SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA, November 17, 2005: When the California state board of education voted Wednesday to adopt new social studies textbooks for elementary and middle school students, it required nearly 1,000 edits and corrections to be made to the materials. Far from the spotlight of the public debate over evolution and intelligent design in science textbooks, a less-publicized battle was being waged for months over the religion content of social studies and history materials. Close to 200 of the nearly 1,000 edits and corrections had been put forward by the Institute for Curriculum Services, a project of the San Francisco Jewish community Relations Council, which spent months reviewing all 12 of the proposed educational programs for bias against Judaism or inaccuracies in their depiction of Jewish history.
Getting the coveted seal of approval from California means big money to educational publishers. California is the nation’s largest purchaser of school textbooks, and schools throughout the state may use public funds to purchase approved programs. Not only do other states often follow California’s lead in their own adoptions, but as one board of education member noted at the meeting, publishers “write for our state.” California has mandated the study of religion since 1987. Students learn about Judaism, Hinduism and Christianity in sixth grade, and Islam in seventh grade.
Close to 80 speakers addressed the education board during its five-hour meeting here, and the 13 board members listened to all of them carefully, discussing their major points publicly before voting on adoption. The vast majority of the speakers were Hindu and Sikh, communities who said they felt slighted by all the publishers’ offerings. “Hinduism is not treated with the same respect as Christianity or Judaism,” said Dr. Mihir Meghani, president of the Hindu American foundation. “The sacred scriptures of Hinduism are referred to as legends or myths,” he said. In contrast, with Christian or Jewish biblical accounts, “they write ‘the Bible says’ or ‘according to the Torah.'” Sikh speakers told the board that although there are almost 600,000 Sikhs in the United States, half of them in California alone, none of the textbooks discusses Sikhism or shows pictures of Sikhs so children can learn to identify and respect them.
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HPI adds: The attempts by Hindus to get adjustments to these same books suffered a setback with the intervention of Prof. Michael Witzel of Harvard University. He sent the board a letter claiming all the Hindu objections were “unscholarly, politically and religiously motivated.” You can download his entire letter
here. The letter makes no references to actual text from any of the schoolbooks, and it is possible the author has not actually reviewed the exact material being considered by the school board. The board has postponed a decision on the Hindu objections to its December 2 meeting. Concerned Hindus may contact Khanderao Kand, who has headed up the Hindu effort, at khanderao@yahoo.com.