A political battle in California is about as common these days as the sun setting over the Pacific. If the multibillion dollar budget battle wasn’t enough, or reacting to the new Arizona immigration law, now state lawmakers here want to ensure the Golden State doesn’t follow the textbook changes happening in Texas.
It all began with State Senator Leland Yee (D), who introduced a bill in Sacramento that would require California’s Board of Education to review all in-production textbooks and reject any changes that have been influenced by changes in the Lone Star State. Bill SB 1451 has passed the first policy committee by a 6-3 vote along party lines and the State Senator says the Texas changes are historically inaccurate and dismiss the contributions of minorities.
Critics of Yee’s bill cite the state’s battle over political correctness in textbooks just a few years ago…an issue we covered at the time here on foxnews.com. For example, there are certain words that either are suggested or mandated for use in California. For example, no longer is ‘Yacht’ suggested because it is elitist. Senior Citizens are now older persons and junk food like hot dogs, cake, candy, butter and soda are not depicted because “they are not healthy.”
One thing to consider, California is the nations largest market for school textbooks and in 2007, districts spent 633 million dollars on textbooks alone. Because of the massive budget shortfall here, lawmakers are now holding off until 2013 to approve new books for high school students and until 2016 for grades K-8….of course all this is meant to try and save millions. More coming on this all day…what do you think?