Textbook Wars
There's a battle underway in Texas about how historic and religious events are presented in school textbooks. The debate will determine how evolution is taught in school and whether kids can learn about Christmas in class.
What's decided there could affect what is textbooks in the tri-state. Here's why. Texas has so many students and such a diverse population that publishers decided that what works in Texas should work in other states.
Members of the Texas Freedom Network packed a recent Texas state school board meeting. They want to protect the way the theory of evolution is written in textbooks. They are fighting what they ay is an attempt to re-write history with an evangelical christian slant.
Organizers accused some republican school board appointees in Texas of trying to slip Christian beliefs into textbooks.
Jonathan Saenz is with the Conservative Free Market Foundation. He says that liberal groups want to erase important holidays from textbooks.
Saenz says, "So what they support is a review committee that took out Independence Day, a review committee that took out Veterans Day, A review Committee that took out Christmas, Rosh Hashana, Neil Armstrong and Albert Einstein."
He denies that there is a plot to blur the line separating church and state.
"We are trying to make sure that any religious heritage or our nation, our country, is not censored," Saenz says.
The Texas school board discusses what goes into textbooks every 10 years.
A final vote on what's in the textbooks is expected later this month.
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March 8, 2010