William J. Bennetta
Oklahoma is an "adoption state." It is one of 22 states, most of
them in the South or the West, in which state agencies control the
evaluation, selection and adoption of the textbooks that will be
used in public schools. In Oklahoma, the agency that performs the
evaluating and selecting and adopting is the Oklahoma State Textbook
Committee.
Oklahoma law says that the State Textbook Committee shall comprise
thirteen persons, all appointed by the governor. Twelve members
must be employees of public schools, and a majority of those twelve
must be classroom teachers. The thirteenth member must be a layman
"having at least one child in the public schools of Oklahoma." The
declared function of the Committee is to "select textbooks or series
of textbooks for each subject, which are in its judgment
satisfactory." The Committee must carry out "careful consideration
of all the books presented [by publishers]" and must select for
adoption "those which, in the opinion of the Committee, are best
suited for the public schools in this state." The Committee may
engage consultants, but the consultants must be "regular classroom
teachers."
These prescriptions constitute a recipe for farce. Though the
Committee is supposed to judge books in history, mathematics,
biology, chemistry and many other subjects, there is little chance
that the Committee ever will have a member (or will be able to
engage a consultant) who possesses professional knowledge of any of
those subjects. Hence there is little chance that the Committee
ever will have a member (or will be able to engage a consultant) who
is qualified to evaluate the treatment that is accorded to any of
those subjects in a schoolbook.
In practice, Oklahoma adoptions are indeed farcical. The State
Textbook Committee's proceedings serve chiefly to celebrate the
invention of the rubber stamp, and the Committee commonly approves
textbooks that any competent agency would immediately consign to the
trash heap.
In November 1999 the Committee finished one if its celebrations by
approving hundreds of books and other instructional items that
publishers had submitted, but this time the spectacle included a
dirty little sideshow: The Committee decided to enlist the
publishers of certain books in a scheme for promoting fundamentalist
religion in Oklahoma's public schools -- and Pearson Education, one
of the biggest schoolbook outfits in the United States, decided to
cooperate with the Committee and to help the Committee distribute
religious claptrap to Oklahoma students.
Although these things happened in 1999 during an adoption in
Oklahoma, they sprang from an event that had taken place in 1995 in
Alabama. Here is the story.
In November 1995 the State of Alabama's Board of Education erected a
rule requiring public schools to promote creationism. The rule is
still in force. It prescribes that all the biology books used in
Alabama's schools must carry a piece of religious propaganda titled
"A Message from the Alabama State Board of Education," which has
been designed to deceive students, to corrupt science education, to
foster false notions about organic evolution, and to advance
creationist pseudoscience. In the text of the "Message," the Board
dispenses a number of outright lies -- some in the form of
statements, some disguised as questions. The Board also attempts to
confuse and mislead students by proffering statements which carry
false implications, and by presenting claims or questions which
appear to contain information but which are, in fact, meaningless:
A Message from the Alabama State Board of Education
This textbook discusses evolution, a controversial theory some
scientists present as a scientific explanation for the origin of
living things, such as plants, animals and humans.
No one was present when life first appeared on earth. Therefore,
any statement about life's origins should be considered as theory,
not fact.
The word "evolution" may refer to many types of change.
Evolution describes changes that occur within a species. (White
moths, for example, may "evolve" into gray moths.) This process is
microevolution, which can be observed and described as fact.
Evolution may also refer to the change of one living thing to
another, such as reptiles into birds. This process, called
macroevolution, has never been observed and should be considered a
theory. Evolution also refers to the unproven belief that random,
undirected forces produced a world of living things.
There are many unanswered questions about the origin of life
which are not mentioned in your textbook, including:
- Why did the major groups of animals suddenly appear in the
fossil record (known as the "Cambrian Explosion")?
- Why have no new major groups of living things appeared in the
fossil record for a long time?
- Why do major groups of plants and animals have no transitional
forms in the fossil record?
- How did you and all living things come to possess such a
complete and complex set of "instructions" for building a living
body?
Study hard and keep an open mind. Someday you may contribute to
the theories of how living things appeared on earth.
State functionaries in Alabama produce adhesive labels displaying
the Board's "Message," and they distribute the labels to local
school districts. Officials of the local districts are responsible
for inserting the labels into their biology textbooks.
Detailed analyses of the Alabama "Message" have appeared in several
publications [see note 1, below], and the Alabama Board's lies have
been well exposed and well refuted.
Transplanting the "Message" to Oklahoma
On 5 November 1999 the Oklahoma State Textbook Committee undertook
to follow the Alabama Board's lead. During a mass approval of
science textbooks, a member named John Dickmann [note 2] proposed,
in a formal motion, that the Committee require the insertion of a
"disclaimer" into all of the approved books that contained
"materials on evolution." Dickmann incorporated into his motion the
disclaimer that he had in mind: It was titled "A Message From the
Oklahoma State Textbook Committee," and its text was virtually
identical with the text of the "Message" that the Alabama Board had
devised four years earlier [note 3].
