Well on the bright side, at least most people are seeing through the smoke: 60% Say Their Kids? Textbooks Place Political Correctness Above Accuracy

Political correctness above accuracy ?!  Tell anything you want if encrypted ?That's the Dark side ...

As we know nothing about the parents the percentage tells us exactly zero.  Flesh out the demographics and provide some data and we may begin to get a handle on whether the statistic is useful.But we do know certain things about the parents:They are "with children in elementary or secondary school".  Also, "After the calls are completed, the raw data is processed through a weighting program to insure that the sample reflects the overall population in terms of age, race, gender, political party, and other factors."AHA!

Texas and California are the two biggest markets for textbook publishers… Texas because they order one edition from on publisher for the all the schools in the state and Caifornia because school districts can select from any of a state approved list approved list… elementary and middle schools have a rather tighter list and most districts adopt district wide while secondary often is allowed more latitude in that individual teachers can lobby for and often get a certain text adopted, but again from the approved list.Publishers often have modified editions to sell in these states that are more complaint with the standards or curriculum framework of the given state. Case in point: kids often asked me why our textbook started on page 298. The text was originally a year-long course in world history (in the other 49 states)... ancient world to present, but in CA the kids study Ancient Civ in grade 6, Middle Ages in grade 7, and pick up world history again in grade 9 or 10 (depending on the district) with the Modern Era. Our text started with a brief review and went from there... added at the end were several chapters that fleshed out some of the benchmarked standards for that particular course of study.

willy,I'm surprised that the material in the article surprises you. History books reflect history, as beheld by those commissioning and / or writing the book in question; we must understand that a person writing the book will place emphasis where they choose. Then up to the market to accept or reject their product. In the case of textbooks the publishers will, perhaps, have two works... one to appealto Zinn's audience and one for Beck's followers. Both books will tell the story from a POV and likely sell to folks that already have that mind set. Both books will tell the same basic story but with differing details that are deemed critical to telling that story. The publishers' realization is that not all people have the same POV and to sell the most books they will pander to the market. In the larger picture the solution is if you don't like the book don't buy it... this doesn't fix the public school situation though.State school boards political appointees and as such will reflect the light of the person that appoints them... 'nuff said on that. Any state that is going to buy a boat load of books will get the attention of the publisher and publishers will roll out new books whenever they think the states are likely to adopt something (often after a change in administration at the state or national level since education is such a hot button issue.The President, with his Race ( ???) To the Top program, coupled with the reauthorization of NCLB (ESEA) has such a storm brewing... the publishers are all running around trying to figure out which direction to go. Knee jerk reactions have always seemed to be the norm where I taught.I looked at the article and found nothing unusual... not much surprises me about education and textbook adoption anymore. [Jaded ol' fart alert!] I will illustrate:Several years ago the middle school adopted new Social Studies texts... I was used to everyone basically getting to choose the book they deemed best from the approved list (ala HS) but... direction from the district was to coordinate with the elementary school and as closely as possible get all grade levels from the same publisher. It was further deemed better if we bought from the company that already supplied the English books. (See a pattern here? Follow the money....)Long story short, rather than fighting, I went with the flow for a couple of reasons, I only had a few years to retirement, the 8th grade book was pretty comparable to the book I liked so not a deal breaker, and as a member of the union bargaining team this gave me a chance to appear collegial to the higher ups (rather than the union bastard). But wait there's more that payoff...The sixth grade teachers like a particular book (fine by me) but since I only taught one section of 6th graders... whatever. BTW it's not a bad book but we had to wait almost a quarter of the school year to get it because of a lawsuit by a Hindu splinter group in Florida over saying the ancient Indians thought the castes system was a good way to order society and they didn't give women much respect or freedom. (all true btw). The books weren't printed until after the suit settled.To avoid a rant that I feel coming on I'll stop at this point. "He who pays the piper calls the tune" is the thing to remember. Teachers (try to) teach; educators (seem to) put obstacles in the way of that.