Historians/History

An Atheist Sees Bias in a Texas Textbook

by Laura Sargent

Ms. Sargent is a 5th-generation Texan, and a proud parochial school graduate. Recently, she presented testimony to the State Board of Education about the textbook she reports on in this article.

Although I am an atheist, born and raised, I attended a private, religious school from nursery school through the 12th grade. I always felt that I received an excellent education and I still feel that way--with one glaring exception, the education I got in history class.

I blame the textbooks we used.

After reading about the Texas textbook controversy, I decided to examine one of the books myself: The American Nation, Beginnings through 1877, published by Prentice Hall. It is supposed to be an 8th grade social studies text, but I have a hard time categorizing it as such. It is a mixture of quite a few different fields and ranges chronologically all over the place, but primarily it is a history textbook.

In most cases, the textbook includes the truth about historical events. However, the truth is often very difficult to discover owing to the manner in which the information is displayed or the amount of space that is given to it. Biased, misleading information is frequently presented first and is developed over pages and pages filled with both text and drawings. The correct information is relegated to one sentence.

These are some examples of the more than 150 incidents I found of flagrant bias, most of which occur in the first 130 pages for some reason:

·The text in various places says that the First Amendment guarantees "Your right to worship as you please…" This sentence should say "'Your right to worship in any manner you choose, or not to worship at all." The First Amendment right to freedom of religion also includes freedom FROM religion.

·In the 1400s, the textbook states, "Islam expanded through trade and conquest. Many people in conquered lands chose to convert to the successful new religion." People who were conquered "chose" to convert? How is "convert or die" a choice? The characterization of a religion as "successful" should be deleted.

·The Crusades: Nothing is said about how many people were killed. The Crusades are presented as only having had positive effects.

·The Pilgrims: The text states that they came over on the Mayflower in search of religious freedom. Really? The Pilgrims were divided between Saints and Strangers. Only the Saints came over so that they could practice their religion freely. The others aboard the ship came to America to improve their fortunes, some even hoping for gold.

·Credit for the idea of "religious freedom for everyone" is given solely to the Pilgrims, but without any evidence:. "Still, the Pilgrims' desire to worship freely set an important precedent, or example for others to follow in the future. Plymouth's leaders announced 'that any honest man may live with them, that will carry themselves peaceably and seek the common good.' In time, the idea of religious freedom for all would become a cornerstone of American democracy." Did the Pilgrim leaders practice what they preached? The third sentence is given as an outgrowth of the first two. I don't think it follows. Just because they wanted freedom for themselves doesn't mean they wanted it for anyone else.

·The Puritans: in the summary of this section the textbook says that Massachusetts Bay Colony was founded for "religious freedom." In the text itself the book asserts that the colonists plan was to build a new society based on biblical laws and teachings. Nothing was stated about religious freedom.

·The summary section of the book says Rhode Island was founded to establish religious freedom. True--but the reason, as explained in the text, was to get freedom from Puritan control. If that was so, then how can both the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay and the colonists of Rhode Island both be said to have believed in religious freedom?

I always blamed my teachers for the biased lessons I learned in history class. But I now believe my teachers weren't lying to me, they were simply teaching from a textbook that was woefully incomplete and blatantly biased (and teaching to the testing standards). I was shocked to learn that almost 30 years later, textbooks still leave out critically important information and are outrageously biased.