members of ethnic minorities, but they had tremendous influence on the course of history for all of America and the whole world, not just their own ethnic groups.

Oh, for the days when Roger actually wrote about movies.

Thanks for writing this, Roger. I live in Fort Worth and have been seriously been considering getting my teaching certification and becoming a history teacher. However, when the SBOE passed the recent changes to the history curriculum, my interest in pursuing this career waned significantly. I do not want to teach kids that Joseph McCarthy is a hero because of all the people he attacked almost at random in order to increase his own power, a tiny handful of them really did turn out to be Communists. Never mind many of the rest had their lives and careers ruined by the unfounded and untrue speculation. I don't want to teach kids that the Civil Rights movement had "unexpected negative consequences" or whatever mumbo jumbo they want teachers to say. Removing Jefferson from the list of Enlightenment thinkers makes no sense either, since, given that Texas is still part of the United States (despite what our esteemed governor sometimes seems to think), it might be nice to explain how the Enlightenment influenced one of the principal Founding Fathers.

At least the voters of the state are realizing just how much damage the SBOE is doing to the Texas's reputation. As others have noted in the comments, Don McLeroy lost his primary last month and is on his way out. Here's hoping that the voters in other districts also want to clean house over the next few years.

* Leon said: "the discussion doesn't seem oriented towards respecting differing views, or giving equal time, or putting the citizenry in a position to reach it's potential."

There is no reason to "respect different views" when they are false and corrupted, nor to "give equal time" to lies and historical revisionism. The citizenry doesn't "reach its potential" by being mislead and poorly educated. If the attempts to redefine the Confederacy as not-so-bad, to remove mention of non-white leaders and achievements, and to weaken science are "equal time" for "conservative" viewpoints, that says a lot about what you and others consider to be the "conservative view" of history.

* Leon said: "You do not seem remotely as bothered by the notion of distinct bias in our textbooks as you do ensuring that it's YOUR bias which gets overly-represented."

The bias is toward factual historical information and intelligent, informed science. If you oppose such a "bias", again it says far more about your own viewpoint than it does about our "bias" favoring facts and science while opposing racism.

* Leon said: "You are thoroughly convinced, as are too many on both sides, that your bias is somehow capital 'T' Truth correct while the alternative - creationism, the importance of Newt Gingrich, etc, is 'uneducated' and 'irrational.' In fact, you use that language."

Treating slavery and the Confederacy in a more positive light, intentionally so, is irrational and ignorant. Claiming there are too many non-whites in history books is irrational and ignorant. Claiming we have to teach kids that an invisible man used magic to create everything in the universe, and teaching against that factual provable reality-based science, is irrational and ignorant.

Which is why one manner of teaching history and science is indeed True with a capital "T", and the other is False with a capital "F".

* Leon said: "Ultimately, much like Washington, the logical conclusion to all this is finding equal ground on the common sense stuff, and trying to keep the other stuff (the biased stuff) tit for tat. Any other alternative is dogmatic, be it the dogma of the Christian Right or the alternative."

That's not t/True -- with a small or capital "t/T". Treating this as if it's a debate between two equally valid positions is exactly what the Christian rightwing racists on the Texas BOE want. They portray this as just a disagreement between two opposing but equal sides, when nothing could be farther from the truth.

Attempting to rewrite history and dumb-down education, to remove fact-based science, to forcibly insert a single religious philosophy (as BOE members have openly and publicly stated is their goal, one of them stating it is his very first concern and issue to address whenever he looks at history books), is not an equal side of the debate. It is irrational and ignorant, and it's irrational and ignorant to pretend otherwise.

* To Mark Stevens, who said: "I think the problem is that we're just insects on a rock, and we're all just guarding the queen and mistakenly think we're on a divine mission that is totally unrelated to ejaculation and conception. Nothing we do matters enough to be taught as important archive."

If it is true that we are simply a small scattering of lifeforms adrift on a rock in the deep and mostly empty void of space, in a universe without meaning, then one might say that the fact we are a tiny pinprick of intelligent life observing and understanding the workings of reality means that everything we do -- even the smallest moments -- are actually more important than we can imagine. Since importance and meaning are in this scenario derived solely from the perception of living, thinking organisms, the concepts are defined by our own existence, and that might make every aspect of that existence the very definition of "meaning" and "purpose". That is another way to look at the same predicament we find ourselves in on this lonely rock, isn't it? :)

Earning my History degree was a lot of hard work, and the best lesson I learned along the way was this: The past reveals no plan.

We were taught about great men who thought otherwise--men as different as St. Augustine and Karl Marx--who saw past events as parts of a pattern, assigning them meaning by making them steps in a process. That process had an endpoint, which was still to come.

The problem with this approach is that it turns History into a movie we've already seen. We learn nothing more from past events, save how they propelled us further toward a conclusion we're already certain will occur.

That road has led to totalitarianism more than once. It does so because it seeks to edit historical knowledge, in effect teaching people less so that they might more easily follow the correct path. An ignorant population is usually a vulnerable one.

If the Christian Right feels shut out of America's historical narrative, let them add their voices to its study, rather than trying to reduce the number of voices out there. History, as a discipline, survived Freud, Braudel, Durkheim, and Levi-Strauss, and in fact, it was stronger for the intellectual challenges those thinkers presented. And it was invigorated permanently by the addition of feminist historians, black historians, hispanic and other non-white historians, queer historians, and other academics who respected the old narratives but made them better by asking new questions.

What questions do these Board members in Texas have to ask? Do they believe they have anything left to learn? They seem more interested in contorting history so that it better supports the beliefs they already hold.

I've learned that the past is evolving all the time, because we, who look back upon it with fresh eyes, are evolving, too. Studying history should make us challenge who we are and what we believe. It should not be a means to justify our assumptions.