After some debate, the Committee adopted an amended version of
Dickmann's motion -- by a vote of eleven to zero [note 4] -- and
declared that sixteen of the approved books would have to be
embellished with Dickmann's "Message" before they could be used in
Oklahoma schools. Fifteen of the sixteen were biology texts -- they
included Pearson Education's Biology: The Living Science
[note 5], the 1998 version of Holt's Biology: Principles and
Explorations [note 6], the 1998 version of Holt's Biology:
Visualizing Life [note 7], the 2000 version of Glencoe's
Biology: The Dynamics of Life [note 8], and the 1998 version
of Pearson Education's Fearon's Biology, an utterly ignorant
production in which even the definition of kilometer is
wrong [note 9]. The sixteenth book was the 1999 version of Pearson
Education's Prentice Hall Exploring Physical Science, a
notorious fake [note 10].
Superficially, the Oklahoma Committee's venture appeared to
duplicate the action which the Alabama Board had taken in 1995 --
but in fact, there was a deep difference between the Alabama case
and the Oklahoma case. In Alabama, as I noted earlier, the task of
inserting a religious "Message" into science textbooks has been
assigned to local school officials. The Oklahoma Committee,
however, decided to assign that task to publishers: The publishers
of the sixteen books cited in the Committee's declaration would have
to affix a facsimile of the Oklahoma "Message" to each copy of each
book intended for use in Oklahoma. In other words, the publishers
would have to serve as the Committee's agents and accomplices in
deceiving Oklahoma students and opposing the students' efforts to
understand biology.
Reactions to the Committee's Scheme
Articles about the Committee's meeting of 5 November ran in
Oklahoma newspapers on the 10th and on the 11th. Then, during the
next ten days or so, the papers reported various reactions to the
Committee's declaration and the Committee's "Message." For example:
- Wayne Carley, the executive director of the National Association
of Biology Teachers, commented: "[T]he more I look at this thing, the
more upset I get. . . . [The "Message"] says this book may talk
about evolution, but you don't have to pay attention to it."
[note 11]
- Americans United for Separation of Church and State dispatched a
letter to Oklahoma's secretary of education, Floyd Coppedge,
protesting the Committee's move and suggesting that it could spawn a
lawsuit. [note 11]
- The National Science Teachers Association produced a formal
statement saying that the "Message" embraced by the Committee "does
not reflect an accurate interpretation of the concept of evolution
and distorts the nature of science. . . . [It] will only confuse
science teachers and students and weaken the integrity of science
education." [note 12]
- Eugenie C. Scott, the executive director of the National Center
for Science Education, denounced as "baloney" the Committee's
assertion equating organic evolution with "the unproven belief that
random, undirected forces produced a world of living things." Scott
asserted that the Committee's "Message" was a device for
intimidating teachers. [note 13]
- Oklahoma's governor, Frank Keating -- who had appointed all the
members of the Committee -- described the Committee's "Message" as
"thoughtful." He also disclosed that he didn't think that he was a
descendant of a baboon. [note 14]
- Floyd Coppedge, the secretary of education, endorsed the
"Message" and said that he was not opposed to teaching creationism
in public schools. [note 15]
- Jerry Smith, a state senator, announced: "Evolution is a theory.
Nobody was around when it happened." [note 16]
The newspaper stories were adequate, but most seemed rather
pedestrian. An exception was Randy Krehbiel's piece that ran in the
Tulsa World, on 16 November, under the headline "A force for
change." The "force" was Laura Dobson, a member of the Textbook
Committee. In two short paragraphs, Krehbiel made clear that Dobson
was a buffoon and Oklahoma's textbook-adoption mechanism was a
travesty:
Dobson, a Ponca City kindergarten teacher, freely admits that she
led the attack on prevailing scientific theory because she wants
creationism to receive equal footing in public schools. She
acknowledges her limited scientific training but points out that
each panelist is allowed five expert advisors.
Dobson's, it turns out, were a school nurse, a middle school
geography teacher, a chemist, an accountant and a Florida
evangelist who preaches that the Earth is no more than 6,000 years
old, fossils are a result of the Great Flood and the Loch Ness
Monster is a dinosaur whose existence proves that evolutionary
theory is a hoax.
As I surveyed the Oklahoma newspapers and read their stories about
responses to the Textbook Committee's action, my thoughts turned to
the publishers of the sixteen books that the Committee had cited.
How would they respond? The publishers knew very well that
the Committee's "Message" was fundamentalist rubbish, contrived to
bamboozle and harm students. Would they obey the Committee's order
and insert that rubbish into their schoolbooks? Or would they
reject the order and refuse to take part in the Committee's little
crusade against science education?
