ACLU enables Texas textbook takeover
I just received an e-mail from the ACLU today.
Dear ACLU Supporter,
Have you heard how a small group of ideologues in Texas are trying to hijack the process that sets the standards for the state's textbooks? They're out to impose one narrow point of view on the content of textbooks used by millions of students.
Why should you care? Because when it comes to textbooks, as goes Texas, so goes the nation. And if these plans go through, a handful of extremists could dictate their morals on millions of students across the country.
It’s no joke. I really was an ACLU supporter a long time ago. It’s painful reading their letters nowadays. They seem to have gone into the business of digging holes, jumping in, and trying to dig their way out.
What they should have said is “a handful of politicians and government bureaucrats could dictate their morals on the content of textbooks used by millions of students”. Because that’s what happens when you set up government schools. The problems the ACLU is seeing in Texas are true for all government-mandated public education. Government bureaucrats have their own worldview, and when almost all schools are run by government bureaucrats almost all textbooks will reflect that worldview.
The ACLU could end Texas’s influence tomorrow. All they need to do is come out in favor of transitioning from government schools to school choice. But they won’t: the ACLU supports government schools and opposes school choice. They like that the government can control teaching; they just don’t like it that the Texas government is more effective than others.
School choice would increase the profit that textbook makers make selling more diverse textbooks. Some of those viewpoints would be ones the ACLU disagrees with, but some would be ones the ACLU agrees with a lot more than what Texas is moving towards. The ACLU could even set up their own schools, and commission their own textbooks. One school or school consortium would no longer have to affect the choices of other schools.
Instead, the ACLU is vocal and active opposing any attempts to let parents choose which school gets their portion of education taxes. They fight any attempts to take away government control of schools. And then when governments exercise that control, they act as if it’s someone else’s fault. It isn’t. The Texas textbook problem is their fault. It is the result of policies they actively support. Increased state power inevitably leads to increased state use of power. They claim to oppose government attempts to impose religion; but they actively support giving the government the power to impose religion.
And the same will be true of health care if we go through with the health takeover: when most of the money is going through government exchanges, health care providers will target their services to the requirements of the government. A monolithic textbook purchasing system in Texas invites textbook companies to create one-size-fits-all textbooks. A monolithic health exchange invites the same thing for our health care.
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Despite all the recent hand-wringing and wailing about the end of our educational system as we know it, Texas has been influencing the content in textbooks for decades. Most of the people now protesting were taught from textbooks approved by a small, ideologically conservative panel in Texas. THIS IS NOT NEW. If Californians don't want Texas dictating their curriculum, all they have to do is buy more books than Texas does.
Hey! overwrought parents who are worried their kids will grow up to be John Birchers: Step 1) Turn off your TV's and put books in their hands and see how they turn out. Step 2) Go to your local PTA meeting and find ways to help the school buy materials that fit the way you want your community to teach its kids. All you have to do is take an active part in the running of the school and you can take it away from the bureaucrats. Gong to Washington and asking the Feds to dictate to Texas what they teach their children will accomplish nothing except convince the very people you need to influence that indeed the New World Order is at hand.
Public or private, fix YOUR school. You can.
One thing I disagree with in the post:
"School choice would increase the profit that textbook makers make selling more diverse textbooks."
If this were actually true, there wouldn't be a problem. The reason Texas has such power over the textbooks the nation uses is that textbooks publishers can't afford to make a "Texas version" and an "Everyone else" version. Editorial costs and the costs of getting a book approved are just too high. At least back when I was in the educational software biz, Texas outspent other states for textbooks by a huge margin.
"Approval process" as I used it above does mean "bureaucratic red tape", but it at least allows a textbook editor to focus on a single set of criteria, and to provide the best possible content within the known constraints.
There has been talk of modularizing textbooks and using advanced printing technology to allow a buffet-style approach to texts, but beyond the cost of the technology is the editorial cost of developing specialized content for smaller markets. If a textbook has two versions of each chapter, the cost of developing the book is nearly doubled, but the market does not grow. (The first publisher to come out with such a book would likely get a lift, but in the end the same amount is being spent by the schools.) In the end I think you'd end up with an editorial staff and a team of spin doctors to take the content and make for instance a "less evolutiony" version of a science text.
Jerry Seeger at 1:42 a.m. April 17th, 2010
IqnSM
Hey, Jerry. The reason that textbook makers think they “can’t afford to make a Texas version and an Everyone else version” is that the current system privileges the kind of textbook maker who thinks that way. Move to a system that encourages schools that are created precisely to attract parents of diverse viewpoints, and a different kind of textbook maker will be able to enter the market successfully. The ACLU School will never buy Texas Textbooks, no matter how much less expensive they are.
You might as well say that alcohol distributors during prohibition used tommy guns because they thought they couldn’t afford to sell their wares without automatic weapons. It’s true, they thought that, and they may even have been right—but that’s because prohibition privileged the kind of distributors who thought that way.
capvideo at 6:47 a.m. April 17th, 2010
tVAhq
That's a good point — in a completely free market schools would be able to choose between expensive textbooks built to high standards with rigorous editorial control, or Jer's Build-your-own textbooks, which would cover all the curriculum bullet points and would have only a few parts that were actually wrong. Other textbooks could specifically cater to fringe markets. (In fact that already happens, especially in the home school market.) Many would make up for shaky editorial quality with marketing. That's business.
It doesn't change the fact that it takes a lot of money to build (and maintain) an excellent text, and those texts will be built to Texas standards, as long as Texas is willing to pay for them.
I suppose having statewide standards for curriculum can be compared to prohibition, in that setting rigorous standards does favor larger publishers who can pay to produce a product that meets those standards. The tommy guns were a result of the free market being in open conflict with statutory law. Will we see school districts in open rebellion, sneaking in non-standard textbooks under the cover of darkness, while uzi-toting goons watch for the police? It really doesn't seem likely (though it's a pretty sweet image).
There will always be standards for the materials presented to the children of my community (I hope), and it will not lower costs to have the standards system fractured into thousands of tiny markets. I'm not saying the current system is better — not at all — but even now no one is forcing school districts outside of Texas to use Texas-approved materials. A publisher could put a "BANNED IN TEXAS!" sticker on the front of a history book and it would probably sell pretty well in New England. There's nothing preventing some upstart publisher from trying to exploit that market, with or without tommy guns. Why hasn't it happened already? Because the money isn't there. If schools outside Texas start buying more books, they will find more books that teach their way. They may not be capitalists, but the publishers sure are. Maybe with this brouhaha the market will shift and people will insist on more local control of curriculum. That would be a good thing.
Jerry Seeger at 7:30 a.m. April 17th, 2010
IqnSM
Right. My argument is that the reason the money isn’t there is that despite Texas’s lead on the issue, there’s really only one market: government bureaucrats. And while New England government bureaucrats differ from Texas government bureaucrats, they don’t differ enough to create a market for different textbooks.
I agree that local control is better than state control; local or state control is better than federal control. But parent control is better yet.
capvideo at 3:20 p.m. April 17th, 2010
tVAhq