The only hope left is to institute mandatory critical thinking in elementary schools. Children will learn the main political position of every president, understand Russian literature when placed in context and be led to learn upper level mathematics. Thus, if a citizen professes to be a conservative or liberal, their peers will immediately want that person to voice their reason for their political affiliation. If that person can't answer, they will be the official dunce. And one more note to anyone agreeing with the Texas Books.

You are disgracing Robert Taft
You are disgracing Eisenhower
You are disgracing Ron Paul
You are disgracing any conservative of the past who believed intellectualism was an admirable trait.

If you are a real conservative, who started the neoconservative party?

Ebert, do you think this could become a reality? Reading some of these replies is starting to bring doubts.

Having read so much this week about the death of film criticism and intelligent debate, etc., I can't help but see that argument and the school board issue as part of a piece about the decline of thinking in American life. Listening to experts has fallen out of favor apparently, whether on science, education, or art criticsm. It really makes me sad to see intellectualism in such a sorry state, the blame for which I must lay at the feet of our conservative leadership since the Reagan era. Cheers to you for always having the courage and the desire to speak and write intelligently, to engage a mass audience without dumbing yourself down, and for embodying the notion of a critic in all regards, whether speaking about film, politics or education, yours is always a genuine, insightful, analytical voice.

* James Yerian wrote: "Textbooks have been slanted way to the Left for decades. It is not surprising that there is a jerk to the Right. When we are taught that are Founding Fathers were racist Indian killers, when we are taught about how the US is a war monger in the 20th Century, instead of the country that freed the world, you can expect a reaction, Mr. Ebert."

Were the Founding Fathers racist? How many owned slaves, how many included in our Constitution that slaves were 3/5 of a person? Were Indians

Hello Mr. Ebert,

I have been a student of history for many years; therefore, I feel I have the right to make this statement.

History originates from fact, but history's interpretation is based entirely on opinion.

I'm being serious here. You would be shocked to know how many ways there are to view the exact same event. You would be shocked to know how much history has been distorted. You would be shocked to know the vast amount of significant historical events completely ignored in schools.

I'm not condoning the actions of the Texas School Board, but this decision to edit history is hardly a sin only they have committed. The whole world is guilty of that sin as well.

Hence, as a history lover, I encourage people to take charge of their own education after school.

My advice is this: go out and read a wide variety of books on history from many different perspectives. Then, make up your own mind. Do not let anyone else make it up for you.

* James Yerian wrote: "Textbooks have been slanted way to the Left for decades. It is not surprising that there is a jerk to the Right. When we are taught that are Founding Fathers were racist Indian killers, when we are taught about how the US is a war monger in the 20th Century, instead of the country that freed the world, you can expect a reaction, Mr. Ebert."

Were the Founding Fathers racist? How many owned slaves, how many included in our Constitution that slaves were 3/5 of a person? Were Indians killed or not, and did the Founding Fathers support those actions? You aren't opposing it because it's untrue, you're opposing it because you just don't want it taught.

School history textbooks don't at all treat the USA as "war mongers" regarding WWI or WWII, and even the Korean War is exempt from the "war mongering" assertion. This is a tired refrain from the rightwing that perceives any and all criticism of even ONE U.S. military action as some kind of liberal conspiracy that translates into kids being taught the U.S. is nothing but an evil empire. It's absurd, it's irrational, and it's not t/True at all.

As for the Vietnam War, the invasion of Grenada and Panama, and the recent invasion of Iraq, it is factually true that the USA's military actions are the definition of aggressive warfare under international law. To claim otherwise simply reveals ignorance regarding international law on this matter. But again, even in these regards, to claim school history books are "bias" and portray the USA as "war mongers" is a silly and demonstrably false assertion.

But by all means, the rightwing knee-jerk "reaction" against the inclusion of even one minority leader, the mention of even one negative criticism of even the most glaringly wrong action by the USA, is definitely to be "expected", as you say. The existence of just one such item becomes grounds for claiming a complete liberal bias, and justification for a complete rewriting of history to exclude historical truths, minority accomplishments, and scientific facts.

* James Yerian wrote: "Evolution is still, after all, a theory."

Thus again exposing the woeful lack of even simple understanding of science, through this rather obvious misunderstanding of the word "theory" in the scientific method.

No "theory" ever becomes other than a "theory", James. Scientific "theories" are not the same as humanities "theories". You are clearly confusing the two, as is common among rightwingers who don't understand the concepts. Humanities theories concern ideas and concepts but do not at all have to be premised on observable data, empirical evidence, or be testable in accordance with scientific experiments. There isn't some next level beyond "theory" in science, contrary to the limited understanding of rightwingers who seem to think that a "theory" eventually can become a scientific "law", which is yet another misunderstood term among rightwingers.

* James Yerian wrote: "It would be nice if it were taught as a 'theory' instead of as a fact."

It IS taught as a "theory", James. Some "theories" are also "facts" -- again, you simply don't understand the actual terms and are confusing them with "theories" in the humanities.

* James Yerian wrote: "Creationism is certainly not scientific, but why it couldn't be taught in a non-science class is beyond me."

It IS taught in non-science class, James. It's taught at churches where it belongs, it's taught at religious private schools where it belongs, it's taught at home where it belongs. It isn't taught in our public education system because there isn't a class for teaching Christianity to students at public schools. Because it's not the place of public government schools to teach Christianity and Christian philosophies to people's kids. And because you've all got a plethora of other places where it is entirely fine and appropriate to teach it to your kids.

Why this obsession with forcing tax dollars to fund a class where everyone else's kids have to learn about your personal religious beliefs, just for the express purpose of teaching kids your personal religious beliefs? Because that's what this is all about, period. There is absolutely no other plausible explanation for being angry that taxpayer funded, government-run public education facilities don't make kids learn your own personal religious views.

* James Yerian wrote: "This is why they are upset that textbooks are trying to be balanced. Again, if there wasn't a left-wing bias to begin with in our texts, there wouldn't be such a 'right-wing' reaction."

