All grade school textbooks will question global warming, thanks to recent vote

Texas educators officially question global warming

Global warming skeptics will be getting younger and younger. Last week, the Texas State Board of Education voted on textbook language that actually condemns global warming as a proven fact. The announcement surprised not only Texans, but almost everyone in the environmental community.

The vote revolves around a grade-school textbook chapter on “Environmental Systems.” The Board of Education voted to change existing state science standards to include the phrase “analyze and evaluate different views on the existence of global warming.” Many people are up in arms about the decision. According to the Environmental Defense Fund, the decision flies in the face of established science and puts Texas children at a “competitive disadvantage in science education.” Dr. Ramon Alvarez, a senior scientist with the EDF says:

“In a last-minute assault on science and sensibility, the board appears to be supporting its own ideological views rather than those of proven science. Experts around the country, including the tenured faculty of Texas A&M's Department of Atmospheric Sciences, agree that our climate is warming and that humans are responsible."

The vote was 13-2 in favor of the phrasing. According to an article in the American-Statesman, the new science standards also excised requirements that students should be taught “strengths and weaknesses” of established scientific theories. Teachers will now be required to teach students to analyze “all sides” of such theories.

The new standards will have a far-reaching effect on what will be published in science textbooks not only in Texas, but across the country. Texas, California, and Florida are widely considered the three major targets of all educational publishers. In fact, most every publisher designs their textbook programs around these three states, synthesizing their state standards into a one-size-fits-all curriculum for the rest of the country. According to a current editor at SRA/McGraw-Hill in Columbus, Ohio:

“I think most parents would be shocked -- maybe even appalled -- by how much influence these three states have on what is taught across the United States. And it’s absolutely true for us,” the editor says. “Every one of our textbooks is written to satisfy the state standards in Florida, Texas, and California. That’s it. Even Ohio, where we’re located, doesn’t create enough of a market to matter. So, if a student’s reading our textbooks in Minnesota or Oregon or Louisiana, nine times out of ten, it’s designed to hit something in the standards of Florida, Texas, or California.”

The Texas science standards have not been revised since 1998. However, some are rejoicing over the decision, including those at the Discovery Institute, a think tank that supports the idea of intelligent design. The Institute notes that the decision is “a huge victory for those who favor teaching the scientific evidence for and against evolution.”

The language seems less divisive than it does open-minded. In fact, revising current standards from a focus on “strengths and weaknesses” to an analysis of “all sides” seems like very little change at all. Still, the mere suggestion that global warming is a debatable topic has rankled countless members of the environmental community. Yet it’s a bold, if not fascinating, move on the part of Texas’s Board of Education -- one that will plant the seeds of doubt in many students’ heads, causing them to question what global warming is rather than blindly accepting what it is not.