Reviewing a high-school book in biology

Students in Texas Have Been Betrayed Again

William J. Bennetta

I was reminded of Wachtler's comment as I looked through the 1998 Texas edition of Glencoe's Biology: The Dynamics of Life, which has been adopted by the Texas State Board of Education as a high-school biology textbook. The Texas Board, I believe, would adopt a ham sandwich as a high-school biology book if that were what a big publisher wanted [see note 1, below].

The Dynamics of Life is a glitzy, ignorant schoolbook that has been around for years. Ellen C. Weaver and I reviewed the 1991 version [note 2], then David L. Jameson and I wrote reviews of the 1995 version [note 3]. I didn't review the 1998 version, but Jameson did. He iterated his view that The Dynamics of Life was a menace to science education, and he said that the 1998 version was just the 1995 version with some minor, poorly done changes (including a new illustration that blatantly contradicted the book's text). He called attention to the 1998 book's ludicrous obsolescence, and he remarked that "Glencoe's writers still do not know what they are writing about, and they have not even tried to keep up with science news that has been readily available in the popular media." [note 4]

The 1998 Texas edition will not detain us for long. Sixteen pages of cutesy, trivial "Texas Biology Reports" have been bound into the front the book, before the title page, but all the rest of the 1998 Texas edition is virtually identical with the 1998 national edition -- the edition that Jameson examined. The Texas edition merits attention only because the Texas Board's adoption of this book testifies anew to the Board's irresponsibility and dereliction.

• Page 120: In Glencoe's national edition, density-dependent factors "have an increasing effect as the population increases." In the Texas edition, they "have an increasing effect as the population increases in size."

• Page 340: The Texas edition shows minor alterations in a sentence referring to the inheritance of a "variegated leaf trait," and the leaf-trait inheritance is no longer said to be "cytoplasmic."

• Page 537: In the Texas edition, the heading on a paragraph has been changed from "Reproductive strategies of amoebas" to "Reproductive strategies of sarcodines." At two places within the paragraph, "amoeba" or "amoebas" has been replaced by "sarcodines" -- and as a result, the rest of the paragraph is unclear.

• Page 748: In the national edition, an earthworm anchors itself by using "setae on the sides of the body." In the Texas edition, the worm uses "setae on the lower surface of the body."

• Page 772: In the national edition, pill bugs are "the most common land crustaceans." In the Texas edition, they are "the only land crustaceans."

• Page 810: The Texas book says that vertebrates are the only animals that can survive the "rigors of changing environments," that vertebrates are the only animals that engage in "complex behaviors," and that vertebrates are the only animals that migrate. The first two claims are meaningless, and the third claim is false.

• Page 831: In the national edition, frogs use their tongues "with great accuracy" to capture prey. The Texas edition, however, claims that frogs are infallible -- that their accuracy is "unerring." That is false.

• Page 855: A picture caption has been rearranged, with no change in wording.

• Page 873: The national edition tells that some mammals have sweat glands. The Texas edition says that sweat glands occur only in "hairless areas." That is quite false. The writers of the Texas edition aren't even aware of the distribution of sweat glands on their own bodies!

• Page 921: In Glencoe's Texas edition, in an array of factoids about vertebrates, the "Numbers of species" of anuran amphibians, caudate amphibians and caecilians have been changed.

• Page 924: In the same array of factoids, the Texas edition declares that birds have no jaws!

• Page 1,119: Two review questions that appear on page 1,118 of the national edition have been moved to page 1,119 of the Texas edition. The questions themselves have not been altered.

After I finished my formal sampling of pages, I glanced through the Texas edition and noticed some of its other charms. I learned that asymmetry is a kind of symmetry. I learned that all animals are predators and must kill prey. I learned that the writers had no idea of what a law of nature may be. I learned that there are only three kingdoms of living things -- then I learned that there are six. I groaned when I saw the phony-baloney caption in which the Glencoe writers misidentified Astyanax mexicanus, a common fish which is described in handbooks for aquarists. I chuckled when the writers put forth their false claim that "Common mole-rats are completely sightless," since a nearby photograph clearly showed a mole-rat's eye. I grinned when the writers announced that "the largest known cell" is the yolk -- just the yolk, mind you -- of an ostrich egg. I laughed aloud at the idiotic "BioLab" project that would reveal "the ideal length and width for a bird's tail," and I laughed at other phony projects that were comparably inane.

I can't laugh, though, when I consider that students may actually use this book in schools. Once again, the Texas State Board of Education has betrayed Texas students and has sold them out.

Notes

1. To read about two other books that the Texas Board has approved for high-school biology courses, see the review of Fearon's Biology in TTL, July-August 1998, and the two reviews of Scott Foresman - Addison Wesley Biology: The Web of Life in TTL, November-December 1998. [return to text]

2. See "Ignorance and Superstition in a Gaudy, Glitzy Package" and "An Inept, Unacceptable Text with Handsome Decorations" in TTL for November-December 1991. [return to text]

3. See "This Book Is a Menace" and "Turn It Off" in TTL, July-August 1996. [return to text]

4. See "The Return of the Menace" in TTL for May-June 1999. [return to text]

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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