By your definition there, then, liberals wouldn't be concerned that rightwingers are trying to engage in religious indoctrination and overt racism and historical revisionism unless the rightwing is trying to do it. Right? So that means, if we accept your argument, there is factually a leftwing bias, and there is factually a rightwing attempt to change the textbooks into religious books with altered history and racism.

I'll accept your claim of liberal bias, if you accept my claim of rightwing racist historical revisionism and religious indoctrination. Fair enough? And again, I'll remind you that you are defining "leftwing bias" as the attempt to accurately portray the views of the Founding Fathers, to incorporate a small amount of attention to the accomplishments of minorities, to avoid automatic nationalistic acceptance of all U.S. military action as inherently right and above criticism, and to teach science. That's how you're portraying "leftwing bias", and by all means I'll happily accept your apparent definition.

Likewise, I fully embrace your definition of "rightwing bias" as insertion of religious indoctrination, removal of minorities, and inclusion of nationalistic support of any and all military actions without question or education about problems and criticisms. Good job.

* James Yerian wrote: "Whites are still the majority in this country. And, Mr. Ebert, some of them did some good things for this country. We can and should teach that as well."

Whites make up 66% of the population. If you had a child born today, then when that child has his/her 32nd birthday, whites will no longer be the majority. So I assume, if your views are consistent and non-hypocritical, that at that point you will begin arguing that textbooks should focus predominantly on non-whites and the history of whites should be relegated to just a small portion of school history textbooks. Right?

To speak as if "gee, we ought to be telling kids about some things white people did 'cause kids aren't learning about it," is so insane it almost takes my breath away. Do you even know what is in school textbooks, seriously? Do you really, seriously believe that the teaching about white culture and history doesn't dominate the teaching of our history?

You act as if the inclusion of any minorities, or of any criticism of anything white people ever did, is an attack on white people and amounts to not teaching about the good things white people have done in history. It means you feel that the accomplishments of white people are so weak and fragile, the mention of any negative behavior or events is going to topple the whole history of what white people have done and will overshadow and negate anything positive that came out of white history. That's what your behavior strongly suggests.

Do you deny that the Founding Fathers owned slaves? Do you deny that expansion to the West relied on killing off the Indian population and taking their land? Do you deny that we had to fight a Civil War in order to end slavery? Do you deny that segregation existed? If you don't deny these things factually happened, why would you be opposed to including such historical facts -- most of which, you kinda might notice, were pretty fundamentally important parts of our history, like expanding West and having a Civil War and maintaining racial inequality and segregation for 80% of our nation's history.

Of course, to a white guy, slavery and segregation and killing off the Indians so a nation favoring white men could grow might all be things you're not too concerned about or prefer to at least just not mention. But history isn't about making you feel better, James, or about covering up and lying about what really happened. We must learn our full and true history in order to understand it, and we must understand it to truly learn from it. So in that way, the attempts to revise and distort history prevents us not only from learning history, but learning from it. It's a double threat that has to be stopped.

I don't want my children learning religious beliefs in school any more than I want them learning the slanted myth of George Dubya: Superstar. But when public schools are distributing blatant historical revisionism by propagandists like Howard Zinn which decry notions of objectivity and logic in favor of postmodernist ideal worship and presentism, and teaching it as de facto history, then it's ridiculous to argue that the Left should be allowed to misinform public school attendees while decryign the Right for wanting to do the same.

We on the left don't hate those on the right, we pity them.

Two more quick observations:

1. Regarding the NCSEWeb video of the high school student speaking before the Texas School Board. Not only are his statistics compelling (and backed up by the 2002, 2004, 2006 National Science Foundation Reports on Science and Engineering Indicators), but there is an important point he began to raise about "teaching the controversy."

Science isn't conducted in the classroom. It's conducted in the field, in the lab, and submitted for publication by peer-reviewed journals with boards comprised of other professionals .... IN THE FIELD. We don't challenge gravity or Pythagoras' theorem in the high school classroom because that isn't the place to prove it.

2. For those who have brought up the "equal time" argument. Equal arguments consisting of equal evidence deserve equal time. As I have learned in my exposure to film critics, not everyone's opinions are equally well-substantiated by fact. Likewise, not all theories are equally substantiated by fact.

In the case of Kitzmiller et. al., it was concluded after exhaustive testimony and cross-examination that the entire Intelligent Design theory consists of no positive evidence as to how Intelligent Design works. Therefore it's not a theory. It's conjecture.

Important point: A "theory" in science is not colloquially meant to suggest an educated or even half-guess. According to the Merriam-Webster definition, a "theory" is: The analysis of a set of FACTS in their relation to one another.

So, appropriately, if we want to really apply the "equal time" principle, then let's note that Creationists have had equal time to substantiate their alternative to Evolutionary Theory... 150 years since Darwin's On the Origin of Species was published, to be exact.

150 years to set up and test endless hypotheses about what we should expect to find if creation were the correct model: the expulsion from paradise, the fall, the flood, instantaneous appearance of entire species, birds with nipples (yes, if nested hierarchies from a common ancestor didn't exist, then we could discover a bird with nipples... that you never will is due to descent with modification from a common ancestor, i.e. evolution)...

And yet, in that 150 years, what papers have they submitted for publication? Well, one study in 1986 by the very same National Center for Science Education found that of 68 editors of peer-reviewed publications surveyed and over 100,000 articles submitted, only 18 could be said to have a creationist-leaning argument being put forth, and of those 18, all were rejected due to lack of evidence, amateur writing (as if these were not experts but laypeople writing for laypeople) and conclusions that didn't fit the evidence presented.

So, more or less, equal time has yielded absolutely no scientific argument of merit in favor of creation/Intelligent Design.

I will bet money in another 25 years they won't have accumulated an inch of evidence acceptable by scientific standards (i.e. what it means to gather facts through observation that can be repeated and confirmed).

