This week’s The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe has an interview with Bill Bennetta who’s a part of The Textbook League (http://www.textbookleague.org/). A watchdog group that monitors school textbooks and tries to get them improved. But the deal is, the textbook oligopoly of 4 publishers that publish all the textbooks perpetuate generations of plagiarism, generations of uncorrected errors and outright lies in information, often because of catering to the desires of the districts, the desire to oversimplify, political correctness, concepts of human superiority, and catering to teachers’ wants who suffer under the errors of their own education.
For example, middle school and high school textbooks even today still have the error of birds’ wings operate under the Bernoulli principle when that’s been LONG disproved. Likewise the idea of humans being at the top of an artificial and arbitrary “Ladder of Nature.” Claims like external fish reproduction being extremely wasteful and inefficient and ineffective as proof that they belong near the bottom of this Nature’s Ladder. When in fact, fish external reproduction is between 98-100% effective–yet, look at human reproduction: Many times more eggs produced that don’t get fertilized and human fertilization being very ineffective and highly inefficient considering energy expenditure and rate of success.
Another example was how one publisher (Holt) went through and made sure there were exactly equal references between male and female persons in the textbook. Yet, even so, despite this artificial skewing toward artificial equality, when the textbook came out in Texas, a feminist group actually counted and found there were more references to male animals and animal characters and made an outcry. And this happens all the time where special interest groups count references to a particular ethnicity or culture and demand equal inclusion to the detriment of facts.
For another example, Geo. Washington Carver for the sake of equality is credited in one book as being the father of modern economics, completely ignoring the three white guys who preceded him.
One middle school science book pretended to not know who invented the first heavier than air flying machine, by referring to them as “two inventors.” Not the Wright Brothers.
Other errors in major school textbooks that STILL exist: uranium is a synthetic element, aspirin is a polymer, and aluminum is a liquid at room temperature.
What to do? State governments have to pander to special interest groups and have their own financial interests involved, the publishers don’t really care about truth and accuracy, teacher’s organizations have shown less than reasonable interest in the problem (many teachers actually fight for the erroneous or biased versions either because the errors are what they learned and so they think is correct or they’re involved in whatever special interest group is forcing a particular bias of a textbook.) As a parent who tries to make a difference, schools aren’t going to listen because they bought the book and so they have a stake in defending their choice. Unfortunately in 9 months a student will be done with their class and so then the parent’s outrage tends to wane and dissolve then. It’s basically a race to the bottom as splashy pictures and layouts and contrived stories take precedence over facts and accuracy.
My wife and I are going to need to pour over our daughter’s textbooks when she starts getting them, and do whatever we can to make sure she’s a critical thinker that is capable of finding answers and not simply accepting everything taught in a public school textbook.
The guest really encourages this book:
“The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn”
The Textbook League site has a page that really got me going (heck, ALL of it gets me going!) regarding textbooks encouraging ignorance and creating beliefs without evidence:
This is one reason why American intelligence, education, has plummeted over the last couple generations. When our schools focus more on rote memorization of facts, often WRONG facts, and do not teach critical thinking. Don’t care about skepticism but encourage accepting whatever you’re told without question, and skewing information to a social desire while ignoring reality and factuality.
I lament for America. We’re seeing the coming end of the empire. We may already be right in the middle of it.
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