The wave of book bans sweeping the US, typically reserved for works of fiction deemed controversial, has hit textbooks used in public schools, marking the next step in Republicans\u2019 war on education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The board of trustees for the Cypress Fairbanks independent school district in Houston voted 6-1 earlier this month to redact certain chapters in science textbooks, including those about vaccines, human growth, diversity, and climate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The motion to remove the chapters was made by the board\u2019s vice-president Natalie Blasingame and almost unanimously supported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Blasingame, who has served on the board since 2021, did not give a specific explanation for the decision, but said the subjects go beyond what the state requires to teach and creates \u201ca perception that humans are bad\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last year, the Republican-controlled state board approved textbooks<\/a> for the schools\u2019 science curriculums, rejecting several books on climate, so the local school district\u2019s censorship of these textbooks is even more restrictive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Education experts say the move could have far-reaching consequences, prompting similar decisions to omit information in other subjects, and public school districts across the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The board\u2019s decision drew the ire of local parents and education groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Brian Henry, a local parent and founder of the non-partisan group Cypress Families for Public Schools, said he was concerned about the precedent this decision sets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWill trustees at the local school board level be able to just delete chapters about civil rights because they just mentioned the history of same-sex marriage?\u201d Henry, 37, said. \u201cIt\u2019s really kind of alarming what this could mean for ideological influence and control over what is taught in schools.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Henry describes Cypress, a sprawling suburb of Houston with a population of nearly 200,000, as an increasingly diverse community with a loud minority of political extremists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cA lot of Republicans in the Cy-Fair area, who are very conservative but are pro public-education, are having to now grapple with the fact that [the] governor, state representatives \u2013 they\u2019re really not pro public\u2013education,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd so people are struggling with how to reconcile that, because they don\u2019t want to vote for Democrats.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Henry added this \u201clevel of oversight, micromanagement and interference\u201d is \u201cscary.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Texas<\/a> Freedom to Read Project, an organization that fights book bans, swiftly condemned the decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTo ban entire chapters of textbooks and withhold that information from students is not only unconstitutional, but it is taking away their access to real-life ideas that exist in this world,\u201d said Laney Hawes, co-founder of the group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAccess to a diverse and wide range of information is what prepares students to navigate this world successfully. When we ban books and limit students ability to access ideas, we are closing doors to their futures.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kasey Meehan of PEN America, the national non-profit organization committed to free expression, said school board members \u2013 who are often publicly elected and do not necessarily have an education in background \u2013 are increasingly having an outsized influence on the instruction being delivered to students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cA narrow ideological viewpoint is reshaping student education for students across our public school system,\u201d Meehan told the Guardian. \u201cI think what we\u2019re seeing is a really targeted campaign to increasingly burden and cause confusion and chaos amongst our public school system, in a way that begins to strain and dismantle it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n PEN America found 3,362 instances<\/a> of individual books banned in public K\u201312 schools for the 2022-23 academic year \u2013 a 33% increase from last year, with Florida and Texas<\/a> leading the way. These books mostly include novels with themes of race or sexuality, not core academic material.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meehan said the censorships of textbooks is \u201ca further escalation of this movement\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTexas is no stranger to book bans or censoring other educational content areas or materials. The idea that we\u2019re redacting chapters from state-approved textbooks is almost unheard of. It\u2019s so outlandish,\u201d Meehan said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n