Textbooks round the world: It ain?t necessarily so | The Economist
In America most of the disputes about textbooks are home-grown. Liberals worry that their children are being taught a nationalistic version of history that emphasises the wonders of industrialisation and plays down slavery and the slaughter of Indian tribes. By contrast, conservatives complain about insufficient patriotism and too much secularism. In 2010 the Texas board of education managed to remove Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, from the state’s list of important revolutionary figures, apparently because of Jefferson’s insistence on the separation of church and state. He was, however, swiftly reinstated.
California and Texas tend to dominate such debates. These two big states have dictated the content of textbooks for the past 30 years, one feeding liberal teachers’ appetites, the other the conservatives’. In Texas, with 10% of America’s schoolchildren, textbook publishers have been keen to accommodate the preferences of the state board of education, and school districts themselves prefer not to put their heads above the parapet. Since 2009, however, Texas has given school districts more latitude to pick between hard-copy textbooks approved by the board and other materials, such as those found online; and the state has little authority, in any case, to make school districts follow its guidelines
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http://www.nybooks.com/articles/arc...nflicts-bad-textbooks-on-us/?pagination=false
In America most of the disputes about textbooks are home-grown. Liberals worry that their children are being taught a nationalistic version of history that emphasises the wonders of industrialisation and plays down slavery and the slaughter of Indian tribes. By contrast, conservatives complain about insufficient patriotism and too much secularism. In 2010 the Texas board of education managed to remove Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, from the state’s list of important revolutionary figures, apparently because of Jefferson’s insistence on the separation of church and state. He was, however, swiftly reinstated.
California and Texas tend to dominate such debates. These two big states have dictated the content of textbooks for the past 30 years, one feeding liberal teachers’ appetites, the other the conservatives’. In Texas, with 10% of America’s schoolchildren, textbook publishers have been keen to accommodate the preferences of the state board of education, and school districts themselves prefer not to put their heads above the parapet. Since 2009, however, Texas has given school districts more latitude to pick between hard-copy textbooks approved by the board and other materials, such as those found online; and the state has little authority, in any case, to make school districts follow its guidelines
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http://www.nybooks.com/articles/arc...nflicts-bad-textbooks-on-us/?pagination=false
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