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Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
Most states select textbooks on a school-by-school or district-by-district basis. Texas subjects proposed textbooks to a rigorous review process according to what subjects are scheduled for review that year. Then the state's schools are given a list of approved books. The state will only pay for books on the list.
For decades, Christian right activists have made the Texas board a principal battleground in the culture wars. The book-selection process eventually became so politicized that in 1995, the state Legislature stepped in and largely cut the board out of the process. Book approval is now supposed to be primarily handled by professionals in the Texas Education Agency, and by outside review panels, with the board's role limited to approving or rejecting books based on whether the book is well made, factual and conforms to the educational standards measured by the statewide standardized test. Chiras' book is the first to be rejected since the law was passed.
Critics say that conservatives on the board have found a way around this by using bogus claims of "factual error" to get rid of books they disagree with. What's more, they charge that the board is using conservative groups like the TPPF as fronts, allowing them to provide critiques that authors and publishers must respond to -- which means rewriting their books -- in order to gain approval. "They are basically a mouthpiece for the board in these issues," according to attorney Adele Kimmel. She says the unstated but obvious message is that "if you don't correct what we think are errors, your book will not be adopted. Anything they disagree with is described as a factual error."
Suspicions that the board and conservative groups are working together are not allayed by the fact that current board chairwoman Geraldine Miller's husband, Vance, is a board member of the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
Don McLeroy, a board member from Bryan named as a defendant in the lawsuit, had not heard much about the suit when Salon reached him on his cellphone as he drove across west Texas. Before his cell connection broke up, McLeroy said that he made his decision because of factual errors in the book. "It's the only book we've rejected since I've been on the board for five years," he explained. "We can reject a book for factual errors and inaccuracies. And that's the basis for why we rejected the book." He referred Salon to an article he had written at the time in which he explained his action. The piece reads in part: "The entire construct of the book is based on a factual error and false premise ... The Western Christian civilization countries [sic] are the cleanest, and have the most stable population growths in the world ... The claim that the root cause of environmental problems is economic growth is simply wrong."
Steve Baughman Jensen, one of Chiras' lawyers, says the board's actions were "not based on any legitimate concerns for factual accuracy or curriculum fulfillment," but on disagreement with "Dr. Chiras' viewpoints on environmental and economic issues, views based on 30 years of scientific study." He adds, "We really think that this is a case not just of officials going beyond their authority, but officials censoring speech and viewpoints."
David Bradley, a board member from Beaumont and another defendant, rejects the argument that Chiras' First Amendment rights were violated. "That position just doesn't hold water," he said angrily. "You need to qualify for the right to speak to 4 million Texas public school children. He didn't meet the qualifications. His case is meritless. It's just opportunistic grandstanding."
In comments to the Galveston County Daily News, Bradley took issue with the fact that Chiras' book used panoramic photos of housing developments as examples of a negative impact on the environment.
"I'm in real estate," he said. "I see that and I see $250,000 homes; I see mortgage bankers; I see carpenters; I see jobs. I see a tax base."
For his part, Chiras said, "I was stunned by the board's decision to reject my textbook. Texas public high schools used an earlier edition of my book, and colleges across the country, including a state university in Texas, have used the current edition. It is incredibly offensive and unfair that my book was falsely portrayed as 'anti-Christian' when this same book is used at Baylor University -- a top-tier Christian school and Texas' oldest university."
The spectre of right-wing ideologues using financial pressure to force textbooks to be rewritten hangs over other Texas textbooks as well. This month, the Texas board will consider the adoption of statewide biology textbooks. The process has been shaping up for months, involving many of the same dynamics as with the environmental books. A conservative research group, the Discovery Institute of Seattle, has argued that the biology textbooks contain factual errors; the books' defenders say the criticisms, as with Chiras' book, are nothing more than viewpoint censorship. The Discovery Institute has presented the publishers with its criticisms, and is already crowing about "corrections" they have gained from publishers in advance of the final review by the state board.
Board member Bradley thinks the filing of the Chiras suit is intended to influence that debate. "The board is considering the adoption of biology textbooks this year, which has also been somewhat controversial and a hot issue." McLeroy agrees, adding, "You've got all this heavy lobbying, the National Center for Science Education on one side and the Discovery Institute on the good science side, or the anti-evolution side, whatever you want to call it."
