And who teaches them how to read?
The parents who are working 4 jobs apiece just to stay afloat because there is no minimum wage.
He can’t, because the section he is citing is referring to Ravitch’s analysis of textbook publishers’ own guidelines.
Ravitch’s book is my most recent bedside literature. One of the key claims she makes, and which the author of the linked review is obviously referring to, is that textbook publishers themselves formulate these all-encompassing guidelines in order to make their textbook offerings as bland as possible and ensure that no-one gets offended, The key aim of the publishers is not to take any particular point of view, but simply to avoid affending anyone and raising controversy, because nothing kills a textbook adoption quicker than controversy.
Ravitch’s second chapter, which seems to be the source of that particular paragraph of the review, is actually concerned with the guidelines used by Riverside Publishing. These bias guidelines, called “Bias and Sensitivity Concerns in Testing,” outline all the taboos of educational textbook publishing, and contain much of the stuff cited in the quotation by Rune. Ravitch points out that most textbook publishers have a similar document, although not all are as generous about sharing that document with outsiders. In fact, many publishers zealously guard their guidelines from outsiders.
Now, it is certainly true that Texas and California have a disproportionate influence over the publication and adoption of textbooks in the United States. This is not merely because both are large states, however; it is because they are both large staes that have state-level textbook adoption procedures. In theory, New York could also exert considerable pressure on publishers, but New York is an “open territory” state, with textbooks adopted on a local city or county level.
Large cities like New York City and Chicago can have some influence on textbook publication, but not as much as large adoption states like Texas and Califronia. Furthermore, despite California’s larger population, Texas actually has a greater overall influence on the textbook industry, because state-level textbook adoption in Texas occurs at all grades, K-12. In California, by contrast, state-level adoptions are K-8, with high school textbook decisions made on a local level. Interestingly, state-level adoptions, which occur in twenty states, are predominant in the American south and south-west, while northern states tend to prefer a local adoption system.
What makes Texas even more interesting is that it has had, since the 1960s, a procedure whereby the citizens of Texas can oppose the adoption of particular textbooks. This procedure required a written complaint outlining the reasons for the opposition, and also offered complainants the opportunity to appear at a public hearing in front of the state’s textbook committee, at which the complaint would be reiterated and expanded, and at which the textbook publishers could attempt to rebut any charges brought against their books.
This sounds, at first blush, like a pretty good system: democracy in action, right? A key problem, however, was that there was no provision in the procedure for Texas citizens to appear or testify in support of textbooks that they felt should be on the curriculum, or that they felt were being unfairly challenged. This meant that the hearing involved only complainants and the textbook publishers, and the latter’s obvious financial interest in having their books adopted meant that they sometimes caved in and changed the text even if the criticism was unfair or unwarranted.
For years, the Texas Education Agency received letters from citizens arguing for a change in the procedure to allow for citizens to appear in support of textbooks. I’ve been through the TEA archives for the period, and have copies of letters arguing, for example, that the system of “[o]ne-sided testimony inevitably injures the cause of truth and education” and “effectively gag[s] many potential participants and prevent[s] other viewpoints that may represent the majority of citizens in the state from being expressed.” Finally, after years of such complaints, the state legislature amended the Texas Education Code in 1982 to allow petitions in support of textbooks by any citizen of Texas. Even then, however, Texans were only allowed to offer written support of a book against which petitions of complaint had been made, and were not allowed to make an oral defense of the books at the public hearing, thus leaving the textbook critics with the upper hand in determining the scope of the debate.
The ostensibly open and transparent procedures adopted in Texas have actually given a small number of vocal conservative interest groups the upper hand in determining what will and will not be taught in Texas schools.
The Gablers, anyone?
Yes, I know I’ve posted that link in another thread already this week. It’s relevant, though, and these two culture warriors need to be more well-known. The better to combat them.
I have hundreds of photocopied pages of the Gablers’ testimony, going back to the late 1960s, all copied from the files of the Texas Education Agency. It’s scary reading.
Excuse me? Free education is another form of charity, and charity discourages people from developing self-sufficiency. Altruism is immoral - haven’t you read your Ayn Rand?
Besides, if they’re poor, it’s probably because their parents are ineducably stupid anyway, and no doubt the children suffer the same mental insufficiency. If they were worth the cost of an education, their parents would be able to pay for it. Quod erat demonstrandum.
Well, I had gotten the impression from the text that the “sensitivity and bias guidelines” were mostly a priority for California (sure don’t sound as a thing Texans would be so up in arms over) and because of the clout of California those were imposed on the rest of the US. Not that it matters to me where it originates from, it’s stupidity anywhere.
Actually I find it worse. If my children were prevented from being taught about prevention, STDs, evolution (ok that’s pretty bad) or some other fairly precise and defined subject, it wouldn’t be such a problem as I could easily teach them that myself. However if the whole curriculum is compromised by political consideration or is geared towards some political goal of fostering a particular type of children at the expense of learning that would mean the whole system is rotten to the core, and the only solution would be to have my children attend some other school – or be home-school.
