Showdown in Texas

By Ellie McGrath

Schoolbooks become a political battleground

Textbook content shall promote citizenship and the understanding of the free-enterprise system, emphasize patriotism and respect for recognized authority . . . Textbook content shall not encourage lifestyles deviating from generally accepted standards of society. --Proclamation of the Texas state board of education, 1982

It is textbook-selection time in Texas, an annual debate between special interest groups over what students should read in public classrooms. In Austin last week, concerned citizens and publishers jammed the weeklong state textbook committee hearings to criticize publishers' interpretations of sensitive subjects such as civics, health and homemaking, and to promote their own.

The most powerful petitioner was Norma Gabler of Longview, Texas. Gabler and her husband Mel, a retired clerk for Exxon, have spent some 20 years scrutinizing text books for political bias, moral lapses and erosion of traditional values. The Gablers have regularly influenced the Texas board of education to drop texts that they consider too liberal, and in doing so have won the public admiration of such New Right leaders as the Rev. Jerry Falwell and Phyllis Schlafly. But at this year's hearings, a new organization took on the Gablers: People for the American Way, a group founded by Television Producer Norman Lear and others to fight for First Amendment causes.

People for the American Way (PFAW) picked the forum for a showdown over texts because Texas, as the nation's second largest purchaser of schoolbooks ($60 million this year), sets a tone for books throughout the U.S. by influencing how publishers tailor their texts. Says Barbara Parker, head of PFAW's National Schools and Libraries Project: "Censorship activity is so well organized that the only way to combat it is through an equal amount of organization. If 93% of a community doesn't want The Catcher in the Rye, that's O.K. That's a community decision. My disagreement is that in education today things are being run by vocal control, not local control." Snaps Norma Gabler: "It's a double standard. Those liberal elements have controlled the minds of our children for years. If parents bring things up, it's censorship. If they do it, it's not."

Gabler arrived at the hearings with two aides from her nonprofit Educational Research Analysts organization and 600 pages of detailed objections to publishers' offerings. In a fourth-grade text by McDougal, Littell & Co., the Gablers objected to a paragraph listing beneficial qualities of drugs like insulin for diabetes on the grounds that such information "is instilling in student minds that the term drugs refers to a beneficial product." In a junior high health text by Ginn & Co., the Gablers took exception to a chapter titled "When Things go Wrong." Their demand: a positive chapter called "When Things Go Right."

PFAW could not defend texts blacklisted by the Gablers at the public hearings, since state regulations allow only negative testimony and prohibit all positive comment. But the board of education will accept written rebuttals by supporters of the criticized texts. In a junior high school health text, the Gablers objected to a class discussion assignment on the concept of "worry." "It has no place being studied in the classroom," wrote the Gablers. The American Way rebuttal: "This objection is a dogmatic statement with no basis in education theory." The Gablers disapproved of an entire chapter of an eighth-grade civics book published by Scott, Foresman & Co. because of "an unnecessarily large amount of pictures of people protesting." The Gablers argue that "this is not an attitude most parents would want their children taught in school." Counters PFAW: "The United States was founded on protests. We find it ironic that people who make a living protesting would object to protesting by others."

The Gablers have many supporters and admirers. Says Paul Mathews, a member of the state board of education: "I feel the Gablers are doing a great service. They're ferreting out slang, vulgarities and also things that are unpatriotic." Yet many classroom teachers object to the Gablers' narrow viewpoints, and the Texas State Teachers Association helped PFAW by sending them the Gablers' criticisms in advance. Says Austin English Teacher Ouida Whiteside: "We all sat back for a long time and thought the whole thing was a joke. Suddenly we realized we'd been had." However, Grace Grimes, a deputy commissioner of education who chaired the textbook hearings, insists that the Gablers are just one component of the selection process.

The Texas board of education will not complete its selection of texts until November. Meanwhile, PFAW, which has 2,500 members in Texas (82,000 nationwide), has petitioned the commissioner of education to allow positive as well as critical testimony in next year's hearings, and hopes to open up the proclamation process that sets standards for Texas books. Says Michael Hudson, a native Texan in charge of PFAW's office in Austin: "Next week I hit the roads across Texas. I'm going to try to increase the level of interest in the process. My role will be that of a catalyst to open things up."

-- By Ellie McGrath. Reported by Sam Allis/ Austin

Late last week another tense conflict over what books students may read ended with a compromise in a group of Long Island, N.Y., suburbs. The board of the Island Trees Union Free School District, based in Levittown, voted 6 to 1 to return to school libraries the nine books it banned in 1975. The removal of the books, which included Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and Soul on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver, sparked national controversy and a legal challenge that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The court ruled in June that the ban might violate First Amendment rights, and ordered a trial to determine the reasons for removing the books. The board decided to avoid a trial and restore the books. It added, however, that librarians would send notes to the parents of children who check them out.

With reporting by Sam Allis

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