Texas Narrowly Rejects Allowing Academics To Fact-Check Public School Textbooks (csmonitor.com)

jriding writes with news that in a 8-7 vote the Texas State Board of Education rejected a plan to create a group of state university professors to fact-check textbooks approved for the state's 5.2 million public-school students. The CS Monitor reports: "The Board of Education approves textbooks in the nation's second-largest state and stood by its vetting process — despite a Houston-area mother recently complaining that a world geography book used by her son's ninth grade class referred to African slaves as 'workers.' The publisher, McGraw-Hill Education, apologized and moved to make immediate edits."

Comments

Scewed by the reviewer.

[freak0fnature]

The 'facts' are not always truth, and the reviewers have their own bias. Here is a great example, the War of 1812. In the US they teach how England was the belligerent and that it was a war between the US and England, defending the US from England. In Canada, they teach that the US was the aggressor. In other parts of the world they teach that the US sided with Napoleon and include the war as part of the Napoleonic wars. Which is truth?

Re:Scewed by the reviewer.

[Fire_Wraith]

"Well, what I told you was true, from a certain point of view." - Obi-wan Kenobi

They're all partly true, and partly incorrect, as each only tells part of a larger story.

-The USA cited British impressment of sailors, interference in trade, and other such provocations by Britain, as part of its declaration of war. To a degree, this is true from the American viewpoint at the time (the British didn't see it that way of course), as many Americans felt that way.

-One of the other goals stated by pro-war American politicians at the time was the annexation of Canada (they thought the Canadians would, to borrow a more recent phrase, "greet them as liberators"). During the course of the war, the USA tried to invade Canada on several occasions, only to meet with failure. Thus, it's certainly reasonable for Canadians to have seen things that way.

-The war took place during the final years of the Napoleonic Wars, in which Britain was the leader of the anti-Napoleon coalition (having been the only one to remain at war the entire time). Several of the major reasons cited for the war arose from British actions against France, such as blocking trade, impressment of sailors, and so forth, so it's certainly fair to view the war as part of the Napoleonic Wars. That said, the USA did not ally with France, nor was its conclusion tied to that of the war against Napoleon, and the USA and France did not assist or cooperate with each other in any military ventures during the conflict.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[gstoddart]

How is it factually incorrect to call a slave a worker?

Oh, I don't know ... because worker seems to imply they had some choice in this instead of being property. Tell you what, we could subject you to the same things as the slaves were, and you could tell us your thoughts on the difference.

This isn't about being PC, this is about pretending people who think that saying "well, it wasn't that bad" aren't morons.

"Workers" aren't chained up, brought thousands of miles, bought and sold, killed or maimed at will.

You simply can't talk about slavery and try claim you're being "PC" by referring to them as "workers" instead of what they really were. At that point you're just saying stupid shit like "well, slavery was a matter of historical perspective, and if you were a landowner these were valuable employees". This is literally whitewashing history to gloss over the details and downplay what actually happened.

That's not PC. That's fully intellectually dishonest, and re-casting slavery to pretend it wasn't that bad. This is fully revisionist history and dishonesty so a bunch of white folks can pretend like it was all a big misunderstanding ... and I say this as a pasty white guy.

Essentially Texas has said their education is no longer about facts, which means who knows what kind of crap will creep into textbooks.

Fer sure

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Whah, hail no!!! We don' want none o' them smarty pants egghead perfessers and braniacs messing' with our beloved holy sacred bullshit stories, or where will it end?

Purty soon lil' Johnny and Janey won't be believin' that this here Earth is flat an' was given to us personally by Jebus Christ hisself!!

And the so-called "slaves", they wuzn't slaves, they wuz "involuntary happy helpers" who got free food and shelter!

Not only that, but mah ancestors hunted dinosaurs with a flintlock way back when, it sez so in mah Holy Book, Not that OTHER filthy dirty lyin' FAKE "holy book" that those differnt' lookin' peeple read from, 'cuz they's all goin' ta' HAIL when they die, yes siree, mah pappy done tol' me so.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[MickyTheIdiot]

Is it me or are do others here think the next 20 years in the US is going to be an extremely rough ride? In less than 10 years we will have to deal with kids who grew up with these textbooks in our college system. In another 10 years they will start to become our "leaders". in 40 years they will be in the Senate and House making even worse informed decisions than the morons currently there.