Not that I’m overtly worried, their school is so impoverished they haven’t had money for any new material since the mid seventies, before the onset of all that PC bullshit. The maps still have East-Berlin, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. Poverty rules!
Huh? Why on earth is phonics-based reading evil? That’s how my children learn to read.
Welcome to American Fundamentalism, where Logic has no power!
Ninety percent of the time when the Fundies get going about things that are unGodly in the schools, they have no logical reason for opposing them other than that the “liberal establishment” was using them.
I thought conservatives were supposed to be pro-phonics and anti-whole language (as if teaching methods have a political significance to them)?
The faulty assumption underlying your post is the notion that things like sex education and evolution are not somehow part of the same web of “political consideration” as all the “sensitivity and bias” issues. I know it might seem convenient for you to separate the educational spectrum in that way, but the fact is that the battles over what type of sex education to teach, and the role that evolution should play in the curriculum, are inherently political.
Furthermore, claiming that the issue of sex education and evolution aren’t much of a problem because you can teach them that yourself ignores the fact that certain subjects gain political and cultural capital in our society precisely because they are taught in the schools. If the schools decide not to teach a particular issue or subject, that has implications for the credibility that subject has in the broader world. This correlation between the curriculum and cultural politics might not be especially laudable or beneficial, but to pretent that it doesn’t even exist is pure fantasy.
Actually, in societies based on personal freedom and responsibility, there are disincentives for burger flippers to spew out welfare babies. If I thought you’d pay for it, I’d live like a drunken Democrat.
Looks like you haven’t read your Ayn Rand:
“For the record, I shall repeat what I have said many times before: I do not join or endorse any political group or movement. More specifically, I disapprove of, disagree with and have no connection with, the latest aberration of some conservatives, the so-called ‘hippies of the right,’ who attempt to snare the younger or more careless ones of my readers by claiming simultaneously to be followers of my philosophy and advocates of anarchism. Anyone offering such a combination confesses his inability to understand either. Anarchism is the most irrational, anti-intellectual notion ever spun by the concrete-bound, context-dropping, whim-worshiping fringe of the collectivist movement, where it properly belongs.” — Ayn Rand, “Brief Summary,” The Objectivist, September 1971
“Above all, do not join the wrong ideological groups or movements, in order to ‘do something.’ By ‘ideological’ (in this context), I mean groups or movements proclaiming some vaguely generalized, undefined (and, usually, contradictory) political goals. (E.g., the Conservative Party, which subordinates reason to faith, and substitutes theocracy for capitalism; or the ‘libertarian’ hippies, who subordinate reason to whims, and substitute anarchism for capitalism.) To join such groups means to reverse the philosophical hierarchy and to sell out fundamental principles for the sake of some superficial political action which is bound to fail. It means that you help the defeat of your ideas and the victory of your enemies.” — Ayn Rand, “What Can One Do?” Philosophy: Who Needs It
See also “Libertarianism: The Perversion of Liberty,” by Peter Schwartz, in the Ayn Rand collection, The Voice of Reason.
Something is amiss here. Fundamentalists have always been enthusiastic advocates of phonics. It is the whole language method that they have always despised.
Rune, I think you misread that page. And shame on me for not going in and looking at it before I fired off a shot at the Right.
It actually says:
It should be read, I think, as having concerns that phonics isn’t being taught with as much importance as they want it to be, rather than having concerns that phonics is being taught at all.
The point still stands, though. I have no idea how the free market or language pedagogy have anything to do with Christianity…
I was merely expressing my opinion as to what could be done about the Christian Right’s influence over curricula for children other than their own. Elimination of the political element, ie., their influence by proxy through government, is one way. I don’t see why I can’t offer my opinions just as anyone else can without people flying off the handle and making a mountain out of it. Just let me speak my peace and leave me alone. Or express your disagreement, and let us discuss it. But these rude quips and inaccurate remarks that I am somehow out of line are uncalled for. My opinion of what to do is different from most others. That does not make it off-topic.
Can you explain how that relates to Jayjay’s post, which it was apparently in response to?
It is self-explanatory — she posited burger flippers working for peanuts, holding four jobs to feed their kids; and I reminded her that making life an all expenses paid vacation incentivizes such irresponsibility as having more babies than you can feed.
He.
And it’s not self-explanatory, else I’d not have had to ask for an explanation, would I?
So, I take it you’re classifying minimum wage laws as welfare now? Hmm. And if someone is in a position where they can’t get a job that pays a living wage (perhaps because they have no education, because there are no public schools), then they should never have any children? I ask this last question because Jayjay said nothing about how many children this hypothetical low-income worker has. One child seems as reasonable an assumpion as five, in this case.
Which leads to another question: if poor people are not supposed to have children, and there is no welfare in your ideal society, what happens to poor people when they are too old to work, and they have no family to take care of them? Let 'em freeze in the streets?
Yes, that’s the disincentive for not saving for your retirement. 
Accidents happen, y’know. Or are poor people expected to put all of their miniscule wages toward birth control, and when that fails and they can’t afford an abortion, leave the newborn babe on the roadside?