Welcome to the Coalition Enabling Our Children Blog!

Welcome to this blog. The Coalition Enabling Our Children got started at the beginning of 2005 when it became clear that students needed a bill passed that would require textbooks to empower them, not damage them for life.

To understand how this came about, a little background:

In late August, 2001, I learned that citizens can get involved in decisions regarding textbooks up for adoption each year in Texas. That year, the science textbooks were up. As a former aerospace engineer and now a writer specializing in space and nanotechnology, and long interested in education issues, I wanted to look at some textbooks.

The next testimony period for the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) was in early September. I had a chance to review only one textbook. It had science, space, and grammar problems.

But what stood out to me was that many of the photographs showed white males (boys and men) in positions having higher status, or doing something exciting, or just being in the photos, whereas white females (girls/women) and minorities (both genders) were generally shown in low-status positions, doing humdrum things, or not even in the photos -- Hispanics especially. So my testimony pointed out the science, space, grammar, and photo problems. The SBOE reaction? "Thank you, next!"

No one else showed any concern for the photo problem, so I realized I had to specialize. By the November hearing, I had looked at 17 more science textbooks. Again I testified to numerous problems, including that

1. many books showed males twice as often as females;
2. some textbooks showed women only in careers such as research assistant;
3. e.g., one textbook only showed one black in a career -- a ballerina, on p. 359. I.e., black students wouldn't have any role model until the year was half gone, and even then, it wasn't a science career; and,
4. e.g., this same textbook depicted NO Hispanic in any career, and another textbook only showed a Hispanic man involved with natural foods.

I also provided each SBOE director with a copy of a paper showing and interpreting representative photos from several books. But they still didn't get it. My pleas to not let these books be published until many photos had been reshot (or other stock photos found) met with blank stares. Later, the Board voted to accept all these damaging textbooks as is.

This post is long enough. I'll continue in the next with what happened the next year, with the history textbooks!