It’s that time again. The time for Texas textbook review committee to consider the textbook trends for the most of the industry. What? You haven’t heard about this. I hadn’t either until my husband had to return to college. The text books were outrageously priced. Once he had the older version of a text and didn’t realise it until well into the semester because the material was the same. We like many others began wondering what was going on when the texts where “revised” every semester stopping us from buying used books for most classes. It turns out the textbook industry is a huge! It moves where the money comes from large states like Texas and California have almost all the say in the direction the public school texts are going.
Fox news and Texas textbook debate
A few months ago Tucker Carlson did a report on Fox news about the textbook industry and how it works, Fox News Reporting, Do you know what textbooks your children are really reading? . One it makes over 10 Billion dollars a year. There are massive amounts of money involved. With the passing of IDEA and schools needing to pass tests every year. Schools began working toward the test. The test makers, also the textbook industry, revise their tests often. In order for the schools to hope to keep up they have to upgrade their texts to match the tests. This is a circular trap and controlled by the textbook industry.
The other huge issue with textbooks is who is deciding what is going into them. The large textbook companies (according to Tucker’s report) have an internal highly secretive group that dictates the trends in the material. Silly me I thought that fact ruled what would be put into a textbook. From what the report said many of these people are strongly liberal in their thinking. So the material trends they choose are of less patriotic history because is leads to discussion of a God founded nation and more information about alternative lifestyles of today. If you read many of the newest texts without other knowledge you would think that homosexuality was a perfectly normal, large portion of American society. The truth is Centers for Disease Control’s National Center for Health Statistics reveals that only 2.3% of the population considers themselves homosexual 2002 study. That leads me to believe that textbooks are peddling an agenda rather than scholarly knowledge.
Lets be clear there are still well founded solid textbooks out there. Many of the smaller homeschooling companies have put out great books that you can rely on. Christian Liberty Press, Apologia, Alpha Omega and many more. Read the front cover find out WHO the book is from.
I have never been a big fan of cookie cutter textbooks. This Fox report and what I have seen in texts myself has encouraged me to throw out the couple of textbooks I had been given over the years. I would rather pay some extra and get a text I trust to use and pass down through the family than teach them something I have to correct constantly.
If you think that is a bit much read this Forbes article about a public school teacher’s awakening to how horrible textbooks can get information wrong.
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