The battle over 'the facts' in textbooks

For years, the state of Texas has exercised an outsized influence on school textbooks—not without controversy, of course.

In 2010, the Texas Board of Education proposed changes in the state history standards to be reflected in textbooks. These changes came under close scrutiny at the time, with critics charging that the new standards would “water down” the principle of separation of church and state by “pointing out that the words were not in the Constitution and requiring that students compare and contrast the judicial language with the wording in the First Amendment.” But isn’t it reasonable for a textbook to point out that the Constitution does not contain the phrase “separation of church and state” (a common misperception among contemporary Americans) and encourage a close reading of the First Amendment?

Moses was another bone of contention because a proposed textbook presented him as a major influence on the Founding Fathers, along with John Locke, Montesquieu, and William Blackstone. Critics called his connection to the Founders “ahistorical,” but the Torah (especially Exodus and Deuteronomy) did influence American political philosophy. The Bible also influenced Blackstone and Locke, as it did just about every Western thinker in the 18th century, whether or not they subscribed to all its tenets.

Another point that upset critics was the definition of the American political system as a constitutional republic rather than a democracy. But if I remember my own history schooling, that’s what it was intended to be, and that’s what the remaining structure still implies. It would be helpful for students to know the difference.

All this was a subject for intense debate when the changes were first proposed. The new textbooks will appear in Texas schools this fall, with most of the changes intact, and progressives fear that students will be harmed. “I want my kids to just learn the facts,” said one concerned Houston mom. That’s a refrain taken up by the opposition: Texas students somehow will be at a disadvantage after they graduate because they won’t know the facts.

The insistence on “facts” is common to both sides, but, as Jonah Goldberg and others have noticed, progressives tend to deny they have a side—or more accurately, an ideology. The left likes to say their governing is simply based on what works, or what is scientific. But their underlying worldview determines what “facts” they choose to talk about. The new Advanced Placement American history standards produced by The College Board emphasizes facts that support a view of America as a nation of conflicting races and classes, with “identity” as a governing principle. That’s an ideology, not a fact, and 55 historians have registered their objections. But until both sides acknowledge their ideology, it will be impossible to have a real conversation.