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n2doc

(47,953 posts)
Fri Oct 24, 2014, 07:47 PM Oct 2014

Texas textbook review: ‘I’d like a Biblical check on that’

By Valerie Strauss

The Texas Education Agency held a special meeting this week at which members asked publishers to respond to criticisms of proposed textbooks in social studies, fine arts and mathematics in advance of next month’s vote on approval of next texts. Earlier this year after publishers submitted textbooks for adoption next month, critics pored over them and found what they said were numerous inaccurate, distorted and biased material in history, geography, government, religion and other subjects.

For example, ideas promoted in different books include the notion that American democracy was inspired by Moses and Solomon, that Jews views Jesus Christ as an important prophet, that in the era of segregation only “sometimes” were schools for black children “lower in quality” and that the U.S. economic systems run without significant government involvement. Some of the books also said that evolution should be taught to students as if it were not fact but simply a scientific theory, and that global warming is not a very serious problem confronting the world. Some critics pointed out simple factual errors, such as the number of Sikhs who live around the world.

At their September meeting, agency members heard complaints from dozens of people about the textbooks and that testimony was sent to the publishers, who provided written detailed responses which you can see here on the agency Web site. On Monday,members held a meeting to review the responses and further consider the textbooks. What happened at that meeting?

much more
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/10/23/texas-textbook-review-id-like-a-biblical-check-on-that/

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Texas textbook review: ‘I’d like a Biblical check on that’ (Original Post) n2doc Oct 2014 OP
I give up shenmue Oct 2014 #1
The comments already under the article Erich Bloodaxe BSN Oct 2014 #3
Even the ones against the new books are poor . One talks of our Chinese concentration camps wwII lunasun Oct 2014 #5
Never read the comments! Prophet 451 Oct 2014 #8
I don't understand why they're so upset about the books Xipe Totec Oct 2014 #2
Pearson ? Aren't they the common core testers? Do these books only go to Tx or nationwide edition ? lunasun Oct 2014 #4
People still can't be bothered to pay attention. Igel Oct 2014 #6
I wouldn't give a shit gaspee Oct 2014 #7

Prophet 451

(9,796 posts)
8. Never read the comments!
Fri Oct 24, 2014, 11:38 PM
Oct 2014

Seriously, comment sections of any website are where the conservatrolls nest and they eat outsiders.

Xipe Totec

(43,872 posts)
2. I don't understand why they're so upset about the books
Fri Oct 24, 2014, 07:51 PM
Oct 2014

After all, they themselves were exposed to that material in school when they were younger and it does not appear to have had any impact on them whatsoever.

lunasun

(21,646 posts)
4. Pearson ? Aren't they the common core testers? Do these books only go to Tx or nationwide edition ?
Fri Oct 24, 2014, 08:15 PM
Oct 2014

McGraw hill . Are they available to be put in any district ? Or TX exclusive?
I understand these are th TX school textbook publishers but are they any different than what they may sell to others?

What are the problems?

McGraw-Hill Education (World Cultures & Geography) – includes information pulled directly from the Heartland Institute, a polluter-funded advocacy group infamous for its anti-climate change propaganda.
Pearson (Social Studies K-5) – Tells students, “Scientists disagree about what is causing climate change.”
Studies Weekly Publications (Social Studies K-5) – casts doubt on scientific consensus around global warming
WorldView Software (Economics) – includes a wildly inaccurate section on the ozone layer and its relationship to airborne pollution

Igel

(35,197 posts)
6. People still can't be bothered to pay attention.
Fri Oct 24, 2014, 08:23 PM
Oct 2014

They say they like grassroots when they only like the "roots" like themselves.

So one more time.

Texas has community review boards. They aim not for narrow kinds of diversity--"people that are progressive but might range to the merely left-of-center, and of at least 5 different skin hues--but for actual diversity.

They're geographically diverse. They include people from rural Tx and urban "inner city" Houston.

They are diverse as to age. They include people that are in their 30s, in their 40s, and in their 70s.

They come from various diverse kinds of diverse communities--Baptist black Bible-thumpers and white Episcopalian democrats, petroleum engineers and field harvesters, Baptist preachers and Mormon missionaries.

Some of them are Sikhs, some Jews, some Mormons, some various kinds of fundamentalists and atheists. They are formed into small committees. Not committees of 500. Committees of 10. On such committees there may not be much diversity--if you're on a committee from a community that's 98% Latino you're not going to be ethnically "balanced" or "diverse" in any meaningful sense. You're going to be on a committee that, on average, will be utterly ethnically non-diverse, 100% Latino.

The diversity comes in with the feedback. You get all-urban-white committees' feedback, all-rural-black committee feedback, feedback from committees that are majority Mormon and majority Asian.

Most of the feedback is utterly insane. The Sikh information might be accurate--or it might be from a mostly-Sikh committee that thinks they're much more common than they are. You can't know. Not, "You don't know." No, it's worse: You're simply incapable of knowing, there's no basis for knowing, nobody can know, there's no basis for an opinion that's not pulled out of your ass and based primarily on bias and prejudice, pro or con.

Some of the feedback might be accurate but at best meaningless and at worst foolish. So last year during science text adoption a graphic went around comparing several different vendors' product. Except one was Pearson, the company people *love* to hate. And it was sent by Sapling, a young start-up that has no enemies and whose product was mostly not published. The complaints were valid--the Pearson products had a lot of mistakes. The Sapling products had fewer--then again, Sapling had only some units published for core sciences. Ooh, that's a reasonable comparison--compare 8 subjects, complete products, against 4 products with a few sample units. Compare a printed product that has errors and typos against an online product that is updated in real time. It was a stupid, foolish, naive, unsound analysis. Yet a lot of stupid, foolish, naive, unsound thinkers bought it.

There are hundreds of these committees. The TEA textbook committees get thousand upon thousand of stupid, foolish comments. They also get really insightful ones. Not as many. But only the stupid, foolish comments get any attention. And the way the TEA handles them is also of no import--what's important is ego-stoking and self-righteousness. Outrage and indignation at how much superior we are also matter a lot. Some are PhDs. Some are barely high-school graduates. But all have been unjustly passed over for McArthur grants and are bristling, waiting to be asked to give TED talks at MIT. Not just NYU or Berkeley, but MIT. Perhaps Harvard, in a pinch, but that's below us.

The TEA has committees of actual knowledgeable people that sort through what can only be described as truly grassroots feedback--not fake grass roots, not biased grassroots, not "grassroots that all think like us so aren't really grassroots except in our conceited imaginations". They ask for responses from the ever-patient vendors, who have actual teachers, professors, and even professionals in business doing the writing.

A lot of false "facts" stay in the textbooks. Sadly, Galileo is still presented as having actually dropped different masses from a tower. There's no evidence, but it's still oft-repeated. There's a lot of false information in textbooks. Epigenetics is a big problem for most textbooks.

That's Texas. Oddly, it manages to truck on. Even as the rest of the country goes whole-hog for Common Core.

gaspee

(3,231 posts)
7. I wouldn't give a shit
Fri Oct 24, 2014, 10:59 PM
Oct 2014

What Texas puts in their textbooks, if they didn't by default, end up in the rest of the country. They have some screwed up "facts" in their textbooks and they put their stupid anti-science bias and pro-slavery, pro vulture capitalism in everyone's textbooks, not just their own.

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