well poop. i had just written a nice entry and somehow i hit a wrong button on the keyboard and it disappeared. here we go again.
i wonder if i should get in the becca-like habit of updating first thing every morning when i get to work. i ended up doing it that way last summer when i first started on diaryland, but i think i prefer to update whenever i feel like it, and when i have something to say. though from the sound of some entries, it’s apparent that sometimes i do indeed write when i have nothing to say. 😉
anyway. can i just say that i love my officemates? i adore them. that is all.
so i was listening to an interesting story on npr this morning as i drove to work, about the politics and religious beliefs that become embroiled in the process of choosing school textbooks each year. in states like texas, california, and florida, this is a huge deal to a lot of people. i never realized this before, but when i mentioned it to becca (who went to high school in palm beach county), she had plenty of stories about textbook battles, and said that it’s not even unheard of for christian coalition members to move to florida and run for the school board in order to be able to affect textbook selections.
some examples from the radio this morning were: a publishing company altered a photograph on the cover of an economics text, digitally adding loincloths to the statues in a picture of the facade of the new york stock exchange. protests against a history book because it contained one sentence about how in the 19th century, there were 50,000 prostitutes west of the mississippi. (i can’t remember the stat exactly, but it was something along those lines, the objectionable part being the reference to prostitutes, i suppose.) protests against another text because it stated that karl marx was the most important socialist thinker in the world.
i don’t understand the big deal, especially when it comes to history–unlike math or science, history has always been and will always be a rather subjective discipline, subject to the biases of the historian. but who are we to nitpick every little thing that our children learn? isn’t it better for them to get a well-rounded education, learn how to analyze and accept differing opinions, and then form their own ideas of their world?
at the end of the report, the journalist asked the question that i thought was most indicative of the entire problem: in the end, how can the conservative textbook crusaders ensure that they’re not simply replacing textbooks’ perceived liberal bent with a conservative one? to me, that is the real danger. getting rid of one bias only to replace it with another.
anyway. i don’t think i expressed my thoughts on that issue very well, but at least it’s something to ponder.
