Books They Don't Want You To Read: The Texas School Board

Back in the 80's, I was publisher of Methuen Australia which as part of its list had a nice line in grade school educational books, reading especially. One new series featured very friendly looking witches on the cover. We were quickly warned by our reps on the ground that this series would not be considered by the State of Queensland because of the witches -  Queensland then was called the Deep North and was in many ways analogous to a Southern state - or even under the bizarre premiership of Joh Bjelke-Petersen closer to apartheid era South Africa. Queensland refused to allow its clocks to go forward at the same time as the rest of Australia, and infamously an airline pilot was allegedly fired for announcing

We are now landing in Brisbane. Please turn your watches back one century

We had a quandary though - with only five states who could possibly endorse and purchase a school book and a very competitive environment, it was almost impossible to turn your back on 20% of the market before you even went to press. Which brings us to Texas. A lot more states here in the US of course, but only a couple of them have major state textbook purchasing programs and probably none of them have the influence and power of Texas. There is a whole sub-industry, as one of my predecessors in another position discovered to our cost, of brokers who will encourage you to produce books specifically for Texas state adoption that then remain unsold in the Texas School Book Depository (well not this one..) and which if I recall correctly we were actually charged property taxes on since our unsold books were taking up state land.

We have here something very close to what we claim to despise in others, notably the controversy over textbooks in Japan that many claim deliberately distort elements of Japanese 20th century history. In Japan elected officials from the Ministry of Education appear to work very closely with private publishers to ensure a 'more appropriate' gloss on certain events. And in Texas we see a mandate that 'capitalism' be replaced throughout by 'free-enterprise system' and 'balance' put into discussions on civil rights, and Thomas Jefferson removed from lists of writers who inspired revolution. As with so much of what used to be called the 'Culture Wars' much of this leaves the average reader unaware of specific Conservative red-button issues and key words somewhat at a loss...but it is glosses and emphasis that really shape our view of History, not just the repetition of facts. There are certain points of view and people that this group just don't want the children of Texas to be exposed to, and that is a very dangerous thing.

So where will publishers stand on this? Interestingly, modern technology may make this less of an issue than it would have ten years ago. The ability to customize textbooks even down to classroom level may mean that American schoolchildren outside of Texas may still learn about Jefferson while back in the 80s the children of Sydney and Melbourne never did see our witch book. I will keep an eye on any statements by the major publishers on this issue and share them. I wonder though if Google will take a stand similar to that on China
Censorship is censorship...!!

Nick W-W