The Trouble with Textbooks

Fox News presented a documentary in 2009 interviewing authors, board members, parents, teachers on their views of biased textbooks in American Classrooms. The main focus of this documentary, The Trouble with Textbooks: Distorting History and Religion published in 2008, exams the saturation of anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism in elementary and secondary school’s educational material. The books was co-authored by Gary A. Tobin and Dennis Ybarra, both from the Institute for Jewish and Community Research. Gary Tobin is now deceased. Ybarra is the research associate and research manager of the initiative on anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism in America’s K-12 education systems. Based on their positions, one might consider their viewpoints prone to bias.


After analyzing 28 textbooks, a number of historical errors were found, as well as, errors reflecting bias toward one religion. One must decide for themselves whether these are honest errors or intentional bias. The fact that the book companies refused an interview is a little disturbing and definitely makes one wonder.

The interview with the mother of the two girls I found unconvincing. Since she had previously placed her girls in a private school, then returned them to a private school after concerns of bias and too much tolerance, I felt she might already harbor a negative attitude toward public schools. I fail to see how providing Islamic children a room for fasting during lunch affects anyone’s education. More parental interviews, especially of children attending the public school, would have provided a more convincing argument toward bias within the schools.

The African American father from California expressed a good argument, probably because he has faced discrimination and so have his children. In face of his own discrimination and that of his children, he still felt overwhelming concerns over LGBT. He, like many parents at the meeting, felt it was not the schools place to teach his children about gays. There was also the point that no data exists proving bully in the K-7 schools. This would need to be verified and the method for reporting bullying in elementary school might also be researched.

Fact: American high school students are performing below basic in history. Is this because of bias and faulty facts in our text books? Is it because the texts have been destroyed by censorship to the point of being horridly boring and irrelevant to our American students? These are questions that need answered by teachers, parents, and students, not groups with an agenda, or chosen, trained review panels.