tomeboy writes “Not a bloggin’ day goes by here at LISNews without some reference or story about censorship. Mr. Ed’s sex life included. But most discussion is of the conservative knee jerk variety. Take your pick, Harry Potter, Judy Blume or anything about gay parents. Whoopee.
But many miss the boat on this issue. This special report from the Washington Times,
Textbooks Flunk Test, discusses the effect of substituting fact, with multiculturalism and political correctness in our public school textbooks. Make no mistake, this indoctrination is censorship. It is also compulsory. And now we know its impact upon our children.
For the few kids prevented from reading about Wiccanism, there are bookstores and interlibrary loan. Sorry. But for our children in public schools, there is no option but to read rubbish written by sensitivity boards.
This is censorship.”
OP/ED @ The USA Today covers the same thing. We’ve run stories on both sides of the issue Before, many from Texas.
An interesting story From TX says Laptops will replace an armload of textbooks.
eTextbooks
From the Texas story about replacing textbooks with laptops, “Their IBM Thinkpads are pre-loaded with Vital Source Technologies software that contains more than 2,000 books.”
I would like to know what these 2,000 books are. Probably a whole lot of Project Gutenberg text.
Textbooks do not need tech support. When a virus goes around or the kids get spyware on the computers that mess them all up, what then? It is expensive to have enough tech support people around to support several hundred students.
I am not against technology but working with computers I have found there are always hidden cost both in time and money. I hope these schools are careful.
Textbooks
The tampering of textbooks is just indicative of the intellectual manipulation of society. The founding fathers gave us all the right of free speech. Such an environment allows for the formation of different opinions not creating a forced universal society outlook. Why should textbooks be a forum for esposuing a singular point of view. If we subliminally give messages to our children to create a multicultural environment then we are not allowing them to understand the true meaning of such a society. People confuse the right to express different opinions as being reactionary. We are given a mind to think and be taught and arrive at our own conclusion. If we are discriminitory then there is a time and place to teach that lesson. Forcefeeding these ideas in textbooks and library collections is very paternalistic. An open mind is not a brainwashed one. If we force ideas then our society is no different than a fascist one. There can be oppression from all sides of the political spectrum. Let us debate issues and ideas not shove them down our throats. This is contrary to the spirit of the founding fathers.
not so partisan a book as that
Interesting that the Washington Times article doesn’t mention that The Language Police talks about pressures on publishers from both the left and the right (for example, leaving out mentions that fossil fuels can cause pollution because it won’t go over in Texas).
Maybe we’ll start moving away from textbooks and towards primary source material for education. Our am I living in a dream world?
Nothing is Perfect
This seems like one of those stories cooked up by people with an agenda.
The story says ast year reviewers in TX found 533 factual and interpretive errors in 28 social studies texts submitted for adoption by the state board of education, of those 351 publishers fixed. So that leaves 182 errors, let’s round that off and say 7 errors per book.
They later go on to say they books are huge, maybe 1,000 pages, “There’s so much included,” Mrs. Ravitch said. “They’re incoherent because of the pressure to include everything.
So let’s say there’s 1,000 pages in all 28 books, that’s 28,000 pages. So out of 28,000 pages of information there’s 182 errors (assuming the reviewers were right).
I’d call that pretty damn good actually. Of course the books aren’t perfect, of course people will disagree with what’s inside them, that’s how it goes with most everything made by people.
I can’t see how the examples they give in the article lead to the problems they point at. How does leaving out “able-bodied,” “aged,” “babe,” “backward,” “chick,” etc. lead to 11 percent of eighth-graders showing proficient knowledge of U.S. history on standardized tests?
“Do not cast adverse reflection on any gender, race, ethnicity, religion or cultural group.”
This makes kids less interested? It makes them learn less?
The problems with schools are so very complex, text book “bias guidelines,” if a problem at all, must be very low on that list.
Re:Nothing is Perfect
What? Rev. Moon’s Washington Times having an agenda?
Next you’ll suggest that Faux News isn’t fair and balanced!