Blue Books, Red Books -- to 2005

[plumtreeblossom]

In order for our history, pol-sci, psychology, literature and science textbooks to be adopted these days into the state university systems of most southern states and/or conservative states, my publishing house has been forced (fiscally, and perhaps even fistfully in a roundabout way) to begin publishing two versions of certain key textbooks that we depend upon for financial survival. In-house, we call these new versions the Texas Version and the California Version.

California Versions are standard college textbooks that provide unbiased content and an accurate representation and delivery of the subject. You probably used some of our textbooks when you were in college, and the California Versions are the same as those.

The Texas Versions are another matter.

I had to help with one a few weeks ago and it singed my conscience deeper than you know. A Texas Version is a California Version with an arm-long list of "objectional" content removed (not discussed or examined from any side, just removed). From a freshman 101 history text coming out in '05, we had to remove the following, among others:

All references to homosexuality except when referred to as a "treatable disease"; a photo of an interracial family with bi-racial children; a photo of an anti-war protest from the Gulf War; a sidebar containing a mini-interview of a Planned Parenthood executive; photos showing alcoholic beverages; a screen freeze of the Socialist Party's website; a quote by Harry S Truman containing the word "damn"; a photo of women's undergarments for sale in a Hong Kong street market; all photos containing dead bodies (specifically war photos); and more.

We don't have a choice about this. We can't do without the Red State college market. We'd go under in half a decade. So we have now been reduced to publishing two versions of certain books. One is the true textbook, and one is something else. But it is not the textbook as it was written. Double versions also drive up cost to the consumer -- America's college students.

I say this because it is another crack in the foundation, one of thousands, millions. Its another illustration, should you even need one by now, that Bush's true war is on America.

Vote locally. Stay aware and help raise awareness. Do anything you can.

To 2005.

Comments

Do you have proof?

[guxx.livejournal.com]

Do you have proof the Republican Party is the cause of these Texan book versions?

Re: Do you have proof?

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Not the Republican Party; not by any means. I know moderate Republicans who weep into their pillows over what is happening in their party. The GOP was once and still is the party of many judicious and wise people; you can start with Colin Powell and work chronologically back to Abraham Lincoln. The GOP is a positive part of what this country is. But their party has been hijacked by a cult of personality that appeals to a reptilian self-loathing/hate-based leader-deprived LCD. The LCD wanted a cartoon superhero. They got one.

(from whence did you extract Repub-blame from my post? I'm not being pugnacious and am not looking for debate, but I'm curious as to how it came off like that.)

Re: Do you have proof?

[dpolicar]

I suspect the equation Ari is making here is {Bush/RedState} = Republican Party... which I can understand making, though I also understand what you mean by distinguishing them.
I suppose one could ask you what evidence you have that this illustrates anything at all about Bush... but it ain't gonna be me. As below, I just don't have the heart.

[dpolicar]

Do you object to my pointing to this? Regardless of how one feels about your conclusions or your attribution of blame (and I share both personally, but can see where others might not), the facts themselves are ones I'd like more broadly disseminated... but I can see where you might not want to become the latest blog hotspot. (Not that my pointing to it would cause that, but I'm being Kantian for the moment.)

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

I'd love to hear your insights, and those of others you respect enough to have on your friendlist. Point away. Obviously I'm not crying victim, because I elected of my own free will to assist with the degrading compromise that my company was forced to make. I don't feel good about the compromise, and neither do the 7,500 other people who work for our publishing house and who need jobs, and who, like me, don't have the financial cushion to act as we would if raw survival (shelter/food) were not a factor. This is one of the most naked posts I've shared in a long time. Bring on the discussion. I welcome it.

[dpolicar]

I liked your post because it captured in a concrete, observed timeslice a pattern of attack-the-facts that is hard to describe in the abstract, but I don't have anything to add to it. I have no insights, nothing really to say.

