Ten years ago, I wrote a book about the censorship of textbooks and tests by groups from every extreme of the political spectrum. Every group had its own political agenda, and the mechanism that made them successful was the state textbook adoption process. When the state board has the power to make publishers rewrite language that someone opposed. Texas and California were the worst offenders, because they had the most active pressure groups.
State textbook adoption is an entree to censorship and political meddling.
A social studies teacher in Indiana writes:
“During the last textbook adoption cycle for Social Studies, Gov Daniels and his State Supt. Tony Bennett originally refused to approve any text for US History except for one book, William J. Bennett’s America: The Last Best Hope. A copy was sent to our school to review and adopt as our new text. One of the reporters who uncovered this story needs to dig a little deeper.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
And it went even further! Mr. Daniels tried to remove a professor whose work he disagreed with. Not saying I’d agree with the professor either, but this is NOT encouraging productive thought and dialog. It’s powerful censorship.
http://m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/07/17/e-mails-reveal-censorship-efforts-by-mitch-daniels-as-indiana-governor/
This is why we nonfiction authors are welcoming the CCSS as an opening to allow nonfiction literature be used in classrooms in lieu of textbooks. There are wonderful, thoughtful books out there about all topics in the curriculum that just may find their way into the hands and minds of children. If children are supposed to learn how to think critically they must think about SOMETHING. Content is now going to matter again. It would be helpful if teachers would be allowed to think critically as well.
To learn more, check out our website: http://www.inkthinktank.com
Correct me if I’m wrong, but is the Ink Think Tank affiliated with Scholastic in some way? Your logos are awfully similar! Plus, you, Vicki Cobb, seem to have had a long relationship with Scholastic.
Hi Barbara:
iNK Think Tank is an organization I founded of award-winning children’s nonfiction authors. We have no affiliation with Scholastic although many of us, including moi, have been published by Scholastic. Our logo is an ink blot so I don’t see the resemblance to the Scholastic logo. I’ve just been around as an author for a verrrrry long time so I don’t blame you for your confusion.
Thanks for your interest.
Vicki
The former Secretary of Education, from the reviews I have read, mind you not the books, appears to have compiled history from 1492 onwards from an American exceptionalism point of view, and right wing indeed.
In one of Sherman Alexie’s short stories a mother tells her son “If any teacher ever tells you that Columbus discovered America, I want you to jump on his back and yell, ‘I discovered you!'”
No, Absolutely not the intention of common core. Why can’t our students think critically now about teacher/state content without following a ridged outline from top down? CC is the indoctrination of our children to government and corporate means. The only critical thinking students would have is following the agenda set forth in the privatizers new textbooks that the states are forced to buy inwhich the vendors profit. Meanwhile, the issue of poverty and students with special needs is ignored by the CC standards.
Why is Exxon promoting CC? Could they be trading in favors for some of their spills that don’t have press?
I don’t know who the reporters are that he is referring to, but Mary Beth Schneider of the Indianapolis Star and of course, Karen Francisco of Fort Wayne’s Journal Gazette would be my choice for investigating this further. Let’s hope they pick this up where it left off.
I believe the original story was by the Associated Press.
Karen Francisco is a fine journalist but I believe she is now the Editorial Page Editor of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. I think this prevents her from personally doing any investigative journalism.
Mitch Daniels is not only wrong in his critique of Howard Zinn’s “totally false version of our history,” he is also wrong when he says that Zinn’s work is not used in K-12 Indiana schools. We know because hundreds of Indiana teachers are registered for the Zinn Education Project website to access people’s history teaching resources. http://zinnedproject.org/2013/07/mitch-daniels/ Also, much of the discussion about academic freedom in the articles about Daniels over the past two days has been limited to whether or not Zinn was banned at the college level — as if academic freedom was not a right of K-12 teachers and students as well. So, thank you Diane Ravitch for weighing in!
So Ed is now a historian and textbook author? You don’t say. Has anyone read the book and written a critique of it? I’m curious as to how accurate it is and what the slant or bias might be. Fact or fiction/fable?
In 2000, William J. Bennett co-founded K12, a for-profit online education corporation which is publicly traded. Bennett is a far right wing libertarian type who hates public schools and would love to replace them with vouchers, charter schools and whatever laissez-faire social Darwinist capitalist scheme he can come up with.