Lastly, no theory in existence has as many facts to support it as this. With regard to competing models, e.g. Darwinian gradualism vs. Gould and Eldredge's Punctuated Equilibrium (which itself has about 30 years of research behind it)... this debate is only over how evolution occurs. That it occurs is an observed fact, the nature of which the Theory of Evolution is the best explanation that yet exists.

But if the creationists want another go at it... Here's your chance... one, two, three... go.

I am sure there is more to this story. There is plenty of liberal propoganda in TX textbooks like "Famous Amos" the cookie maker has supplanted and replaced Einstein and Edison an other "evil white males". Or native american, Gaiai -earth worship, "tepee good MRI bad" mumbo jumbo infests our current textbooks. A friend of mine's kid is reading " 3 cups of Tea" ( a sappy book written by a mountain climber) in literature class instead of Twain, Salinger and Shakespeare. Weirdness on both sides.
Quit whining Ebert. The NEA and education establishment is off the chart liberal/left wing/socialist. They have a strangle hold on our education system.

Ebert: Wally Amos in, Einstein and Edison out? Reference, please.

"Three Cups of Tea," a #1 NYTimes best seller, may indeed be the kid's reading material, but INSTEAD of anything else? What's his whole reading list?

With the current state of our education system its not like the kids will learn any of the revised history/ science. I'd be happy if a majority of them could read and had goals outside of welfare and owning a nice car.

Here in Wake County, North Carolina, the newly-elected conservative majority on the county school board is eliminating the wonderful (and successful) magnet-school program in favour of assigning students to "neighbourhood schools."

Some may indict me of hyperbole by saying, with many of my fellow North Carolians, that his amounts to re-segregation. So I'll just point out that there are few schools on the other side of the tracks.

It's a bit of local flavour, to be sure, but like the Texas revisionists, it reflects a large reactionary movement across Dixie to..well, I risk hyperbole again.

Should the left wing be in charge of the books Roger?

Ebert: I think the middle wing would be best.

Hi Roger,

I remember watching McLeroy when he originally appeared on Nightline. What an idiot. I especially took note of easily he dismissed his own lies by stating "I was rushed" or it was a "mistake". But then goes on to condemn others who don't share his views. Chilling.

His quote, "But we are a Christian nation founded on Christian principles.", is just head shaking.

Who is this nitwit talking about? The Pilgrims? Whatever this delusional jackass wants this country to be is one thing. But, Our nation was founded by people who believed just the opposite. This country is not and has never been a Theocracy. It is a Democracy. Maybe he should go to Iran so he can understand, first hand, the difference.

And please, please, would you try and explain, once and for all, the difference between an "Idea" and a "Scientific Theory" in a way that people who are of a low IQ can comprehend? I ask because it has been stated so many times on your site, in many places, by so many people before, but apparently (see comment above) has not sunk in yet. Maybe you can use cartoons? Simpler words?

Sigh...

I know. It wouldn't do any good.

Take care.

"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" -- Thomas Jefferson

Roger, you're still relevant? Huh. Who would have thunk?

It seems that John Sayles had the crystal ball when he made "Lone Star".

i always preferred Michael Medveds movie reviews

Most disturbing to me, by far, isn't the content of this new Texas curriculum. It is that there is a statewide curriculum to begin with.

Why is there such a concern that we all be on the same page?

I'm willing to be educated on this issue. But I want some of you to consider that the beliefs of a community help it to forge an identity, and some communities may share beliefs that seem wild to you and me. Who in the hell are we to say they are wrong, when perhaps we are all wrong, or all right?

I, for one, am dumbfounded by the Christian theology and mythology that 80% of Americans buy into. But I have come to love churches, love church people, love organized religion. It was my liberal education that propelled me towards considering organized religion the greatest ill in modern society. My liberal education began to convince me that organized religions were intolerant towards certain people I was told I had to love. Most religious people, however, radiate with love for their fellow man, be he gay, black, or Iranian.

My liberal education was really rather ignorant about the religion to which I'd grown up a devotee.

I guess it must've been my being nurtured once more in the warm bosom of small-town Indiana that made me realize that, on some things, being Educated ain't all that it's cracked up to be. For, the Education that I got at a state university and in a public high school was more concerned with my coming to agree with others than with coming to my own conclusions. The predominant message in college, for instance, was that cultural diversity was good. Well, duh. What great energy was wasted in putting out a message which normal interactions with real people of various backgrounds would make perfectly clear!

If we grow intolerant of one another, I would argue that it is because we grow insecure in who we know ourselves to be. Think of warring clans on the frontier, perfectly insecure within undrawn boundaries, fighting at the margins for, if anything, certainty, a bold, thick line.

I tend to believe that our people are getting considerably meaner towards one other. Is it because we do not know who we are any longer? Is it because we are not allowed to know?

Remember that the people we most often admire are the outliers, the mavericks. They think and say and do things differently, and we place them on that pedestal as an example we wish to follow.

Remember too that having points of view that directly contradict mainstream thought, when formulated not out of spite but through genuine emotional and intellectual processes, not only gives one the tremendous sense of freedom that he cannot live without, but it feels awful damn good. Leaving academia behind, and perhaps not incidentally, abandoning some of the steadfast tenets of liberalism I felt obliged to adopt, I am recovering lost parts of my true identity, rediscovering the call of my animal soul.

Why don't they just do what they really want and throw away every other book there is and only allow the bible in classrooms and arrest everybody who believes in evolution and all those other irrational liberal sins?

"Certainly most parents expect their children to be taught from textbooks reflecting the current state of knowledge in each subject."

Unfortunately, you cannot assume people to be ideal. The school system, from my experience substitute teaching, expects mainly effort and obedience from students--not curiosity. Those are the attributes established corporations are most interested in spreading. And many parents by default go along, expecting mainly grades and good behavior reports--not knowledge.

@jon w

The American colonies didn't secede from Britain because they were not considered a unified entity with Britain. They were colonies - lands used and abused by Britain for raw materials and taxes. But the colonies had no representatives in British Parliament. Hence, "Taxation without representation."