It is in my nature to play devil's advocate, to get all academic here and talk about how differing perspectives on what is really worth teaching is not necessarily being a bad thing, but frankly my heart isn't in it... it feels like "we" (whatever that means) are being pounded on to a point where empathisizing with "them" just takes more work than it's worth.
I'm certainly not going to chastise you for doing what you have to do to pay the bills. I suppose in principle I could, but again it feels too much like kicking the underdog; I just don't have the heart.

I'm not even angry, though I feel like I should be... just heartsick. There are many things I like about this country, and I wish people would stop kicking those things into the dust of the streets.

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

I'm curious how you know what the right changes to make for the red state version are. Did you "just know" that there'd be complaints to Truman's quote, say, or was it made clear it was unacceptable?

Also, I guess I'm wondering if this is a developing trend, or a consistent fact. How long have you been in this industry, and what's this been like over this time? Are there positive trends that we don't know about that are happening at the same time as this is?

Finally, I guess I'm unhappy at the claim you made in the second paragraph about unbiased content in the California versions of textbooks. I just can't buy it; I think it might be more honest to say that your California editions match the current viewpoint of most professional historians? Bias-free is basically impossible, no?

Thank you for an interesting post. I've talked to some people in publishing about what it's like to publish evolution textbooks before, and gotten depressed. But I haven't had a chance to talk to someone in the general textbook industry. Good luck. What a challenge this sounds like!

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

The book I worked on was a 2nd edition. The 1st edition was rejected by the University of Texas and a number of other state and private universities. The University of Texas were the ones who provided a specific list of what would need to be removed from that specific book in order for it to be adopted, as well as fairly clear guidelines for all other future books (which is I guess why the new version was name "Texas Version"). Those guidelines would of course apply to all publishers, not just us.

I've only been in publishing for 6 years (I got a late start. Most career publishers my age have 15 years under their belt) and I only joined my current publishing house 5 months ago. But I've never seen anything like this before, not at my previous press at least. That's why I'm still shell-shocked about it.

Apparently, some parents read their children's college textbooks before allowing their child to use the book. I never knew that (my parents certainly never read my college textbooks. Not even my high school or junior high textbooks). Anyway, that's where the initial complaints to the University of Texas came from, and for reasons I won't venture to speculate about, they and other universities are bowing to them.

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

Certainly, parents are becoming much more involved in their kids' higher education. (Not that they want their kid to be better educated; more often, it's because their kid is really above average and some foolish professor had the temerity to question that readily apparent fact.) I guess I'm not surprised they're often reading their kids' textbooks, too.

UofTexas is huge, and so must be quite different from my university in how it picks textbooks for courses. I'd be curious at what level of the university the kowtowing is coming.

Versions

[baronet.livejournal.com]

When I read the existance of a "California" version and "Texas" version, I assumed that they would a blue-state version and a red-state version and that they would be equally biased in opposite directions. But it sounds like the CA version is uneditted from what the authors wrote, while the TX version has specific edits done. I put forth that rather than the red state version and blue state version, they are the edited version and the unedited version, or to be more emotional about it, the censored and the uncensored versions.

It further sounds like the parents, administrators and politicans who rejected the first version of the History text *want* a censored version. They want to make sure that the wrong kind of ideas don't pollute their schools. But if it gets called the censored version, then those people who don't currently care one way or the other (or who don't voice their opinion) may start to say "hey, I want junior to learn from the uncensored version." It's easier to get the school board to say that uncensored is good than it is to say the California version is good. I imagine that most people in Texas know that California is fully of fuzzy thinking nutty-crunchy good-for-nothing radicals.

Re: Versions

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

Sorry if I was unclear in my first comment; I mostly meant that an unbiased edition of a history textbook is an impossibility, as its authors will still be writing from their own biases. (Note that that's probably for the best. "Unbiased" books tend to be amazingly boring...)

What's probably more the case is that mainstream CA values fit a lot closer to the mainstream beliefs of most actual historians...

Re: Versions

[baronet.livejournal.com]

I agree that bias is unavoidable and that it isn't even all that desirable. My point was that we should frame the debate not as "biased my way" and "biased your way" which makes them sound equally acceptable, but rather as "the version the authors wrote" and "the version the author wrote with a bunch of stuff taken out 'for your own good'" that makes it clear which version has been censored and watered down.

