Textbook Controversies
There’s a new textbook at school. She isn’t very popular, though; her kind often must deal with the prejudices of being dull and boring and the associations with excessive homework loads before they really fit in. At her old school, no one liked her because of the weight she added to the students’ backpacks. At her new school, she has sworn to disprove all the prejudices and break that mold.
According to history department chair Marshall Cohen, textbooks’ roles in and outside of the classroom have changed drastically in his four decades at South. Two of the major concerns about textbooks today are the biases that some carry and the overall intellectual level of their material.
Cohen, personally, is more troubled by the latter. “Textbooks should be appropriate for all students who use them,” he said. “Essentially, they’re a lowest common denominator.” During his tenure at South, he has seen textbooks evolve from having college-style, dense text on every page to textbooks that more closely resemble “picture books.” With bolded vocabulary words and key phrases, numerous graphics, fact boxes in the margins and links to additional online resources, today’s textbooks indeed seem to be ai…
Background on Texas Textbook Controversy
Texas’ State Board of Education recently passed a resolution to make all textbooks used in Texas public high schools more politically conservative. Because Texas has almost five million students in its public school system and the most streamlined education system in the country, major textbook companies typically cater to the standards of Texas’ education system. Therefore, many school districts across the country will now purchase the conservative, inexpensive and standardized textbooks for their high school students.
The majority of the c…
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The Lion's Roar is a student-run newspaper of Newton South High School. We publish monthly with articles regarding the school and Newton. Find out more
