Get Your Politics Off Our Kids!

The Texas social studies textbook adoption process has turned into a political fight, just as many predicted it would.  That’s a shame.

This past week, a reporter for a local San Antonio news site interviewed us about the politics behind education.  However, when her stories came out, it was party-line politics once again.  Included in her two stories were the following:

• One article cites, without skepticism, a review by the partisan National Center for Science Education (NCSE) that perpetuates debunked claims about scientific consensus. The NCSE openly attempts to inject its special interest politics into education. It is not a scientific organization.
• Both articles quote the highly partisan Texas Freedom Network (TFN) as saying that the publishers are not to blame for problems in the textbooks, only the State Board of Education (SBOE) is.  But the TFN has made it very clear that its primary aim is to discredit and defeat politically certain elected members of the SBOE.
• Finally, one of the articles mimics a TFN complaint about political cartoons that appeared in one proposed text and joked about affirmative action via a story about space aliens.  Apparently, neither the blogger nor TFN realized that this cartoon is provided as a primary source and the lesson is designed to encourage critical thinking about affirmative action.  While the related questions might be lacking, the idea of having a cartoon as a primary source, it is perfectly acceptable to use political cartoons – which will always insult someone – as primary sources in critical thinking exercises.

All textbooks have problems, and many of these proposed Texas textbooks are particularly inaccurate or biased.  The state adoption process should be about correcting these problems before the books are published and handed to students.

It is forever disappointing when partisan groups hijack this process to further their political goals.  In the end, the children suffer when politics and special interest control the content of educational material.  Verity Educate continues to expose these influences and the inaccuracies and biases they perpetuate.

#GetYourPoliticsOffOurKids