Houghton Mifflin offers misleading defense for climate-denier high school textbook.
Houghton Mifflin offers misleading defense for climate-denier high school textbook.
Earlier this week, ThinkProgress noted that New Jersey high school senior Matthew LaClair exposed the American Government high school textbook — written by conservatives James Q. Wilson and John Diulio — for promoting climate-denier myths. The textbook casts doubt on whether the greenhouse effect “exists at all.” Houghton Mifflin issued this statement in response to the growing controversy:
The authors do not provide a history of global warming; rather they use the issue to illustrate “entrepreneurial politics.” As part of this illustration, the book cites a wide range of sources, from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to Nobel Prize Winner Al Gore.
Late last year, we released the 11th edition of “American Government,” which included some revisions to the “entrepreneurial politics” section. These revisions reflect current developments in environmental policy research.
Every single one of these statements is false or misleading. The Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson does a thorough debunk here.
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They’ll tackle intelligent design in the 12th edition.
April 12th, 2008 at 5:12 pmWhy do conservatives hate science and truth?
April 12th, 2008 at 5:13 pm“Houghton Mifflin offers misleading defense for climate-denier high school textbook.
In that case, that would make them, Dunder Mifflin.
April 12th, 2008 at 5:15 pmSeriously, how many of you guys that grew up in democratic homes but bought into the Reagan moderate scheme and voted for republicans have learned anything from it?
This is just one example of why our public schools are a failure. No child left behind is another example. Who cares about prayer in school, I can’t imagine anyone who cares about their children sending them to public school in America.
April 12th, 2008 at 5:15 pmTheToonGuy Says:
April 12th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
They’ll tackle intelligent design in the 12th edition.
________________
Shi-ite, ToonGuy… they’ll gladly take us all back to the 12th century.
April 12th, 2008 at 5:16 pmblue state bob Says:
April 12th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
Why do conservatives hate science and truth?
_______________
Because they end up looking like jackasses every time their lips move.
April 12th, 2008 at 5:17 pmJohn Diulio
That would be John J. DiIulio, Jr., formerly of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.
April 12th, 2008 at 5:27 pmRon Suskind writes (Why Are These Men Laughing?, January, 2003):
And by the way, that third letter in his name that looks like a lowercase ‘l’ and often gets mistaken for one, is actually an uppercase ‘I’: DIIULIO, not DILULIO.
April 12th, 2008 at 5:36 pmCompanies like H-M that publish educational materials that lie & mislead on important global issues should be put out of business. They should be ashamed, but I’m sure they are not. Fiction, etc. is one thing, but to put debunked garbage into a school textbook is truly disgusting. Will their next history text praise Bush & the occupation of Iraq? How much did they contribute to the Bush admin., and/or how much kickback did they get thanks to lobbyists to Bush & McBush? These people are reprehensible, providing Bush admin. propaganda to students/children. Imagine the hysterical uproar from Repubs if H-M included in a text that all people deserve respect– Mexicans, Europeans, the French, gays, Iranians, immigrants, women who have had abortions, etc.!! Or that evolution is really the only scientifically accurate argument?
April 12th, 2008 at 5:44 pmWhatever happened to that darned “Liberal Media”? The conservatives own most of the airwaves, now they are taking over the school. And just keep listening to the conservative talking heads - “liberals run education . . .” and the unwashed masses will continue to swallow the lies.
April 13th, 2008 at 12:32 amWhy are so many people surprised? Textbooks have ALWAYS been designed as “conservative propaganda” for DECADES.