On the other hand, the southern states of the United States seceded from the Union to form their own country, The Confederate States of America.

It was seen as a violation of the Constitution for a group of states to separate from the union and enter into an agreement with one another.

So in the case of colonies vs. Britain you have a people subject to rule with no recourse to redress grievances. In Confederate States vs. United States you have a people already entered and agreed to a Constitution with recourse to address grievances.

Of course, the simple answer may be that the colonies won the Revolution and the War of 1812 while the Confederacy lost the Civil War.

The easy answer is to remove--as much as possible--government brainwashing from either direction. Empower parents (via vouchers, etc.) to buy the textbooks and hire the tutors to teach their own children or send them to charter schools of their choice.

Parents overwhelmingly want their children to succeed, and whether they teach evolution or creationism will likely not have much to do with how well they do software development, law, medicine, accounting, or marketing.

The children of parents who teach ID or creationism probably are less likely to get involved in the field of science that involves evolution. So what? They may turn to other fields of science.

The children of evolutionists, on the other hand, are more likely to be the ones who choose that field of study.

Society won't collapse if some kids learn creationism and others Darwinism.

Why should we all learn a "one size fits all" curriculum? Let future success of the children decide what gets taught the next generation.

We have always had a large faction of ignoramuses in this country and I suspect we always will. It's just such a shame that a nation with the resources of the US has to struggle along with the burden of these types. What you see nowadays masquerading as conservatism is really the slow and agonizing death of some old and very outdated myths about free enterprise, white male privilege, American imperialism, and the proper role of religion in public life. The tea party types and their Republican enablers are witnessing the final discredited days of Reaganism and it's painful for them. In the meantime I think we have some things to be very optimistic about: great universities, the internet, an ever-expanding mass media that continually brings more news and information, an artistic and intellectual culture that refuses to be held down by reactionaries, an economy that will revive and yes, a president whose very complexion proves to the world that America has moved on.

Hi, Roger.

I think I'd better clarify my first comment above because it was pointed out to me that out of context it could sound like I meant all Texans who need the irradiation of the sun to produce melanin think non-white Texans should go "back to Mexico." What I was actually refering to was one of this blog's references that only 46% of Texans are white, and yet that 46% has a disproportional influence on the text books of not only Texas but also the United States. It is the very same portion of that 46% that does not think molecules are created in stars that I point out also think Texas is made for whites. I am among those who require irradiation to produce melanin as are clearly 46% of Texans. My comment was aimed specifically at the hidebound ones, however.

On a related note, I notice that Don McLeroy (who wants "creationism" in the text book curriculum) listed as a reason for this that it can be taught and understood without requiring mathematics. In other words, yes, he thinks mathematics is too difficult to have in science and that we should teach things that do not require math.

That's much like Representative Hank Johnson's concern here http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20001686-503544.html where he was afraid if we sent 8000 soldiers to Guam it would overpopulate the island and make it flip over. If you listen to the video clip of him speaking, he neither knows how to calculate square footage nor knows that mountains don't capsize if you put 8000 people on top of them.

It's bad enough that this country elects law makers who don't know physics and mathematics, but Hank Johnson and Don McElroy are perfect examples of the fact that non-scientists should not teach science and non-mathematicians should not teach mathematics nor have any say in what the curriculums for them should be.

Have you ever asked a Creationist to explain from whence atoms come and the fact that stars make atoms? They're so fixated on something Darwin said before we could even see genes and atoms that they can't accept the fact that the earth revolves around the sun and the sun is merely a star among zillions. The first page of Genesis in the bible talks about "the firmament" which is a fixed vault over a flat earth with gems for stars. Creationists learn their physics from that. But we should not.

Roger Ebert, you are deplorable.

We have got to stop stupid people from getting into power. Power and ignorance do not mix. It will do us all in.

I've changed my mind; I do have more to say about this topic.

@ James Yerian wrote:

"Creationism is certainly not scientific, but why it couldn't be taught in a non-science class is beyond me."

From kindergarden until graduation at the end of grade 12, I attended Private Catholic schools in British Columbia, Canada.

In Religion class, we were taught Religion.
In Science class, we were taught Science.

The two were able to co-exist peacefully, side by side. But that's because it was a Private Catholic school. NO Government funding. (I think tuition was $800 a year, at the time.)

Ie: the separation of church of state (Province) as observed in Canada, does not prevent parents from sending their kids to a religious-based school. All it does is ensure that 35 million Canadians are able to share the country whatever their faith may be.

Canada isn't just a place. It's a state of mind:

I want to live in peace. And so I want you to have what I enjoy, too. As history tells me there's less arguing and fighting that way.

Ie: my parents didn't expect the Canadian government to pay for my Catholic school education. Reason being? Church is free. You can go to a Catholic church to learn about your specific religion. Which applies to every other religion, too.

That doesn't appear to be the case, in America.

Some Americans want to live in what amounts to "a religious state." For Creationism belongs in a Religion class. Meaning you don't actually understand your own Constitution - which I view as a direct consequence of pandering to ignorance or actively encouraging it, and for decades, in order to make a buck.

Ie: this is what you get when greedy corporations dumb you down as a Nation in order to make billions in profit. You raise generations of Americans wherein a certain % don't even understand "what" America was supposed to be about.

WHY people left Britain and Europe in the first place.

You were never, ever supposed to be:

All white
ALL Christian

You were supposed to aim higher than the worst of you on the boat, at the start, and achieve it by way of embracing:

I want to live in peace. And so I want you to have what I enjoy, too. As history tells me there's less arguing and fighting that way.

For yes; you were settled by the English and the Dutch. Yes, they were white and Christian. But then you had this little thing called the Boston Tea Party and The American Revolution and the Civil War and well, hey - there ya go.

