The Publishers Flunk Science

By Ezra Bowen.

Like many publishing executives, Roger Rogalin of D.C. Heath has doubted that school authorities would press for upgrading the notoriously bland content of textbooks. Even after California's superintendent of public instruction Bill Honig warned publishers last year that his state meant business in reaching for higher standards, Rogalin said, "We've heard a number of times that things were going to change, only to see them fall apart down the road."

But California made good this month when the state school board notified eight publishers that it would not accept in present form the junior high science texts they offered for adoption. The reason: inadequate treatment of human reproduction, ethics (in treating subjects like pollution) and, most glaringly, evolution. The state's 16-member curriculum commission charged that these topics "were systematically omitted from the vast majority of textbooks." California, which buys 12% of U.S. school books, more than any other state, granted the six least neglectful publishers, including D.C. Heath, a conditional reprieve: they have until Oct. 15 to submit acceptable revision plans.

California's textbook-development director Francie Alexander charged that "there's just less and less information about evolution" in publishers' recent offerings. The Charles E. Merrill Principles of Science, for example, meekly allows that Charles Darwin developed "a theory that explains why there is a great number and variety of plant and animal species."

Why the pedagogical pussyfooting? Evolution is controversial, says Honig, "and publishers kept watering it down until children couldn't understand what evolution was." Indeed, over the past decade pressure from believers in the literal truth of the Bible's creation story prompted many of the 22 states with textbook adoption codes to back off from Darwin. Market-sensitive publishers swung into line.

Educators have been slow to ask for a better balance in how such controversial topics are handled or to insist on better writing throughout the books. In 1974 the California board decided that discussion of creation dogma belonged in social studies classes, not science classes. But it was not until 1983 that the state finally drafted specific guidelines that require full text treatment of natural selection, mutation and adaptation. In Texas, third behind California and New York in text purchases (5.5%), the state school board last year reversed a policy that evolution be taught as only one of several theories on how life came to be. Texas Education Commissioner W.N. Kirby sees the recent California action as part of "a growing national trend toward improving educational standards."

California officials insist that their ukase to publishers is not a rebuff to religion but an endorsement of interesting, up-to-date books. The state is also demanding improved presentation of historical subjects like the Holocaust, which publishers have tiptoed around. "The publishers will publish the books we want if we are clear about what we want," says Honig. As the textbook makers considered ways to meet these sterner standards, there was a growing sense among educators that the demands of the big spenders might start to cure the affliction of simplistic books in U.S. classrooms.

With reporting by Jon D. Hull/San Francisco