April 13th, 2008 at 2:22 amIt all started when a Texas couple (can’t recall their name at the moment–and don’t feel like Googling it) decided to, OF THEIR OWN INITIATIVE, review textbooks being designed for Texas students. They were, by their own admission, very conservative and decided to rate the books based on how “correct” they were with regards to politics (mentions of Communism in any manner other than stern disapproval were deemed as “sympathetic to Communism”) and religion (anything that provided a negative view of organized religion–no matter the historical accuracy–was seen as “inciting moral decay” and “increasing the likelihood of juvenile delinquency”). As this was during the tail end of the McCarthy era, these were deemed valid concerns and the couple felt that “someone” needed to “protect the children” from harmful influences, especially in the textbooks which were largely written by “big city” professors who didn’t share “good American values”. (Now, how exactly they became so influential, I honestly don’t know. They just did.) Based on THEIR recommendations, textbooks on ALL variety of subjects (from the “controversial” matters of civics and science to the “safe” fields of grammar and math–literature textbooks, of course, had to pass a wide variety of checks, not simply the “age appropriateness” but things such as the author’s “importance” or perceived value to literature and political or religious persuasion, whether real or imagined) were either accepted or rejected by the WHOLE STATE OF TEXAS. Now, HERE’s where it gets really important. The State of Texas had, in the 1950s, the LARGEST SCHOOL SYSTEM in the entire country. This wasn’t based on number of pupils, but rather number of local school systems–somewhere in the neighborhood of 250-300 separate school systems. With so many local school systems to buy textbooks for, Texas had a heck of a lot of clout with publishers. A book rejected by Texas stood little chance of being bought by ANY other state since each state school board generally followed Texas’ lead.
Nowadays, the textbook publishers still rely on Texas as a “guideline” for what will and what won’t be published but the real problem for textbooks now is the fact that so many school boards (from the local level up to the state Boards of Education) are loaded with social and/or political conservatives who rely on a very short period for textbooks to be reviewed by the public in just a relatively small handful of cities (if memory serves, the last time that the State of Alabama had a textbook review period, there were more than 300 different textbooks for all school levels–elementary to high school–in all subjects with only two weeks available for review; in Montgomery, it was two weeks, but it seems like 4 or 5 other cities had the texts up for review for about a week).
But if anyone can find the Texas couple who quite literally controlled the textbook industry (for more than 40 years–I seem to recall something about a decade ago which indicated they were still offering their services in a more “advisory” capacity but weren’t as active in the process any more), you’ll find how utterly frightening these people were.
Claiming that Al Gore didn’t make 10s of Millions of dollars off of the inconvenient truth film and the green peace concerts is laughable at best.
Al Gore, Alex Jones, Michael Moore. none of these people really give a damn. They’re all capitalists that dont stand for anything but typical American Apathy.
Funny How Al Gore FORGOT to mention that 50% of the oil we use in this country is IN THE MILITARY! Funny how he made it seem like it was all our fault. Not Bill Clinton or his fault for not doing ANYTHING to get us off of gasoline and even worse DESTROYING MEXICO with shifty agreements in NAFTA.
It’s crap posts like this that make me want to stop reading left leaning blogs. You guys apologize for these phonies to no end.
April 13th, 2008 at 4:23 amHmmmm…..”Texas schoolbooks”…what’s that building where they were kept…and then what happened?
Well, thank God- no, thank BOLT BERANEK AND NEWMAN for ARPAnet and, later, the internet, where they can access many points of view and figure out what they want to believe, oftentimes right in the classroom.
April 13th, 2008 at 8:07 amThough I think it’s inappropriate for a history textbook to deal with scientific matters, which a history teacher may not have the expertise to interpret, I’m still more concerned about the, thinly veiled, religious dogma.
I don’t understand why the Reichwingers don’t display much Faith. Doesn’t this indicate that it’s strongest supporters don’t consider the Bible able to “stand alone”? I thought it was supposed to be the infallible, complete, word of God. Why does the religious right need to dissemble, conflate, and lie, to “spread the message”?
April 13th, 2008 at 8:32 amJosephW Says:
April 13th, 2008 at 2:22 am
I was curious, so I did use The Google. The couple was Mel and Norma Gabler.
April 13th, 2008 at 10:10 amI wrote an email to Tom Horne, the Arizona Superindendent of Public Instruction regarding his comments. I urge all of you to do the same. You may do so here:
http://www.ade.az.gov/aboutade/iwanttotellyou.asp
Please keep it on point, semi-respectful and proofread before you send it.
April 13th, 2008 at 5:28 pm