[micklawson.livejournal.com]

Hmm I guess I'm 'lucky' to be an outsider looking in, but this book thing is not new in the states from what I have read, though it does seem to be getting awfully Orwellian.

Book authors and Press Editors have been 'victims' (IMHO its readers that are the victims) of this type of corruption for many years, as I have written recently in either uk_dead_pool or my own LJ (sorry I forget which) and it is generaly to protect the corrupt elite.

plumtreeblossom Do you mind if I add you? I'd like to see how this story pans out, I know many have similar stories of 'challenged books' and I can't believe how many of them are standard reading here in the UK for 12-18 year olds.

Mind you, the christian lot have been the same in years past, how long was it before the litterate priests gave us a bible in the natives tongue, rather than latin?

Though shalt commit adultery 1635 bible (KJV)

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Sure, and I'll add you back! (I'm meeting so many cool people from that Vegetarian community). I don't ever mention the actual name of my publishing house, or the titles of any books that have not yet officially been published and released, but you get the basic gist of things.

[micklawson.livejournal.com]

Thanks, your added :) though I will point out, I have a habit of ranting not always on the Orwellian values the UK and US seem to be adding to, but it seems that way at the moment.

I don't ever mention the actual name of my publishing house

I don't blame you, the more corrupt the world becomes the more we need a reliable income.

[intuition-ist.livejournal.com]

question from the curious:

how hard would it be for the top (3? 5? 10?) textbook publishers to put their heads together, put their collective foot down, and say "no. you will not censor these things. you buy what we sell or you don't buy anything from us period. and we intend to publish (in the newspaper if necessary) a list of the cuts that you intended to force us to make."

how many textbook publishers are there? how hard would it be to hold the line on this? how desperate are the textbook publishers for cash?

i've heard these arguments used before -- from the stories of the people who censored movies and news shown in the South during the Civil Rights era, and the same sorts of questions sprang to mind (with no one to ask them of).

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

how hard would it be for the top (3? 5? 10?) textbook publishers to put their heads together, put their collective foot down, and say "no.

Any number of publishing houses could get together and "just say no," but then the book will be rejected by the objecting university systems and the sale will not be made. You might be thinking "so what?", but we're talking about tens of millions of dollars and thousands of potential job losses due to revenue loss. In a more-or-less free market, any product demand that rises will be filled, somehow or other. If a state university system wants a book free of the content I mentioned in the original post, either some publisher will say "yes" and produce it, or new publishers with enough venture capital will spring up to produce it.

how many textbook publishers are there? how hard would it be to hold the line on this? how desperate are the textbook publishers for cash?

There are about 70 major publishers in North America, and hundreds of smaller ones. Virtually every one of those publishers is just barely hanging on in today's economy, and competition id fierce. Many are operating in the red, and publishing houses (in whole or in part) do fold every year. So yes, "desperate" would be a fairly applicable word to use in this financial climate.

Have you read "Lies my Teacher Told me?"

[heliopsis.livejournal.com]

It's a scathing assessment of high school history textbooks and history education. You wouldn't think this would be exciting reading, but it is. The book is not explicitly political, but it shows how history textbooks have been consistently bowdlerized by political forces for years. What is most distressing to me in your post, is that this is a University textbook that is being censored. I had assumed that the truth would out eventually; but maybe not. If University students are being protected from uncomfortable truths, then what's next? Will University libraries be expunged of disagreeable books?

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

I remember a conversation in the mid-80's (back during the Reagan Red-Baiting Years) in which my interlocutor had heard that history textbooks in the Soviet Union were published as looseleaf binders, so that changes could be made. I took the position that we do the same thing in the US, but we have the money to simply print new textbooks every time our story changes. I think the sad thing here is not that our history is being edited (how many of you learned about the Japanese-American internment in high school? our invasion of the Soviet Union in 1918?) but that we can no longer even agree as a country on what our story will be.

Sorry you're finding yourself on the front lines of the Culture War, plumtreeblossom.