The environmental stuff seems to stem from lobbying by “big bucks” corporate individuals who don’t want textbooks to show their particular industry in a bad light or as sometimes harmful to the environment- this is particularly important to “big oil” Texans.
One of the civil rights issues is because Texas (and California) are textbook leaders for other smaller states who may not want to be shown badly, say, in a history text, and may lobby for inclusion or exclusion of information .
Other civil rights issues occuring today include same-sex marriage (homosexuality), and sex ed (abortion). Texas is an abstinance only state and offers very little in the way of sex ed. Apparantly, if we never mention homosexuality or pregnancy, it will simply disappear. The idea that keeping teens ignorant of sexual issues will make them sexless is impractical. Even folks who remain abstinate until marriage need family planning and STD information. Texas has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the nation which is likely related to our poorly informed teens.
The issues of environment and civil rights have occurred before and will be brought up again later (and probably with less fanfare than intelligent design) when the health and social studies texts get reviewed over the next several years. Currently, our next scheduled review is for the science textbooks.
Large boards like Texas can have textbook publishers make changes to suit the board and its standards, and other states will tend to buy books preapproved by larger states. Publishers tend to bend to the will of large purchasers and I understand they will sometimes rewrite whole chapters to meet the goals of a large buyer.
It’s not unusual for out-of-state groups to express interest in a different states textbooks as exampled by the Washington state based ICR group attempting to manipulate Pennsylvania’s and Georgia’s science standards. Sometimes the interest could be reasonable and justifiable, other times it is agenda driven. Special interest groups should not be in charge of what content is placed in textbooks.
Garygnu’s book recommendation will show how that kind of ‘tweaking’ of textbook content can occur better than I can explain it. In any case, having a board stacked with religious fundamentalists in not healthy for out state.
I am not an expert on any of these areas (hijack alert- well, I do deal with alot of pregnant teens- recently, I was asked by a pregnant teen why, if the baby’s daddy had had a vasectomy…why then did ‘stuff’ come out of his penis. There is actually a good answer to that question (seminal fluid), but seeing as how she was pregnant by him, I would think the answer was fairly obvious- however, it was not. Besides, not many teen boys have vasectomies) but am interested in school textbooks and that they provide actual, real, information. I’ve been trying to get on my local book review board but have been unable to do so as of yet.