"Again, if there wasn't a left-wing bias to begin with in our texts, there wouldn't be such a "right-wing" reaction. Whites are still the majority in this country. And, Mr. Ebert, some of them did some good things for this country. We can and should teach that as well." - James Yerian

Yes, they did do some wonderful things!

George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Harriet Tubman, Thomas Jefferson, Walt Whitman, Thomas Paine, Theodore Roosevelt, Susan B. Anthony, John F. Kennedy... it's a long and impressive list. :)

But that doesn't mean you shouldn't include Martin Luther King and Rose Park, too.

It's not the color of your skin that matters. It's what's inside your soul. And religion is supposed to help you be a better person; not enable you to behave badly.

I gather Yerian is originally a German surname.

Oh, the irony. :)

Note to Leon if he's still reading these comments-
If you had one person who said there was a Santa Claus and one that said there wasn't, could you agree that one was irrational? Which one? There either is or there isn't, right? There is such thing as reality, right?
(What if the first person said people just needed to have faith and we should not need proof that there was a Santa Claus?)

Dear Ebert,

You're a douchebag. Nobody cares about your political beliefs, because they're ignorant and hypocritical - you didn't care about textbooks until your arch-nemesis, the RIGHT WINGERS!!! started actually having influence over the contents.

Please shut up.

Oh, wait, I mean please stop writing.

Ebert: That's nemises.

Douchebag.

Seriously, a little balance in perspective is in order.

For years, states like California and New York tipped the scales on how textbooks were written and, surprise, they demanded a liberal-oriented multiculturalist, non-traditional view of U.S. History. And, yet, no outrage from the political left about indoctrination.

My recollection from old readings is California either had laws or regulations mandating a "fair" balance of mentions amongs various ethnic demographic groups. Thus, some Founding Fathers found themselves with a 1/4-page entry and some otherwise unknown person of non-male,non-white genetics were given more square inches of ink. In fact, this was the case in Texas, too, prior to Republican resurgence in the last decade or two.

So mock the easy targets now if it makes you feel better. But why not mock the liberal ones in the future (unless, of course, you think liberals aren't biased . .. which would actually be the very source of how this issue came to be)????

Oh, and, for all those still insisting the "separation of church and state" is in the Constitution, go look for it. It's not there. That was borrowed from the writings of Thomas Jefferson and inserted into case law by the U.S. Supreme Court in the middle of the last century. It may be the "law of the land" b/c a majority of robed justices liked it, but it's still not in the Constitution. Does anyone want to argue this point still????

"In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made School Boards."
-Mark Twain

As goes Texas, so goes the nation. The Texas State Board of Education influences the content of textbooks used in the state, and Texas is the second largest state market for textbooks in America. First is California, but the California fiscal crisis has led to a decision to put off textbook purchases until 2014. Therefore, major American textbook publishers must follow the Texas standards or lose their most important market.

Unfortunately, while the media has continually repeated this, the idea that Texas textbooks get distributed in schools across the nation is nothing more than an urban legend. There is absolutely no evidence that this happens today. It's just sloppy reporting.

Having said that, I do think that what's happening here in Texas is disheartening. I was Catholic-school educated, where I learned about evolution, so I just don't understand where the religious fundamentalist point of view. How interesting that my religious education gave me the knowledge these people are so desperately afraid of.

Person who only used the initials "IW" and said Roger is being too negative, let me give you some perspective on negativity.

I have never been so angry about something. Not even over the many more serious things that have plagued America, including war. Not over health care debate, not over any tax hike, not over racism, sexism, homophobia, or many of the injustices I've seen in the past, say, 15 years or so. Nothing has ever struck me as so completely insane. It apparently just hit the right button for me. Right or wrong, I hate the Texas school board more than I ever did Saddam Hussein or Kim Jong Il.

Maybe it's because I thought the board should know better. Maybe because I thought American school boards would be above blatant indoctrination as opposed to some of our dictatorial overseas counterparts. I don't know. Whatever the case, in regards to their actions, I'll use a word that Christians have an easier time understanding: what the Texas school board is doing is evil.

I don't even like Thomas Jefferson, but I cannot imagine considering taking the author of the Declaration of Independence out of a textbook--especially when talking about the enlightenment. As a matter of fact, why don't these revisionist Texans remove the enlightenment in order to focus on Sunday school teachings. I mean, if you're going to rewrite American history, do with some chutzpah.

I also love the idea of them throwing creationism into science class, setting up a precedent to allow mysticism and philosophy into a class dedicated to empirical evidence, experimentation, and research. Awesome.

Downplay Roosevelt? Sure. Let's knock out the only president in our history that was President for more than two terms during the second largest domestic crisis in our history, just behind the Civil War. Which brings us to Lincoln.

I suppose a village idiot from some remote Afghanistan mountain could downplay Abraham Lincoln, but I didn't believe there was such an American. Let's just accept that Texas disapproves of Lincoln's "godless tactics during the War of Northern Aggression." Still, anyone in that state would have to admit they're only in the U.S. of A. because of him. Oh, and they don't have slavery anymore because of him. That's quite an important social change that deserves attention.

Maybe they should also cut out the part of our history where Democrats ruled the country for more or less 60 years...twice. Paint them as atheistic usurpers who stole the power away from righteous white middle class Republicans.

As far as I'm concerned, the ten conservative members of the Texas school board are psychotic menaces to society. Three of them are home-schooling their kids or taking them to private school. What in the name of God are they doing on the Public School Board? They're insurance salesmen and IT professionals. There is not one educator or academic among them. Those board members worthless drains on the world and someday my children might have to pay the price. That is the appropriate amount of negativity to give these people. Roger is being very kind and magnanimous.

Roger,

Have you seen the movie, Orwell Rolls in his Grave?

It's kind of about how the whole media has been programmed towards the right because it is owned and corrupted by corporation: which also touches upon political corruption, how Bush stole the election (twice I think), Iraq, and of course of how all of this happened which is Orwellian language which programs thinking.

