This article appeared in The Textbook Letter for March-April
1999. It accompanied a review of Sandra Stotsky's book
Losing Our Language: How Multicultural Classroom Instruction Is
Undermining Our Children's Ability to Read, Write, and Reason.

Losing Our Science

William J. Bennetta

Such perversity isn't unique to basal readers. The falsification of the history of science and technology can be seen in many other schoolbooks, including multi-culti history books and multi-culti science books. To the greatest practical extent, the writers shun any mention of scientific and technological innovations, no matter how important, if those innovations were achieved by white males. When such innovations must be mentioned, they typically are presented not as products of human effort but as things of unknown origin -- things that simply appeared out of nowhere.

Concomitantly, the writers of multi-culti books contrive phony material in which great scientific and technological feats are ascribed to women, to blacks, or to Amerindians. For example:

• The writers of Addison-Wesley Life Science tried to make a heroine out of a woman who, they claimed, had pioneered the use of agar in microbiology. The writers presented this mundane matter as one of the grand events in the history of biological science -- but they manifestly didn't know what agar was or why it was useful. See TTL for November-December 1990.

• The writers of Kendall/Hunt's Middle School Life Science made George Washington Carver into an ecologist, so that they could show two pictures of him in a unit about "Ecosystems and Ecology." (Pictures play a major role in the promotion of multi-culti racial and sexual stereotypes.) The Middle School Life Science writers never said a word about Darwin, von Humboldt, Warming, Forel, Lotka or any of the other white scientists who really did study ecosystems and who made paramount contributions to ecology. See the review of Middle School Life Science in TTL for September-October 1992.

• Indeed, the writers of multi-culti textbooks have made George Washington Carver into a clown -- a sort of minstrel-show Mistah Lab Coat who regularly turns up in contrived, absurd situations. That's too bad, because the real Carver was a man of considerable accomplishment and wasn't ridiculous at all. To read about another of Mistah Lab Coat's comical appearances, see the second review of McDougal Littell's America's Past and Promise in TTL for September-October 1997.

• Glencoe has dug up a black named Lewis Howard Latimer. You can find a picture of him on page 683 of Glencoe Pre-Algebra, along with a paragraph about his monumental contribution to modern technology: He made the drawings that accompanied Alexander Graham Bell's application for a patent on the telephone. (There is no picture of Bell himself, nor any account of his work, nor any attempt to glorify any draftsman who was white.)

• The writers of D.C. Heath's Physical Science: The Challenge of Discovery concocted a story in which some Amerindians were credited with inventing mechanical air-conditioning technology -- or something like that. One couldn't really tell what the Indians had allegedly invented, because Heath's story, like so much of the nonsense contrived by multi-culti racists, was quite incomprehensible. See "Down in the Mud with Mark A. Carle" in TTL, July-August 1991.

• The writers of Addison-Wesley Environmental Science tried to glorify an Indian superstition by declaring that it was "similar" to scientific findings made by geologists. This was a lie. There was no similarity at all. See "Addison-Wesley Attacks Again" in TTL for November-December 1995.

• In all the multi-culti "American history" books, it seems, the accounts of World War 2 tell how "Navajo code talkers," serving with the United States Marines in the Pacific theatre, conveyed tactical messages in their obscure language (which the Japanese could not understand). Treating the Navajos as the cryptological stars of the war, the books say nothing about the ingenious white men who broke Japan's and Germany's military codes and obtained information of supreme strategic importance, enabling the Allies to fashion successful strategies in the Pacific and in Europe. Nowhere in these books will you find an article about William Friedman or an article about the brilliant cryptanalysts of Bletchley Park. You won't even find an article on Joseph Rochefort and the breaking of the Japanese naval code JN-25. (From intercepted JN-25 messages, Rochefort discovered that the Japanese intended to attack Midway in 1942. This cryptanalytical stroke enabled American forces to prevail at Midway and to break the back of the Japanese navy, ensuring that Japan ultimately would be defeated -- but students won't read about Rochefort's feat in any multi-culti schoolbook. Rochefort was white.)

• The writers of Glencoe's Merrill Physical Science gave a whole page to Alma Woodsey Thomas, a black painter. They didn't say why an article about Thomas should appear in a science book, and they didn't show examples of Thomas's work, but they displayed a big picture of Thomas herself. See how black she was!

• "Gerty Theresa Cori (1896-1957)," says the heading on a biographical article in Glencoe's Merrill Chemistry, and above the heading there is a picture of the lady herself. Gerty Cori was one of the winners of a Nobel Prize, awarded in 1947 -- and the other winner was her husband and collaborator, Carl. Why doesn't Carl's name appear in the heading? Why is there no picture of him? Can anyone discern any practical difference between Glencoe's tawdry trickery and plain lying?

These are only a few examples, but they suffice to show how some schoolbook-writers, devoted to multi-culti indoctrination, systematically promote illusory visions of the history of science and technology. The writers ignore or misrepresent first-rate scientific and technological achievements, they ignore or misrepresent first-rate scientists and technologists, they project a false impression of "science," loaded with glorified trifles and irrelevant junk, and they contrive "science" that is wholly phony.

William J. Bennetta is a professional editor, a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences, the president of The Textbook League, and the editor of The Textbook Letter. He writes often about the propagation of quackery, false "science" and false "history" in schoolbooks.

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