Bill Would Allow State to Ban Textbooks
Story by Brian Lopez – Texas Tribune
Textbooks are becoming the latest lightning rod in conservative lawmakers’ recent fight against books on school shelves.
House Bill 1804, authored by state Rep. Terri Leo-Wilson, R-Galveston, would allow the State Board of Education to reject textbooks for students below ninth grade if the textbooks include content on sexual orientation, gender identity and sexual activity. Textbooks could also be rejected if they fail to present U.S. history in a positive light or “encourage lifestyles that deviate from generally accepted standards of society.”
As of Monday afternoon, Leo-Wilson’s bill had been left pending in the House Committee on Public Education.
During this legislative session, lawmakers have zeroed in on restricting what sort of books kids can access in public schools. Bills in the Senate and House aim to take sexually explicit books off of school library shelves, with a bill in the House going as far as to require parental consent before a student can check out books with sexual references. Critics have said language within the bills is so vague it could end up inadvertently affecting books that are not inappropriate. (So far, none of these bills have cleared the necessary hurdles to make their way to the governor’s desk to be signed into law.)
If HB 1804 were to be signed into law, it would essentially restore power to the SBOE that lawmakers had restricted more than a decade ago. Until 2011, the board could reject textbooks based on subjective criteria, but legislators took that power away after the board recommended textbooks that questioned the theory of evolution.
The 15-member elected board, which dictates the state standards for what children need to learn in the classroom, has moved further to the right with recently elected members running on campaigns railing against “critical race theory.” The theory is a college-level discipline that examines how racism functions at a systemic level in the U.S. It is not taught in public schools in Texas, but the theory has become a catch-all term among conservatives to criticize teachings about race they feel have a liberal slant.
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