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Hello everyone, and welcome back to America Under the Microscope, advanced episode. Hi Lulu.

Hi, James.

Let's continue our talk about text books and curriculum, and let's get into the more controversial issues related to textbooks in America.

Oh, yes. I've heard about some of the issues.

Yeah. So let's go and talk about some of that textbook content that people find to be questionable.

As we talked about in the last episode, so the states choose the standards and the textbooks that can be used. But this also leads to political influence because different states have like different views of what should or should not be taught.

Different political leanings.

And this can reflect into the textbooks for use and what get taught. Good example of this in America would be the American Civil War.

Oh, American Civil War, I thought now is pretty much settled like people have a generalized leaning on this, or people still disagree on which side should be supported?

Well, in general you're not going to find people arguing that because slavery was bad. It's more of like in some states, more commonly in the Southeast will still frame it as like a war against Northern aggression.

I see.

Instead of a war about…

Abandoning…abolishing slavery.

So, I mean, they still talk about the abolishing slavery, but they also talk about some of the atrocities that the Northern armies did, and they focus more on that.

They're not teaching incorrect information, but they're just skewing it and putting a kind of a spin on it.

I think it was history textbooks, it’s always… perhaps it attracts more debates because history is one of those, the facts might be the same, but how you spin it, how you interpret it will directly affect people you are teaching.

And the other subject that this is really noticeable in are biology and English.

Biology and English?

Yes. Biology, the big one in biology is evolution.

Oh, yes, because there are people who don't believe in evolution.

There are quite a few Americans, due to their religious beliefs, don't believe in evolution and don't want evolution to be taught in schools. Or if it is taught in schools, it needs to be taught alongside something called intelligent design.

Intelligent design?

Yeah, it's a religious idea. I don't quite understand it. But it is…

Is it just creationism?

Yean, it is, under a new term.

Can I just clarify this? It is against law to teach students, directly teach students religion in public school, right?

Yes, separation of church and states. So the schools cannot do any kind of religious activity or religious indoctrination in schools. What they can do is they can teach about the religions as in this is a religion, this is what people believe, this is where it is practiced as an you know just general cultural knowledge.

But you cannot tell a student that is like there is one god, that you will get you fired.

But now it sounds like you're saying people who are religious are saying if you teach, if you teach evolution, if you teach that human came from monkeys, then you must teach religion as well.

In some states, yes, not in all states. I was lucky in my state that did not happen. My state is like you learned evolution, that was what you learned.

Yeah. The other thing I would imagine is sex education.

That's another big one. But mostly it’s just whether it is taught, how much it's taught, or is it not taught. So some places they just don't teach it.

At all?

At all. Some places teach it really well. So it depends.

And I suppose when.

Yeah, also when they teach it too.

And you also mentioned English language, what's that about

Ha, a big part of the issue and English is like the novels you read.

Oh, the book list.

So a lot of parents don't want their kids read certain novels because they contain themes they don't like, or language they don't like.

Like Catcher in the Rye?

That's one because of the themes, it’s really common, but also books are common one… one of the most banned books in America is Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.

Why?

Well, because they use the N word a lot, like ‘a lot’ a lot.

But shouldn't people understand that this is based on historical context, like things have changed and reading this book does not necessarily…

You would think that.

Okay.

Never underestimate what people can accept or not accept.

I see. So let's just say that people are not happy with these textbooks or textbook contents, say parents are not happy. Then what can they do?

Do they actually just protest against it, or can they actually have any real influence to change the textbooks?

They do have some influence. So parents can go to the school board meetings and push their views and state their views. They can try to go all the way up to the state level and affect laws and get things changed, and influence the legislatures to pass new laws related to education.

There have been some success, like the state of Idaho where I was born, if you teach biology and you want to teach evolution, you must also teach creationism which is technically illegal, but no one's willing to fight it

WOW. I see. I see.

I'm assuming then, because parents also don't agree with one another. Then what happens, they would just fight amongst themselves.

I imagine you can go online and find several videos of parents fighting each other over content taught in class, and disagreements, and about their ideology and things like that.

Parents have been arrested because of this causing disturbances. Parents have assaulted teachers.

Yeah. This is stupid because teachers don't really have any control based on what we were talking about. Teachers don't have any control of what textbook is used.

Teachers do not have control of the textbooks. They do not have control of the standards. They have control about how they get the students to achieve the standards. But they have to do that within the material and the framework that's provided.

The other thing, apart from all these controversies, the other thing that there can be problematic is if textbooks are not standardized like we have here in China, then what about exams? I know you don't have the equivalent of 高考, but what about… I know you still have like SAT or ACT or AP. Then if there are standardized exams, how can students deal with it if they're using vastly different textbooks?

First of all, they're not part of the school system. SAT and ACT are independent. So they're not part of the school curriculum. They're completely optional and for university admission.

I see.

So if you want to take those tests, you're on your own. AP as you mentioned, AP is actually a class that has an exam to go with that class. If you're taking AP, you're in an AP curriculum, and then you take the AP exam. An AP class will be the same regardless of where you are.

I see. So people who are taking SAT, ACT or AP, they have standardized materials to prepare for these standardized tests.

For AP yes, not SAT or ACT.

OK. But what if you say I don't even want to go to university, I'm not taking SAT, ACT, you know in China we have like 会考 right? So we have sort of …even if you don't go through高考, you have standardized tests for each subject. Do you have that?

Nope.

Okay, I guess that's why there's not that much pressure on what textbook you use because you don't really have a generalized or standardized test anyway ways.

There are standardized tests for the state. There's state standardized tests, but there's no national one.

And a lot of state standardized testing isn't for the students. It's actually for the teachers in the school to see whether the teachers have been meeting, getting the students to meet the standards. The students don't need to pass those tests. If the students fail them, it's the teacher that gets punished.

I see. So within a state you're okay, but moving from one state to another, you’re gonna be in trouble because ...

Or you'll have an advantage.

Oh, that’s true. I'm such a pessimist.

Because this happened to me, I moved a lot. I ended up always being head of my classes for such a long time because… I always ended up going from a more advanced school to a slightly less advanced school, so the things that they were learning were things I have already learned.

So, you can be the top of the class.

So it's like we've already learned these in my previous school. Cool, this is easy.

No more book report because you have your old one.

All right, I think we're gonna wrap up here. I've certainly learned more about how textbooks are used and how they're designed, and what kind of controversial issues are related to them.

Thank you, James, for coming to the show.

Happy to be here.

If you guys have any comments about text books or if you had an experience with other text books, leave us a comment in the comment section. We'll see you next time. Bye.

Bye, guys.