Blog post #4

2. California and Texas dominate the censorship of textbooks at the publication level. Does the fact that one state is traditionally liberal and the other traditionally conservative help or hinder the accuracy of textbooks? Why?
This definitely hinders the accuracy of text books in my opinion. In either state certain facts are left out. It is understandable that there is not enough room for everything in the texts. However the fact that special interest groups are the people deciding what stays and what goes is very scary. Text books should be written from a completely unbiased standpoint. They should be as accurate as possible in order for students to get a full understanding of the subject matter and make what they want to out of it. In Texas they are very conservative and clearly want the generations to follow to be the same. As is the case with California but from the liberal standpoint. This is working very well for them, as Texas continues to become more conservative and California continues to become more liberal. Which is, in a way, pitting these people against each other. In the reading it states "in 2004, both publishers and the Texas board of education agreed to a proposal, at Frey’s urging, that clearly defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman in health textbooks." This is ridiculous to me because the institution of marriage is a very new idea in the western world. In ancient Rome there were recognized marriages between both sexes and it was not shameful nor wrong in those times. Why can't we just get the facts? Do California and Texas think people in their states are so dense that they can't know the truth because they wouldn't know what to do with it? Or do Texas and California simply want to shape and mold each generation into exactly what they want them to be? Another quote from the reading that really bothered me was, "These guidelines have become increasingly complicated and dictatorial, to the point that they include a list of over 500 words that are banned from all textbooks. For example, to satisfy the feminists, according to Ravitch, “words that include the prefix or suffix man or men must be excluded; such words as manpower, chairman, forefathers, freshman, businessmen, and mankind are banned.” How ridiculous? Really, what are we supposed to change the vocabulary and dictionary of the country because some feminists say so? NO! I JUDT WANT THE FACTS MAN!!