Surely You're Joking

[Rob Lister]

In his subjectively honest autobiography "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!", Richard Feynman devotes a chapter (Judging Books by Their Covers) to this and related issues in textbooks. The truth of the matter is the books go mostly un-reviewed. Sure, they hire teams of committees to review them, but more likely than not, nobody on any committee so much as opens them up, much less fact-checks them. They are however lavished with free dinners, vacations, and other graf. The book deals are worth millions, after all.

He recounts when he was on such a committee and was unable to get a criticism in edgewise.

Now, add some religion, politics and general bureaucratic incompetence to that and what you end up with is an all but worthless textbook and a keen hope for a teacher that can teach around it.

Meh. My kids are grown and gone. I wish them luck.

You actually did

[rsilvergun]

or at least I did. My economics course in High School was a propaganda platform for capitalism. There was no discussion of other competing systems, even in a bad light. Nor was there any criticism of capitalism whatsoever. Looking back it's more than a little disturbing. I was very clearly being indoctrinated into a certain way of thinking. We can argue whether it was the right or wrong way to think, but it's still indoctrination, and I was still being encouraged to accept something on 100% faith in what was supposed to be a place of learning...

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[BonThomme]

This is what your parents said.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[cdrudge]

The actual wording of the textbook reads:

The African Slave Trade between the 1500s and 1800s brought millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations.

While that alone may technically be accurate, it's a great mischaracterization of the situation. It's even more egregious because the section of the book it's in is under "Patterns of Immigration". It's not really immigration when it's a forced migration to a place you're not even recognized as a full human let alone any chance, at that time, of being a citizen.

Feynmann

[necro81]

Having no personal experience in choosing textbooks (just buying many of the assigned texts in college - not much choice there), my view on the process is heavily influenced by Richard Feynmann's recounting the time he served on the California Curriculum Commission in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynmann. For those who haven't read it before, here's his chapter on Judging Books by Their Covers.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[Immerman]

That's Antarctic sea ice - other end of the world. And the increase is only 1/3 the area of the ice lost in the Arctic. And note that's *area*, not *volume*. Old sea ice tends to get very thick over the decades, young sea ice, not so much. And I would guess that the increase in Antarctic sea ice is related to the ongoing melting of the continental ice sheet - as fresh water flows out to sea the surface water is becoming much less salty and thus freezes at warmer temperatures. (fresh water floats on salt water, and salt lowers the freezing point - that's why they salt roads to remove ice,).

Nobody claims that global warming will be uniform, in fact it's expected that some areas will get colder as weather patterns change. As will transient cold spells such as the polar vortex related freezes we've been having lately.

Re:Fact check or PC checking?

[blueg3]

It's immigration (and emigration) whenever a group of people migrate from one region to another, regardless of what the reason is or how they're treated.

It's a little bit of a tricky word territory because it would be inaccurate to call them "immigrants". That word is usually used in modern English to refer to non-forced migration, so could make the reader draw inaccurate conclusions.

It is, though, completely reasonable to put the event under a discussion of "Patterns of Immigration", because that is clearly referring to large-scale movements of people with important sociological and historical impacts. Historically, many major human migrations have been the result of slavery, exile, genocide, and other such unpleasant and rather non-voluntary reasons. They're still called migrations.

Re:If you don't like the textbooks,

[Jason Levine]

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein

Re:Not just money

[Jason Levine]

And with the Charter schools it becomes a vicious cycle.

1. Charter school takes public school money.
2. Charter school only takes in "good" students (e.g. not kids with low grades or with difficulties that would require extra assistance).
3. Students with "difficulties" are left in the public schools who have less money to help them.
4. Charter schools get better test scores than public schools. (Since they get to pick and choose not only what students they take but what test results they publish.)
5. Businesses that run charter schools profit and donate money to politicians.
6. Politicians call for more charter schools and to close public schools.
7. Repeat 1 - 6.

Unfortunately, we're seeing this in action in NY and it's not pretty.

Re:That's because you took Economics not PolySci

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually capitalism comes out really badly in many sectors when looked at from an economics point of view. Particularly natural monopolies (eg: utilities), or where there is no real competition (eg: emergency heath services).

yeah, they do need fact checking

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

“The Atlantic Slave Trade between the 1500s and 1800s brought millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations."

There are indeed two massive errors in that sentence. First, the total number of slaves brought to the entire US from Africa was about 388000, and less than half a million if you count other points of origin, like the Carribean, not "millions". Second, most of those slaves weren't brought to the "southern United States" because they didn't exist yet, they were brought to British colonies that happen to be where the southern United States is located today.

It was European colonialism that forced more than 10 million Africans into slavery, and only a few percent of those slaves ended up in the territory of the US, most of them before the US even existed.