Here's the movie in its entirety:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SV_mvc4zKw

"That the Theory of Evolution towers with majesty above those who, in some cases, believe the earth may be 10,000 years old, and that men walked the earth with dinosaurs?"

Of course. A brilliant point. I'm sure that issue is number 1 on the priority list of most unemployed and underemployed people in your country. "I wonder what kind of creatures were roaming around on this planet 10,000 years ago. Or 60 million years ago. Did it even exist then? Hmm...".

As a conservative I'm willing to actually concede that those in Texas might have gone a little far in the way they've handled this textbook business. Then again compared to the leftist indoctrination practised by those kooks teaching their kids to sing songs praising Obama, it's nothing.

(Of course, conceding *anything* is one thing I've never seen you do while I've been following this blog on and off over the last few months or so. You've shown me time and time again that for most leftists today it isn't about debate or being reasonable, it's purely about the ego.)

But they must be getting something right down there in Texas because they are thriving and have been thriving all the way through this recession. Their low taxes have probably got a lot to do with it. That brings us to your whining about Reagan... y'know, Reagan did cut taxes and it worked. And ask any serious businessperson why jobs are going to China and "won't come back", it's because the US has such ridiculously high tax rates. And of course then there's all the stifling bureaucracy too. There are plenty of people in the USA, currently unemployed, who are perfectly suited to jobs you would probably describe as "menial". But you probably wouldn't like to see people granted the dignity of work, right? Best just leave them on welfare and get involved in drugs and gangs and petty crime, and a life of depravity. It makes for much more interesting subject matter for movies doesn't it?

Oh, by the way, I loved your tweet a few days back when you called Breitbart "little Andrew Breitbart". The man who gave Hitman 3 stars questioning anyone else's relevance is the biggest laugh I've had all week.

I am a high school science teacher so I have a very real idea about the textbooks. I have 2 sets of textbooks for my class, and you know what? I don't use them. They are terrible. I have never used the text to teach my students, and I probably never will. They learn best from practical experiments and discussions, rather than reading from a book. Real curriculum stems from standards, not some textbook.

See, everybody? See? I must be in tune with the universe, so pay attention or be damned to Texas.

My last posting, last night, I wrote of my class of '69: "A surprising number are dead -- I think too many; I've compared with others."

My old classmate Hendo writes me today: Cliff M. died a few days ago. Age 58. What the hell's going on with my old classmates? They started dropping dead in their 40s.

Roger got me thinking. Do I even remember any textbooks from hi school? Almost none. I've had no use for most of it.

I remember Studs Terkel's books; Socrates, Freud, Jung, Koestler, Tillich, Fromm. Gibbon, Kafka, Pirandello, bunch of encyclopedias, a whole lot of great material not available in hi school. I've had use for all of it. Even ORIGIN OF SPECIES, the ideas of which I've long discarded along with Jung and Freud and co. All worth the trip.

Especially Neitzche's THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. Reading that at 16 gave me a profound heads-up not to believe everything you read about history, tho' I love history. Sure enough, as years wore on, I learned that a huge amount of what goes as official history of the world is just wrong, a good deal of it. John Hobson, above, appears to know that about Galileo. I learned that Galileo's official charge was for having not written his treatise in latin.

We're taught lots of myths for shallow politicized reasons. It's just that these Texas blokes are being publicly Stalinist about it. What happens is the kids with brains wander off in search of their own truths, while the media clown show does as it will for those not interested in their own truths.

One of the most amusing books I've read was TEXAS HAS WON ALL WARS, which I found typewritten in a second hand shop in Redlands, California in 1982. The author was serious. Having lived a few years in Texas, I was already familiar with the attitude.

One true thing that's in the Texas history books is that it was largely settled by German soldiers, awaiting orders from Germany to take the state over. That's why so many tall blondes there. And why Germans love cowboy music as they do -- much is polka sung in english.

Not every hi school kid wants the kind of reading list I made for myself. But that doesn't mean they're swallowing this Texas b.s., or anything else, whole.

I'm a native Texan. In the last few decades I've seen the perception of Texans in general go from "straight shooters" to "blithering idiots." Saying I'm disappointed in this latest development doesn't even begin to scratch the surface in describing the way I feel.

I am a white man residing in a relatively conservative area of Texas, northern San Antonio, and I have yet to talk with anyone that is pleased about this story. It is one thing to require students to learn about the importance of Christianity in the early republic, but for a member of the board to refer to evolution as "hooey" is quite alarming.

The largest Martin Luther King Jr. march in the country is in San Antonio, TX... so please don't think this whole state is full of ignorant close-minded bible-thumpers. We celebrate our multi-culturalism and mostly reject this veiled attempt at injecting white supremacy into history.

I had the displeasure of actually watching some of these proceedings and the ignorance is astounding. I didn't go to university here in Texas, but I certainly hope higher standards are met in Austin, Waco, and College Station...

Roger, I believe there may be a problem - I posted a comment at about 2pm this afternoon and it has not shown up even though your site has been updated. And yes, "Thank you for commenting" did appear after posting.

Just an fyi...

Ebert: I personally post comments, and do not always do so in order.

Will-
That's the same way I feel about the recent Massachusetts Senate election that I'm sure you have heard about. I thought we were living in a highly educated, progressive part of the country but I had to stand by and listen to people (members of my own extended family, no less, which makes me CRINGE!) chant "Brownie!" I blame Fox, plain and simple. Those members of my family are people who watch Fox. And otherwise, they were totally normal people (went to college, functioning normal in life) but they don't even understand that it is not news! It is mass brainwashing, I really don't think it is paranoid to say. It really troubles me and I don't know what can be done about it. I think it will end our way of living in this country. I'm worried about my children's future.

