Publishers: Stand up to the Texas State Board of Education

Eric Mann pointed me at a Credo Action-sponsored mailing campaign to the major textbook publishers.

This is a way YOU can make a lasting difference in our education system.

They provide you with a pre-written letter you can send, but allow you to send your own instead. So even if you don’t agree with Credo Action’s politics, and even if you don’t like their letter, I urge you, please take a moment and send something.

Here is what I sent. Please write, either via this link, or directly. Please feel free to steal anything you like from my piece.

Dear sirs,

As an MIT-educated parent, with a life-long interest in education, I have watched with increasing horror the ever-escalating manipulations by the Texas State Board of Education.

There are times when a company must walk away from business. Times when the indirect costs far outweigh any profits. Times when the lasting damage to ones reputation is more important than the bottom line today.

Now is that time.

If we—no, if YOU allow this blatant manipulation, we will all be poorer for it. I can think of no greater harm to be done to our educational system, than to allow this bunch to insert their propaganda into the nation’s textbooks.

But it’s not enough to supply an alternate version for a state which appears to have slipped into an alternate reality.

It is time to take a corporate stand, that you will have NO PART IN THIS.

I do not believe the Texas State Board of Education will continue have this extremist makeup for much longer. I think any books you were to make for them would have a very short lifespan, anyway.

But if you take a stand for intellectual honesty – a PUBLIC stand, I believe you will hasten that day. You’ll help put the issue on more Texan voter’s radars.

I actually think you’ll have a chance to make up for any lost sales, when those damaged-goods propaganda pieces that most parents would cringe at giving their kids, are urgently replaced with real textbooks again.

Please stand up to these folks!

Our children are counting on you.