Thursday, October 20, T33
Daily Nobrsskan
Pa go 5
As Austin goes, so goes the nation
Recommendation
c
eoiisl textbook censorsMio
Textbook censorship of a noxious
political and religious kind has taken
hold during the dawn of the New Con
servatism and this censorship is not
the responsibility of parents who com
plain to local school boards about
(
i
Cine
Peterson
Grandpa Jo ad's vulgarity in 'The
Grapes of Wrath." Various publishing
houses have beun to, as ED. Whits
put it, tailor their convictions to fellow
the fashion.
Many charges of censorship have
been made against Mel and Norma
Gabler, members of the Chrrtbn Mis
sionary Alliance and founders of the
Texas-based Educational Research
Analysts. 1 ;
Recommendations that the Gablers,
make about -what books should be
used carry unusual weight with the
Texas State Textbook Committee, which
makes up a book list for all the public
schools in the state. Because Texas has
: the largest single pririary and secon
dary school textbook market in the
country, what is acceptable in Austin
can determine what schoolbooks are
printed.
!
ll-ni , ,
7 2a
Letters
Ziahdsmjustifled
Krishna Madan's column about
Palestinians end Jews (Dally Nebrcs
kan, Oct. 7) may Have been intended
sincerely but it sounds in inaccuracies
and distortions of the truth. 11a states
, as an undisputed fact that there was
an "illegal influx of European Jews"
into British-controlled Palestine 35
years ago, ignoring the fact that Jews
began settling in Israel in fairly large
numbers in the 1920s and 1930s, pur
chasing land and cultivating what was
a wasteland. All this 'was legal, and
only a very small minority of settlers
entered "illegally," because of the res
trictions imposed by the British Man-,
date authorities.
Similarly, the columnist casually da
fines Zionism as "a racist ideology that
discriminates against Palestinians."
Zionism is a viewpoint that Jews should
have a national homeland cf their
own, like the other nations of tha
world. -:-
Proponents of Zionism have always
hoped that the Jewish State would be
able to live in harmony with its Arab
neighbors, but it is the latter who have
almost invariably rejected the out
stretched hand. Zionism does not dis
criminate against "Oriental Jews," and
the nascent Jewish State took in many
thousands of Jewish refugees who had
been booted out of Islamic countries,
almost swamping the initial settlers
with their numbers. Thesa Jews, who
left eH their property behind and fled
for their lives, were absorbed by the
new State of Israel, and are to'day mak
ing their mark in Israeli society. If the
Arab countries had treated the Arab
refugees only half as well, instead cf
cynically and deliberately seeking to
exacerbate the plight of these unfor
tunate people, the Middle East might
ba at peace today.
Dorothea Shefer
Lincoln
Policy 'sabotaged '
As a conservative, I strongly dis
agree with Lawrence Klein's critique of
Reaganomics (Daily Nebraskan, Oct.
17). If Reaganomics is a failure, it is
because of the political sabotage that
the liberals in Congress inflicted upon
the Kemp-Roth tax bilL
The 25 percent tax cut was strung
out over three years on the insistence
of the liberals. The American economy
is only now responding to the belated
efTcts cf the tax cuts. -
Tha big spending and high tax eco
nomic policies of Keynesians such as
Klein can only produce high inflation,
high interest rates and low personal
. savings.' : -
We need Reaganomics to restore the
individual initiative to vork and to
save. Why work if the big spenders are
only going to redistribute our hard
earned money to the parasites that
feed off the welfare state that America
has become? ;
Glenn Paulsen
senior
: . - psychology
.". Hare letters ca Paa 6
The Gablers and other textbook acti
vists have a fairly specific philosophy'
for their evaluations; any favorable
reference to Fran'.din Roosevelt will be
regarded as unpardonable Leftist bias.
Anne Frank's diary was attacked
because, the Gabler research team
insisted, it has not been proven that
the Naif Holocaust actually occurred.
The really scary thing about most of
these judgments is not that anyone
could believe these books are wrong,
but that a state board would yield to
the censoring pressure as the Texas
agency largely has. ,
And there have been national con
sequences. At least two publishing com
panies Doubleday and Laidiaw
now have biology texts which do not
even mention the word 'evolution'?
they sell no high school biology books
which do.
Another Gabler target has been the
"American Heritage Dictionary." Nat
Ilentoff, a member of that dictionary's
usage panel, recently discovered an
edition of the dictionary in which a
number of Gabler sore points, were,
shall we say, eased.
- To charge the Gablers and their
research group with censorship is to
miss the point.
The Gablers do not have the power
to censor, anymore than I do" Ilentoff
wrote in the Oct. 4 Village Voice. "The
censors in Texas are those members of
the State Textbook Committee who let
themselves be influenced by the
Gablers."
, Everyone has the right to promote
philosophies in educational material
Every history book and every list of
extra reading for a high school English
class contains an approach and view
point, whether it is coherent and deve
loped or not. People who think that a
mainline viewpoint is fair by definition
are guarding a false and superficial
ideal of objectivity. The job of school
officials who make judgments shout
curriculum h to make their evalua
tions truthful in some sense.
No scientific text should contain
material not based on rigorous re
search, or leave out an important
not to say essential part. And no
. forceful book should be left out of con
sideration for class reading for politi-.
cal and social reasons, whether its phi
losophy i3 traditional or radical
u JLsL juwu i)
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Oct 29, 1933
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