Dive Brief:
- The Texas State Board of Education is considering a vote that could allow independent subject matter experts to check the state's textbooks for errors.
- The move comes several weeks after a McGraw-Hill Education geography textbook caused controversy with language that used the term "workers" in reference to slaves, and recent years have also seen the conservative-leaning body back efforts to play down climate change and the theory of evolution in science while exaggerating biblical influences on the Founding Fathers in social studies and history texts, according to the Associated Press.
- Adding further fuel to the fire, the members of citizen review panels tasked with examining approved textbooks are nominated by board members.
Dive Insight:
The Texas Board of Education has long courted controversy as it pertains to textbooks. A 2012 article published by the New York Review of Books noted that “as a market, [Texas] was so big and influential that national publishers tended to gear their books toward whatever it wanted.” Ultimately, the state reportedly has an outsized influence on the entire U.S. textbook market because it pays 100% of costs for all books on a list pre-approved by the conservative board.
Republican member Thomas Ratliff, who called for the vote on having independent experts examine approved texts, told the Associated Press that the nomination process for citizen review panels has often led to the appointment of politcal ideologues "instead of people who can think for themselves and not be told what to think."
Professor Keith Erekson, director of the Center for History Teaching and Learning at the University of Texas at El Paso, said that 50-80% of U.S. textbooks contain social studies text that was reviewed by the right-leaning board, which contains one board member who allegedly “believed that the income tax was contrary to the word of God in the scriptures.”
The issue of what exactly makes it into the state’s textbooks has been stirring controversy for years. In 2011, the Board claimed that there were “gross pro-Islamic, anti-Christian distortions in social studies texts." The NEA has referred to the 15-member Board as having a “Christian fundamentalist bloc” pushing a conservative agenda. As recently as this July, local Texas media called textbook revisions “nuts.”