I am a fiscal, and to some extent societal, conservative at heart. Nevertheless, I cannot identify with or endorse the conservative movement, simply because along with the quite sensible ideas of limited government and individual responsibility, they insist on involving religious nonsense as a necessary part of their ideology.
The sheer stupidity of trying to refute hundreds of years of science by taking a book of allegorical poetry written by desert nomads twenty or more centuries ago, and since translated across a dozen languages, AS LITERAL FACT--well, it's breathtaking. To listen to these intellectual stumblebums use twisted logic and fallacious reasoning that would shame a seven-year-old child to arrive at a conclusion that is so demonstrably false, is to reach the inescapable conclusion that conservatives have completely lost touch with reality.
Instead of seizing the opportunity for political relevance that Obama's overreaching has given them, instead, they are marginalizing themselves by clinging to their idiotic religious ideology. Reality check, guys: GOD IS AN ILLUSION AND A DELUSION. However, I'm all in favor of Texas being turned into an open sewer of religious stupidity,--we'll at least know where to find them all, given that they're likely to congregate. Build a thousand-foot-high electrified barbed wire fence around the state, man it with armed guards spaced around the perimeter, and let them use whatever loony-bird textbooks and elect whatever loony-bird officials they desire. And if one of 'em tries to escape, well, shoot 'em down like the dogs they are. (Some folks jest NEED KILLIN'.)

Stories about the perfidious behavior of the Texas Schoolbook publishers surface every few years....but nothing ever seems to happen. Liberal publishers don't go to work publishing more accurate, competing textbooks, leaving the field open to mountebanks.

The right has hit upon a strategy of constantly repeating their own lies over and over again until their dogma becomes accepted cant. The process is insidious, and pernicious when it is aimed at school aged children.

I fear that we are sliding rapidly down a shoot leading to theocratic dictatorship because it is difficult for reasonable men to stand up to fanatics without becoming fanatics ourselves.

Am I too nutty to suggest that the major reason that Texans want to exclude Thomas Jefferson from school textbooks is that it is now generally known that Jefferson had sex with many of his black slaves and there is a very good chance that if Texans were subjected to DNA testing, it would reveal black blood in their ancestry. That kind of startling revelation would be enough to cause most southerners to exit the nation under cover in the dark of night. We can only hope.

The best solution here would be to just give Texas back to Mexico and apologize for the inconvenience...

Brush up on 1984. Just as 2 + 2 = 5, these people insist on the recognition of creationism precisely because it is contradicted by fact. This 'debate' is, and always has been, about the gratuitous application of hierarchy for its own sake. The motives of these ideologues, as they continue to impose their self-serving values by force, are more distinctly un-christian and un-american than any of the secular ideals they so zealously condemn.

The world they seek is one in which the truth is what they say it is, with no accountability to the rigors of science, democracy, or, ultimately, morality.

About the movie I linked (Orwell Rolls in his Grave), I don't really agree with everything, but it is an interesting look in how the media can report anything that doesn't damage itself and how its not looking out for the publics best interest.

It suggests reinstating the fairness doctrine or something of that sort, but I'm not sure that I agree with that.

Is a monopoly of ideas a monopoly?

It seems to me, no, a monopoly is a monopoly (meaning ONLY economically).

when these 5 or 6 companies that own the media become one, then I think we should act.

Until then, we should see where teh truth gets us before we get into this fairness doctrine.

Doesn't NPR and the BBC already practice it?

Some of the articles I've read said that Texas isn't the influence on textbooks that it once was; that it's easier for publishers to distribute different texts to different markets, right down to custom texts for individual classrooms (what a new can of worms that might be!).

Pity the poor Texan kids who will be denied something that could be called an education, however. It seems reasonable that there would be certain federal standards that need to be met, and that educators and scholars not politicians and pundits decide what they should be.

Why in the name of God, god and all that is holy do we even have to consider buying the "product" of these morons? I am OK with including this creationism (nonsense) along with evolution and letting our highly intelligent and sensible youth sort out what they wish to believe, but for these backsliders to be telling us what we will be allowed to consider as TRUTH, give me a freaking break!!!

Roger, you are the BEST...whenever I am finished watching a movie, I always go to your site to see what you thought, and am most often amazed and enlightened reading your insightful reviews. I am also in awe of your up-front and personal approach regarding your cancer...you define "real" in my book.

I live in the Dallas area. Right now people are bent out of shape of that Erica Badu (sp?) music video where she got naked and was "shot" in dealy plaza.

They won't care about books until this woman's breasts are dealt with.

Lets see Liberals were taking out John Adam,s and other founders while putting in Ralph Nader. I think todays board got it right. When Lefty's like Ebert are upset, then I know these text books have real American history and not Liberal storytelling like Ebert.

You liberals are so intolerent people. Yet you actually think you are so tolerent. LOL

Ebert, you are not a very bright person, I guess that is what happens to you when you spend too many hours of your life in the dark.

This is the moment when I'm truly glad I live in Britain. We have a right wing here, a strong conservative faction that would agree wholeheartedly with the Texas State Board of Education's views on Reagan (as a matter of fact I, though broadly a social libertarian / economic socialist and therefore opposed to their ideology, have a sneaking admiration for the decisiveness of Reagan and Thatcher – why has the left lacked leaders like that since FDR and Atlee?). When it comes to such 'debates' as the evolution/creation one, however, the British right is as rational as anyone. You would be hard pressed to find more than a very tiny percentage of people in the UK who believe that there is even a debate to be had. It is true that we also have a disproportionately high profile hardline right whose xenophobia is more in tune with the views of people like Michael Savage but commentators speaking for them, were they any sort of presence at all in the media, would struggle to reach more than a few per cent of Savage's ten million, even adjusting for the smaller population. It really, truly worries me when people like the aforementioned creationists are in a position of real influence in the world's most powerful country.

And real influence is what they have. People in the position they are have more real long term power than the House of Representatives, the Senate or even the President himself (for it has never been herself). If the hard right on the board get their way a generation of schoolchildren in the second largest State by population will grow up thinking that the world is 10,000 years old, Jefferson Davis was as important a