TW: Perhaps you know how textbook publishing is driven strongly by the requirements of the big states such as New York, California and Texas. A small state can define weird requirements and a publisher may ignore them and risk that states business. The publishers are generally unwilling to ignore the large states, however, as to do so risks too much business.
Hence the perennial fights in the larger states over textbook definitions drive the entire country's textbook criteria. The latest is the dreaded creationism tripe being foisted upon us by cultural conservatives in Texas. If the cultural conservatives have done anything effectively over the past 30 years, it has been insinuating themselves into local government including school boards. In this case the cultural conservatives are near control of the TX state board responsible for textbooks.
From Int'l Herald Tribune:
"...Even as federal courts have banned the teaching of creationism and intelligent design in biology courses, social conservatives have gained 7 of 15 seats on the Texas board in recent years, and they enjoy the strong support of Governor Rick Perry, a Republican[TW: this guy very much sees himself as POTUS material btw although I suspect anyone with "former TX governor' on his resume will struggle for awhile in POTUS contests].
The chairman of the board, Dr. Don McLeroy, a dentist from central Texas, pushed in 2003 for a more skeptical version of evolution to be presented in the state's textbooks but could not get a majority to vote with him. McLeroy has said he does not believe in Darwin's theory and thinks that Earth's appearance is a recent geologic event, thousands of years old, not 4.5 billion as scientists contend.
...Stephen Meyer, a specialist in the history of science and a director at the Discovery Institute["intelligent" design advocacy organization] , denied that the group was advocating a biblical version of creation. Rather, he said, it is fighting for academic freedom and against what it sees as a fanatical loyalty to Darwin among biologists, akin to a secular religion
...But several biologists who appeared in the hearing room said the objections raised by Meyer and some board members were baseless. The majority of evidence collected over the last 150 years supports Darwin, and very few dissenting opinions have survived a review by scientists.
"Every single thing they are representing as a weakness is a misrepresentation of science," said David Hillis, a professor of biology at the University of Texas. "These are science skeptics. These are people with religious and political agendas."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/22/america/texas.1-413294.php
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