They ban textbooks, don't they?
Texas school officials rejected a widely used environmental textbook, claiming it was filled with errors. The author says they're censoring him because they didn't like his green views -- and he's suing.
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By Frederick Clarkson
Nov. 5, 2003 | A federal lawsuit filed last week in Texas may very well turn into the Lone Star State's own version of the Scopes "Monkey Trial" -- the famous 1925 court battle in which two of America's most famous attorneys debated whether evolution should be taught in the public schools. Then, the underlying issue was whether Christianity should trump science; today, it is the scientific status of mainstream environmentalism. In the current case, the author of a widely used environmental textbook is suing five present and former members of the Texas State Board of Education, who two years ago rejected his book because of alleged factual errors and pervasive bias. Claiming that the author's free speech and equal protection rights were violated by an act of censorship, the lawsuit asserts that the real reason the book was rejected was the author's environmentalist views, which clash with those of right-wing school-board members.
The lawsuit, filed Oct. 30 in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas by the Washington-based Trial Lawyers for Public Justice, was also filed on behalf of several Texas high school students, who the suit alleges have been denied access to this book. The plaintiffs want the book included on the state list of approved texts, a court order declaring that the board members' rejection of the book was unconstitutional, and unspecified damages stemming from the lost sales.
The stakes of the suit could hardly be higher. The battle is a veritable microcosm of the culture wars, pitting the Christian right, energy industry supporters, and defenders of Texas' right to control the textbooks its students read against environmentalists, the publishing industry, First Amendment advocates, and professional educators.
The textbook at the center of the suit is "Environmental Science: Creating a Sustainable Future," by Daniel D. Chiras. The book, which is in its sixth edition and has been taught in many colleges and high schools in Texas and across the country for 20 years, passed the usual rigorous peer review process and had been recommended by the commissioner of education, along with two others. However, in a last-minute hearing before the board in November 2001, the book was rejected by conservative board members, who said it was factually inaccurate and espoused a "radical" environmental agenda. The board called it "anti-Christian" and "anti-American" because, among other things, it claimed there is a scientific consensus regarding global warming.
The unusual feature of the rejection was that the board and its individual members ignored the formal review, apparently relying on a 24-page critique prepared by a conservative think tank, the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), an organization closely tied to the state Republican Party and one of whose board members is married to the chairperson of the board of education. The board was also apparently influenced by testimony from members of a right-wing activist group, Citizens for a Sound Economy, at the hearing. After a stormy hearing, the board, which is made up of 10 Republicans and five Democrats, voted to reject the book along straight party lines.
At the hearing the TPPF charged that the book was not acceptable for use in Texas classrooms. Asserting that the "vitriol against Western civilization and its primary belief systems is shocking," the TPPF's critique, written by Duggan Flanakin, alleged that the book is full of "errors of fact and significant omissions, in addition to the heavy bias toward radical politics." At times, the TPPF's critique veered into shrill rhetoric more reminiscent of Rush Limbaugh than a sober academic review, as when it charged that by championing solar energy and turning "producers and marketers of traditional energy sources into bogeymen ... this text provides yet another form of flag burning." The TPPF also engaged in some crude smearing, saying that Chiras' claim that air travel has an "increasingly high environmental cost ... makes Osama Bin Laden into a hero of sorts for discouraging air travel in the United States and elsewhere."
The director of Citizens for a Sound Economy claimed, among other things, that the book "blames Christianity, Democracy and Industrialization ... as causing the so-called [environmental] 'crisis'" and that this is "highly offensive to patriotic Americans and Christians."
Most of the alleged factual errors cited in the TPPF's critique appear to be matters of ideological controversy or irresolvable philosophical disputes, not matters of provable fact. For example, Flanakin attacked as an "inaccuracy" Chiras' statement that indigenous peoples practiced sustainable development, which required an integrated set of goals. "One can hardly reason that these primitive societies set clearly definable goals, or even that they practiced sustainability," Flanakin wrote. "It is more likely that most of these largely nomadic peoples espoused a 'frontier ethic' that was made possible by the fact of very small populations and large territories." As Flanakin's use of the words "more likely" indicate, this would not appear to be a point that can be definitively proved one way or the other.
According to Texas law, the board has the right to reject a textbook if it contains factual errors, but not because it disagrees with the author's viewpoint. Burt Neuborne, a professor of First Amendment law at New York University, says, "You can't choose a book based on the viewpoint of the author. A government official has the power to make determinations based on quality and accuracy, but he does not have the power to censor what school children hear, and turn the school system into a propaganda mill." At the same time, he cautions, "If there really are questions of fact, and quality, the courts can't second-guess."
There is no question that Chiras is an active and committed environmentalist. His book sounds loud alarms about the state of the world environment, including global warming, deforestation and other crises. He argues that the current situation is not sustainable and that the developed nations, which consume a disproportionate share of the earth's resources, urgently need to change their ways. He points out that the rise of industrialized civilization had serious negative consequences for the environment. He critiques current policies and lays out a number of alternatives to them.
None of these viewpoints is particularly controversial within environmental science -- in fact, they could be said to pretty much represent mainstream environmentalist thinking. But mainstream environmentalism hardly seems mainstream to conservative board members, who note that Texas law requires that its textbooks promote democracy, patriotism and free enterprise. Chiras insists that his book is completely consistent with those goals.
Since environmentalism is not a hard science, like mathematics or physics, questions of fact can be hard to establish. The TPPF critique attacks Chiras' book for being one-sided, but the line between being biased and simply having a point of view -- and in Chiras' case, a point of view that is far from heterodox in his field -- is almost impossible to define. As a result, the outcome of the lawsuit is hard to call.
Whatever its fate, the Chiras case is a shot across the bow of a powerful, assertive and increasingly successful conservative faction on the board that openly boasts of its ability to affect the national textbook publishing industry. As the nation's second-largest textbook market (after California, which also has a statewide approval process for public school textbooks), Texas is likely to purchase some $700 million worth of school textbooks over the next two years. Because of the scale of the Texas market, publishers often cater to what they think will sell to the board. "Publishers fear offending the Texas board, which often sets the agenda for textbooks nationwide," says Adele Kimmel, an attorney with Trial Lawyers for Public Justice.
The bottom line, in Neuborne's words: "The market is such that if publishers can't print separate editions, Texas censors not only its own books, but the entire nation's." |