"It's a Business Decision"
Of the sixteen books on the Committee's list, six were books
published by Pearson Education. On 23 November I called Pearson's
vice-president for quality and standards, Wendy K. Spiegel, to find
out what her company was going to do. Spiegel told me that "in
order for publishers to do business in [Oklahoma]," the publishers
had to comply with the Committee's order -- and Pearson had decided
to do just that.
"It's a business decision," she said. "We made the decision that
we chose to compete in Oklahoma."
I wasn't surprised: I had read Pearson's books, I had watched some
of Pearson's commercial antics, and I was well aware of Pearson's
contempt for students, for education, for simple honesty, and for
anything else that might stand between Pearson and a dollar
[note 17]. Still, I was
chagrined when Spiegel -- after informing me of
Pearson's business decision -- told me that inserting the Oklahoma
"Message" into science books wouldn't constitute "changing the
content of the books." She must have thought that I was uncommonly
stupid.
How about the other publishers? How were the publishers of the ten
other books going to respond to the Committee's order?
I never found out. I had to give attention to other things, so I
laid the Oklahoma matter aside for a while -- and before I could
return to it and question the other publishers, the entire affair
was rendered moot by Oklahoma's attorney general, Drew Edmondson.
On 2 February 2000 -- in response to a query from a state senator --
Edmondson issued an opinion that nullified the Textbook Committee's
order and crushed the Committee's "Message" scheme. The Committee,
Edmondson declared, possessed no authority to "require that a
statement or pronouncement specified by the committee be added or
placed in textbooks as a condition [for adoption]." Further,
Edmondson said, the Committee had violated Oklahoma's Open Meeting
Act: The agenda for the Committee's meeting of 5 November 1999 had
failed to "inform the public that a disclaimer regarding evolution
or any other topic was to be considered, much less voted on."
[note 18]
And that was that. Edmondson's opinion had the force of law. The
dirty little sideshow was over.
Oklahoma's 1999 adoption of science books provided several lessons,
but I suppose that most of them will be ignored. I don't expect
Oklahoma's politicians to wake up, to install a respectable
textbook-adoption process, and to abolish the Textbook Committee. I
don't even expect them to try to turn the Committee into a
respectable agency -- say, by enacting laws to ensure that the
Committee will include plenty of subject-matter experts and will not
be packed with impostors and buffoons. That, I reckon, is too much
to hope for. I do, however, hope that alert educators, when they
consider the Oklahoma adoption, will ponder the folly of buying
textbooks from any company that is willing "to do business" by
deceiving students and betraying teachers.
Notes
- As an example: "Alabama
Will Use Schoolbooks to Spread Lies and Foster Creationism" in
The Textbook Letter for November-December 1995. This article
is available on The Textbook League's Web site at
http://www.textbookleague.org/65bama.htm. [return to
text]
- John Dickmann is employed as a teacher at a public middle school
in Broken Arrow. [return to text]
- In the Alabama "Message," the opening sentence ended with the
phrase "plants, animals and humans." In Dickmann's "Message," this
phrase was replaced by "plants and humans." Most of the other
differences between Dickmann's "Message" and the Alabama text were
differences in punctuation or spelling. For example, Dickmann used
"micro evolution" and "macro evolution" in place of "microevolution"
and "macroevolution." [return to text]
- In November of 1999, two of the thirteen seats on the Committee
were vacant. [return to text]
- Two reviews of Prentice Hall Biology:
The Living Science
ran in TTL, September-October 1998. [return to text]
- For a review of the 1998 version of Biology: Principles and
Explorations, see TTL, September-October 1997. [return to text]
- For a review of the 1998 version of Biology: Visualizing
Life, see TTL, September-October 1997. [return to text]
- See "This Book Is a Travesty" in TTL,
November-December 1999. [return to text]
- See "Here's Frankenstein Again" in TTL,
May-June 1999. [return to text]
- See "This Prentice Hall Book Fails on
Each and Every Count" in the present issue of TTL.
[return to text]
- See "Textbook rule fans the flames," by Randy Krehbiel, in the
Tulsa World, 12 November 1999. [return to text]
- Quoted by Scott Cooper in the Tulsa World, 18 November
1999. [return to text]
- See Barbara Palmer's article in The Oklahoman, 20
November 1999. [return to text]
- See Randy Krehbiel's article in the Tulsa World, 16
November 1999. [return to text]
- See Diane Plumberg's piece in The Oklahoman, 18 November
1999. [return to text]
- Quoted by Scott Cooper in the Tulsa World, 18 November
1999. [return to text]
- See the article "First the Hoopla --
Then the Whitewash" in the
present issue of TTL, and see the textbook reviews cited in
that article. [return to text]
- See "Vote to disclaim negated," by Barbara Hoberock and Scott
Cooper, in the Tulsa World, 3 February 2000.
[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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